I'm learning more about WWI lately. Some excellent videos on Youtube. I don't have a lot of free time to read entire books on the subject, so I've resorted to YT videos while I work.

It was a war in which I suspect most wished death over long-term survival and makes modern warfare look like child's play.

Brutal conditions, living in trenches and tunnels, machine gun charges across open barbed wire terrain, millions of shells from endless deafening artillery (as something like 3 shells per second from thousands of cannons day and night) that buried men alive, poison gas, trench warfare, sewage, filth, rotting bodies, disease, rats, climbing over dead bodies, being sent into the war with inadequate equipment (such as no cold weather mountain gear and a million died of exposure in the mountains, or the Russians had not enough rifles, many nations ran out of ammunition or artillery shells, etc.) and antiquated or no medical treatment or understanding of PTS.

Also fascinating to see the first innovations of use of tanks, airplanes, submarines, phones, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkboF4hu-bE

Here's a good one. The Battle of Somme in France. The horrors are unreal, and the death count is staggering. I believe it was in the order of 58,000 dead on the first day of the campaign. The narrator points out that 5x the death toll at D-Day in WWII.

There's an excellent series called "The Great War" on YT, that is in 10 minute segments chronologically of the war week by week.

Slugs in WWI:
http://www.militarian.com/threads/ww1-c ... ade.11948/

Watched. Wow.

Those tanks . . . holy crap, those must have inspired terror on the other side!

Some great battle rifles from WW1. I shoot mine regularly: 1903, 1917, No. 1 Mark III, 1898 Mauser. The best shooter I have is the 1917 Enfield. My favorite is the 1898 with its completely badass butcher-blade bayonet.

Hardcore history, Dan Carlin, WWI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFMT_BVBBsAc

also in podcast form.
You are Welcome

My grandfather fought in WWI. He was part of Company D in the 125th Infantry.

I have a copy of his diary from that time. Pretty incredible to read what he went through 100 years ago. Right now he would have been on a boat crossing the Atlantic:

Aug. 6, 1918 - Left Newport at 2:30 for France
Aug. 18, 1918 - Landed in Brest, France

The battle didn't commence till the 26th of September. My Grandfather got within 2 kilometers of the line on the 27th then went over the next day.

He fought in the Argonne Forest in France then moved on to Germany before the armistice was signed.

Show called "Tunnels" I think. Pretty interesting about the largest purposeful non-nuke explosion dug under German tunnels across the line.

ALLOT of Sitka Spruce was logged here in Wa because of WWI. Almost all of it.

Haven't done much studying ofWW1 since High school a few decades ago

Facinating war for sure. I read a few books about 20 years ago on subject matter before I got into WW2.

One of the books I read was recommended by my nurse wife, The Great Influenza. During WW1, this flu virus erupted in an army camp in Kansas, moved east with American troops, then exploded, killing as many as 100 million people worldwide. It killed more people in twenty-four months than AIDS killed in twenty-four years. (Quote from the Amazon page)