Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher.

As I looked through this book and the websites to which it referred, some of the words of soldiers and civilians jumped out at me. It truly makes the time period and the Great War itself take on new meaning when you experience it through the eyes of those who were there.

Borijove Jetvic, fellow terrorist of Gavrilo Princip, the man who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand and his wife: “Princip made an appeal to the prison governor: ‘There is no need to carry me to another prison. My life is already ebbing away. I suggest that you nail me to a cross and burn me alive. My flaming body will be a torch to light my people on their way to freedom.'” SE: He thought he was a hero and had no idea of the horror that he had unleashed.

French lieutenant: “Humanity . . . must be mad to do what it is doing. What scenes of horror and carnage! . . . Hell cannot be so terrible.” SE: Yet, hell is worse, and we go there willingly and stupidly, just as men went to war thinking it would be an adventure.

American survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania, Charles Jeffrey: “There was a thunderous roar, as of the collapse of a great building on fire. Then the Lusitania disappeared, dragging hundreds of fellow creatures into the vortex. Many never rose to the surface, but the sea rapidly grew black with the figures of struggling men, women and children.”

American poet Alan Seeger who volunteered to fight with the British before America entered the war: “”If it must be, let it come in the heat of action. Why flinch? It is by far the noblest form in which death can come. It is in a sense almost a privilege. . . . If you are in this thing at all it is best to be in to the limit. And this is the supreme experience.” SE: Is there such a thing as a noble death, or is Death always and forever the enemy, to be endured perhaps stoically and even nobly, but always the enemy of the resurrection life that God has for his children? The ‘supreme experience” is not death, but rather Life.

Teddy Roosevelt in 1917 after the torpedoing of two American ships by the Germans: “There is no question about going to war! Germany is already at war with us.”

Joyce Lewis, American soldier wounded in the Battle of Belleau Wood: “The surgeons came out, finally, and seeing me, exclaimed, ‘What, ain’t you dead yet?’ Then they took me to the hospital, fixt me up as best they could, and sent me to Paris in an automobile ambulance.”

Private William Bishop, Jr.: “Pleasure around here isn’t much except reading your shirt, which means to look it over for cooties. An as for rats, they are the size of a five year old tomcat. You can’t scare them. They crawl all over your bunks, and if you knock them down they just come right back again.”

Colonel Thomas Gowenlock on the Armistice and the end of the war: “All over the world on November 11, 1918, people were celebrating, dancing in the streets, drinking champagne, hailing the armistice that meant the end of the war. But at the front there was no celebration. . . . All were bewildered by the sudden meaninglessness of their existence as soldiers. . . . What was to come next? They did not know and hardly cared. Their minds were numbed by the shock of peace.”

To read more about the Great War the book suggests the following website:

PBS: THe Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.