…100 years ago ended (or more properly, began to end, since the peace talks still would take some months) the first World War.
Obviously there are no survivors of that war, but the accounts, testimonies and data remain. This war and the testimonies fom it, its legacy, was the first war fought where the accent was put on the horror of the fight itself. Also the first fully industrial war, it provided ample evidence of how weak is our body and what horrible things happen to it when we bring machines to the endeavour of kill or be killed.
In some ways, it just set the scenario for the second World War, which magnified the horror aspect to the point that after it the always warry european nations began striving for a lasting peace from union among the different. A concept as old as the memories of the lost unity under the Roman empire, which has taken the world to new, unexplored paths.
For all those who suffered, for all those who lived and learned, for their sacrifices and of course for all those whose main role in the tragedy was to exit this world too soon, I invite you to think of the difference between the virtual wars we are so keen of today (blessed they are for they channel some of the violence inherent to human being) and the horrors we asociate now to war. Was a costly lesson but we learned it well enough for us being us.
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus - Antoine de Saint Exupery, French writer, aviator and warrior fallen in the line of duty.