THE WAR THAT DID NOT END ALL WARS

BATTLE OF THE MARNE

The First World War could have been just another European war: German armies sweep into Paris, the French surrender, a peace treaty is worked out and the war is indeed over by Christmas. Had this happened, the world would have been spared the four years of bloodshed that ensued, and for Canada, not a single soldier would have been needed in Europe. Instead, the Germans were repulsed at the Battle of the Marne, unwittingly signing the death warrant for millions.

FIRST TRENCHES

The opening weeks of the First World War had been fought in the open: Great armies smashing into each other in farmers’ fields just as they had done for centuries. But on Sept. 15, 1914, stalemated British and German armies began digging for cover at positions in Northern France. The trenches would endure for four years, stretch from the North Sea to Alsace on the Swiss border and cover some 56,000 kilometres.

AIR-TO-AIR COMBAT

Airplanes had only been intended as reconnaissance devices. Incredibly, in the first days of the First World War enemy pilots (who often knew each other from pre-war European flying meet-ups) wouldevenwaveasthey passed. On Oct. 5, 1914, this era definitively ended when a French pilot shot down a German plane. And this wasn’t a case of blazing away at a faceless enemy: The Frenchman pulled out his rifle and shot the German pilot directly.

CHRISTMAS TRUCE

The last gasp of civility on the Western Front. Sparked by the spirit of Christmas Day, German and British troops met in No Man’s Land, sang carols, shared alcohol and food, and even played a soccer game. When senior officers later heard what happened they were horrified. And by 1915 the hatreds would be too deep, and the losses too great, for any shared humanity with the Germans.

ZEPPELIN RAID

With a few small bombs exploding in seaside British towns on Jan 19, 1915, the era of strategic bombing had begun. German zeppelins weren’t bombing troops or military targets: This was terror bombing designed to scare Britain out of the war. It didn’t work, but the idea of “breaking the morale of a population” through bombing would go on to kill millions before the century was out.

USE OF POISON GAS

Canadian and French troops were the ones who suffered with the first large-scale use of poison gas — chlorine — on April 22, 1915 at the Battle of Second Ypres. Within minutes 5,000 soldiers were dead. This was the point at which any semblance of war as a glorious man-to-man struggle ended. Men were now eradicated with human insecticide.

SPANISH FLU CASE

Under normal circumstances, the particularly virulent flu that swept through a Kansas hospital in early 1917 would have been an epidemiological footnote. But occurring as it did during the largest movement of humanity ever known, the Spanish Flu would spread like prairie fire and kill more people than the war that spawned it. Targeting the young in particular, there’s no telling how many future leaders or innovators it claimed.