Henry Allingham, the world's oldest man, has died aged 113. [more inside]
posted by idiomatika on Jul 18, 2009 - 61 comments

Soldier's Mail: Letters Home from a New England Soldier, 1916-1919.
posted by Pater Aletheias on Jul 9, 2009 - 11 comments

Warfare: 1917 gives you a taste of the trenches.
posted by chuckdarwin on Oct 21, 2008 - 47 comments

Satirical maps of Europe from 1914-15.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 6, 2008 - 25 comments

The Faces of War, a fascinating document of the prosthetic masks used to cover serious facial injuries from the battlefield. Before plastic surgery was widely practised and used to reconstruct the horrific facial injuries of the First World War soldiers, men with the most serious facial injured were often hidden away from society.

Men such as those recorded in watercolour, and in pastels (warning: some may find these images disturbing); patients of Harold Gillies, pioneer of facial reconstruction at Queen's Hospital, Sidcup, the wars major centre for facial reconstruction and plastic surgery.
posted by chrisbucks on Oct 1, 2007 - 24 comments

Photos of WWI poison gas and flamethrowers. [more inside]
posted by damn dirty ape on Sep 14, 2007 - 44 comments

"Henry John Patch would be notable simply by virtue of his 109 years on earth... But Harry Patch is more than a gerontological phenomenon. The man arranging his medals and sitting up straight for a photograph in the conservatory of a nursing home in Wells is the last British man alive to have served in the trenches during the First World War."
posted by mr_crash_davis on Jul 12, 2007 - 26 comments

The Great War in the Air is a 69-part video project, clearly a labor of love, by one Jan Goldstein, a musician, painter, and publican. Overwhelmed? Here's a representative sample: Part 7, on the French ace Georges Guynemer. Please note: extensive use of YouTube. Many of the images seen in the film may be perused at earlyaviator.com.
posted by mwhybark on Nov 11, 2006 - 12 comments

A World War One sketchbook from an unknown soldier. Some of them are quite enigmatic.
posted by tellurian on Oct 11, 2006 - 18 comments

On my 19th birthday in 1917, we were in the trenches at Passchendaele... Haig put a three-day barrage on the Germans, and thought, "Well, there can't be much left of them." I think it was the Yorkshires and Lancashires that went over. I watched them as they came out of their dugouts and the German machine guns just mowed them down. I doubt whether any of them reached the front line.
Harry Patch, Private, Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry. Born June 17 1898.
Of the millions who fought in WWI, only a handful are still alive today -- and all are now well over 100 years old. With the horror of the trenches about to slip from living memory, Max Arthur has tracked down and interviewed these last survivors of the 'carnage incomparable'.
posted by matteo on Nov 1, 2005 - 27 comments

Channel 4's 100 Greatest War Films as voted for by their (generally more clued-up than average) viewership has plenty for you to disagree with, but much to recommend. Filmsite.org has a history of war films (as does Berkeley) for the completists among you. There are more war films from and about Vietnam and Indochina than you can shake a bayonet at (see also the 1999 NYT article, Apocalypse Then: Vietnam Marketing War Films to learn a little about the Vietnamese government's 1960s and 70s archive of war film). The [British] national archives have archived film from pre-WWI to the Cold War.
posted by nthdegx on May 17, 2005 - 74 comments

Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Propaganda from WWI to Operation Iraqi Freedom, including many safe conduct passes. Also, leaflets from the Korean War & Vietnam, Sefton Delmer's "Black Propaganda Radio, and even some NSFW (work, not war) propaganda. Come On Boys, Himmler For President!
posted by armage on Mar 9, 2005 - 6 comments

Armistice Day: WW1 Document Archive. Verdun memorial. The Western Front today. A World War One Literature Blog. Trenches on the Web, unsurprisingly slammed today, it seems.

Consider visiting a nearby military cemetary today. I've found it to be a worthwhile use of my time in the past.
posted by mwhybark on Nov 11, 2004 - 6 comments

World War I Document Archive. Treaties, diplomatic documents and, of course, photos. even ee cummings.
posted by turbodog on Aug 25, 2003 - 4 comments

World War 1 Memoirs and Diaries , by soldiers, nurses and chaplains. 'With the advent of the world wide web, an opportunity arose for the descendants of many survivors to publish fragments of diary entries for the education and interest of others. '
The diary of Edwin Jones, who fought in Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Via the firstworldwar.com website, which also features poetry and prose (including an overview of British World War 1 satire and how it reflected the class system at the time); propaganda posters; and miscellaneous features on everything from the Christmas truce to the disputed sexuality of T.E. Lawrence.
Related :- an interview with one of the last British WW1 survivors, aged 107 ('I survived the trenches - and would never go back'), and the BBC's 80th anniversary site, which includes five poignant, sometimes tragic, letters from soldiers to family and friends.
posted by plep on Mar 31, 2003 - 8 comments

"The Christmas truce was the last twitch of the 19th Century. By that, I mean it was the last public moment in which it was assumed that people were nice, and that the Dickens view of the world was a credible view." -- Paul Fussell

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is an interesting footnote in history where German and British soldiers stopped fighting and fraternized in the middle of the battlefield. Some witnesses have claimed that enemy soldiers played a friendly game of soccer.

The events have since been chronicled in print, song, and on film.
posted by MattS on Dec 14, 2001 - 4 comments

In Flanders Fields - by John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields


MetaFilter readers wherever you are, please take a moment of silence to honour those who gave their lives so that we could live ours.
posted by PWA_BadBoy on Nov 11, 2001 - 75 comments