Once effective protective masks were developed for soldiers, the principle had to be applied to other necessities, as

displayed by the special mask worn by this horse from a German ammunition column making its way through woods
contaminated with poison gas in June 1918.
Planes were used to observe the enemy and the pilot would report back to
men on the ground. Later, 'Scout' aircraft had machine guns to shoot down
enemy planes. Bigger aircraft carried bombs to drop on troops on the
ground. This was originally done by either the pilot or co-pilot dropping a
bomb over the side of the plane.
A German soldier rubs down massive shells for the 38 cm SK L/45, or "Langer Max" rapid firing railroad gun, ca. 1918. The Langer Max was
originally designed as a battleship weapon, later mounted to armored rail cars, one of many types of rartillery used during the war.
German infantrymen weilding macine guns adopt a fighting pose in a communication trench somewhere on the the Western Front. Both soldiers
Soldiers
are wearing struggle
gas masks and to pull a huge
Stahlhelm piece with
helmets, of artillery through
brow plate mud. The called
attachments mud was deep and devouring.
stirnpanzers. A wounded
The stirnpanzer man came
was a steel plate to
used for
fear death by drowning in the trench or the latrine, often a much greater dread than a
protecting snipers in the trenches, where popping your head above ground for a look could be lethal. rogue shell.
At the outbreak of World War I, the Germans began actively to develop chemical weapons. Both sides eventually used different gases as
weapons during the war. Mustard gas, introduced in 1917, blistered the skin, eyes, and lungs, and killed thousands. Gas mask technology
varied widely, eventually developing into an effective defense that limited the value of gas attacks in later years.
There were men crying with the pain of gaping wounds and dreadfully swollen, discolored trench feet. There were strings of from eight to twenty
blind boys filling up the road, clinging tightly and pitifully to each other’s hands, led by some bedraggled limping youngster who could still see. I
wonder if I’ll ever be able to look at marching men anywhere without seeing those blinded boys, with five and six wound stripes on their sleeves,
struggling along the road. -Helen Dore Boylston first Harvard Unit, a U.S. medical team
Bodies of dead German soldiers are seen in a destroyed trench on the Western Front. Photos like these were censored from the public during
the First World War, but word of the destruction got out by other means. David Lloyd George, soon to be Prime Minister, believed that if people
knew what was going on in the trenches, the war would be ended immediately. At the time, the government even denied that trenches existed.
On Christmas Day in 1914, British and German troops called an unofficial truce. It is now referred to as ‘The Christmas Truce.’

We went outside and stood listening. All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets, machine gun fire
and distant German voices. But there was a dead silence that morning, as far as you could see. We shouted ‘Merry Christmas,’ even though nobody
felt merry. The silence ended in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war. -Soldier Alfred Anderson
Soldiers often wrote letters home. Life in the trenches was summed up by the phrase: "Months of boredom punctuated by moments of
extreme terror.” Havildar Abdul Rahman wrote to his family in frantic words that escaped the military censor: ‘For God’s sake, don’t enlist
and come fight in Europe. Cannons, machine guns, rifles and bombs are going day and night. In my company there are 10 men left.”
 Noon Dinner
5am 'Stand-to' (high-alert) After dinner Sleep and
5.30am Rum ration downtime
6am Stand-down 6pm Stand-to
7am Breakfast 6.30pm Stand-down
8am Clean selves and weapons 6.30pm on Work all night
Most diaries include descriptions of marches, extreme boredom, and sometimes sports. Says historian William Spencer, “Usually soccer. On

the first day of the Battle of the Somme, July 1 of 1916, at least one regiment advanced towards the enemy kicking a soccer ball."

Soccer team of British soldiers with gas masks, World War I, Northern France, 1916.
Robert Graves remarked upon life in the trenches in his book ‘Goodbye to All That’: “Rats came up from the canal, fed on the plentiful corpses,
and multiplied. A new officer joined the company and was given a dug-out containing a bed. When he turned in that night he heard a scuffling,
shone his torch, and found two rats on his blanket tussling for the possession of a severed hand.”
Female members of the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry stand in front of Red Cross ambulances. The first female recruits of this
organization came from the upper classes. The women worked as drivers, nurses and cooks. The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry
(FANY) was a unit of women nurses on horseback, who linked the military field hospitals with the frontline troops.
"It was obvious they weren't 19," says historian Richard Van Emden, "but you'd have a
queue of men going down the road, you're getting a bounty for everyone who joins up, are
you really going to argue the toss with a young lad who's enthusiastic, who's keen as
mustard to go, who looks maybe pretty fit, pretty well. Let's take him."

As many as 250,000 boys under the age of 18 served

in the British Army during World War One.
 "Everybody's head [was] high, and we were all proud to be Americans, proud to be black, and proud to be in the
15th New York Infantry." Melville Miller of the the 15th New York Infantry (aka: The Harlem Hellfighters)

"What became known as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum following WWI, and especially in the final months
leading up to America's involvement in WWII. Many African Americans collectively mobilized and began to fight for a
single goal, in this case, ‘We must desegregate the armed forces.' " -Author Rawn James, Jr.
“If a man knows nothing but hard times, he will paint them, for he must be true to himself.” -Horace Pippin

Horace Pippin, The Barracks, 1945. Oil on canvas. The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC
The End of the War: Starting Home, c.1930. The Philadelphia Museum of Art

"Night were comeing on. And it Began to rain. Then I tried to get the blanket from my dead comrad. That I could not do.
And I could not get him of off me. The Rain came more and more ontill I were in water yet I were groweing weeker and
weeker all the time and I went to sleep. -Horace Pippin
WWI Army veteran Horace Pippin (1888-1946) fought with the famed ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ during the Great War. His oil-on-canvas
depictions of his experiences in France, where he lost an arm, became famous. Pippin fought for his country—though he lived in a time
when many would not fight for him or his rights as an American due to his race.
The amateur photographer Margaret Hall volunteered with the American Red Cross in
France between September 1918 and July 1919, during which time she served Allied
troops, refugees, and even prisoners of war at the canteen. She kept a journal detailing
her experiences and ook numerous photographs of northeastern France and Belgium.
(Even though cameras were not allowed, she had two that she used on her travels.)
“There never has been anything real about my life over here. I can't believe
that it is I who am seeing it with my eyes, living in something that is a reality
and not a dream. It worries me sometimes for I am afraid it will disappear
out of my memory like a dream, and I don't know just what to do to hold on
to it.”- Margaret Hall

Margaret Hall. Grave in "No Man's Land,"1918–19. Gelatin silver print, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY
In 1918, Margaret Hall confided to her diary that when she passed French medical, police, and customs inspections, they “forgot to ask if I had a
camera”. She defiantly pasted into her journal the official American Expeditionary Force regulations banning cameras.
Within months of the armistice that ended the First World War, American artist Claggett
Wilson (1887–1952), who had fought in France as a combat marine, produced a riveting
portfolio of two dozen watercolors based on his wartime experiences.
Flower of Death— The Bursting of a Heavy Shell—Not as It Looks, but as It Feels and Sounds and Smells by Claggett Wilson (1887–1952).
Watercolor and pencil on paperboard. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D. C.
Claggett Wilson, Saviors of
France--Jeanne d'Arc, St. Louis, Clovis and
the Hands of the Common Soldier, ca.
1919, watercolor on paperboard,
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Eastern Front or Eastern Theater of World War I encompassed at its
greatest extent the entire frontier between the Russian Empire and Romania
on one side and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, the Ottoman Empire
and the German Empire on the other.
The Western Front was the main theatre of war during the First World War.
Following the outbreak of war in August 1914, the German Army opened the
Western Front by invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military
control of important industrial regions in France. Both sides dug in along a
line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier
with France, which changed little except during early 1917 and in 1918.