#7 - The First World War by John Keegan

I have started to grow in my interest of history, especially military history. I've heard a bit about John Keegan as a military history authority so I decided to read his book. I was actually intending to read his book on WWII, but the library only had this one ready so I went with this one first.
It was fascinating to learn about WWI as I really knew next to nothing about it. I was amazed to learn about the first modern war that really wasn't that modern. It was more like the first war that started to transition to modern warfare. Many of the armies involved were switching from bright colored, wool uniforms to more utilitarian camouflage type uniforms, from simple rifles to machine guns and powerful artillery, from straightforward marching into battle in columns to trying to avoid being shot and killed! Novel concepts, I know.


Tanks and airplanes came into the picture toward the end of the war (1914-1918) and wireless communication (radio) was non-existent. Although trucks and trains were used frequently, millions of horses were a part of battle and thus millions of horses died in battle.


It really was tragic in that the reasons for war were extremely petty, the desire results of the war by most of the combatants were almost non-existent in terms of even changing land boundaries, and some 15 million died in seemingly pointless battles of attrition.


The armies had somewhat modern machine guns and artillery to defend their positions effectively. However, without modern communication, generals who were miles from the battle line, had to rely on runners for updates from the battle. Therefore, generals were making decisions about battles hours after the fact, sometimes days. Needless to say, when your current battle plan is not working, waiting hours to days for the signal to retreat while being mowed down by machine gun fire is not an effective way to win a battle, let alone survive.


It was also staggering to find out that generations of young men were pretty close to wiped out. In Britain, France and Germany, huge percentages of young men were killed or wounded badly. This left millions of young widowed women or single women without any chance of getting married because the men were physically not available.


The consequences of sin and life without God are absolutely tragic.


I liked the book, but it was long - over 400 pages. It was somewhat confusing at times since I am not familiar with European geography though there were a few maps to help. I thought it was worth the read but only if you like military history. I especially wanted to understand the history that led to WWII.