The Great War





The one-day battle had 60,000 British casualties—the largest of any battle Britain has been involved in before or since. Included in a separate booklet is Adam Hochschild’s narrative essay that places the art in context. Hochschild gathered lots of fascinating facts and statistics about the battle. First, rain delayed it for several days. Before the battle, British soldiers added 55 miles of new train tracks.  Over 224,000 shells were shot in just one hour.  The cacophony was so loud that civilians heard it in Hampstead Heath in London. And before the battle, hospitals in England were ordered to clear their wards of convalescents so that there would be room for the injured.

What a magnificent artist Sacco is. He manages to impart to the opening scenes the excitement and jollity of new recruits who have no idea about their destiny. Sacco also gave a sad and melancholic air to the trenches on the day of the battle itself. The world looked grey except for the white explosive clouds rising skyward. The only view of nature was a single copse of trees that stood out amid a ruined landscape.  Later, Red Cross trucks and rows and rows of covered cots with corpses and the injured paint a stark reminder of war’s reckoning.

 For a nonfiction account of the war, read Adam Hochschild’s To End All War: a story of loyalty and rebellion: 1914-1918. It concentrates on the moral issues that this very destructive war raised among those who favored it and those who opposed it in Great Britain.