The art of trench warfare.
I watched a documentary about the lives of soldiers in "the Great War". It was a pretty poor documentary and most of it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before, but a couple of things struck me in new ways.
1. Trench warfare, it seems to me, is a stunning display of the insanity of war. Bring two armies of men together along a front and stick them in trenches for several years, lobbing grenades back and forth, with trench raids and artillery bombardments, miserably picking at one another while the character, morale and feet of the men slowly decay in the rot and ugliness of the trench. You call that war? That's... that's a suicide pact. It's incredible to me that nobody could think up a more decisive way to fight. Pure insanity.
There was this Christmas truce between the British and Germans in the winter of 1914. I knew about it, but here is what struck me this time: The higher-ups in the army were so disturbed by the truce, and the idea that the men on the ground were spontaneously engaging in camaraderie across the frontline, that they must have felt it threatened the whole war effort. So the next year they ordered a heavy assault on Christmas eve, to make sure there would be no more damned truces between the men. I found the whole thing terribly, terribly sad.
They say that Europe lost a whole generation of men. The American forces were considered to have got off easy: only some 100,000+ dead American men. Think about that.
2. Trench art. This was a new thing to me, although if I'd thought about it I suppose I would have expected this sort of thing to exist. I am incredibly moved by this art. I felt like weeping when I saw the first couple of pieces. It's something about how they speak of the long, deadly time these soldiers spent wasting away in the trenches, while at the same time they also show the irrepressible power of the human drive to create beauty.
Shell casing with Britannia, spirit of Britain.
Shell casing with scarab beetle
Mutton bone with thistle carving
Clock, wood and munitions shells
Beaded snakes made by Turkish prisoners
Miniature warplane
There's tons more like that at http://www.trenchart.org/.