![]() There was suddenly nothing truly enduring if the world might be blown up in an instance. It was so horrifying and so huge that it affected the whole view of life and meaning thereof (or lack of) for many. Everything there was blown up, over and under so many times, it’s no wonder it was deemed impossible to turn it back into anything useful when the shooting finally stopped.īut the scars left by WWI go much deeper. The battle at Verdun went on for years, more or less heatedly. Occasionally farmers finds uniform buttons or small metal objects, like a dagger or part of a gun, that have been buried below this farmland for several centuries. Today, only a monument raised much later serves as a reminder of the bloody battle on that ground. ![]() Just outside the town where I grew up in Sweden is the site of a major battle between Swedes and Danes in 1677. I have visited Gettysburg, the site of a battle that raged for a few days and that didn’t materially alter the lasting shape of the landscape. I’ve never made it to the battlefield at Verdun. Someone estimated that possibly as many as 1 in 4 shells didn’t explode on impact. So are crumbling bunkers and other fortifications.Įach year, tons of unexploded artillery shells are dug up out of ground, rivers and lakes in the area. Trees were planted and nature allowed to slowly reclaim the area.ġ00 years later, the ground is still pockmarked with shell craters. After the war was over, the area where all the fighting happened, crisscrossed by trenches and fortifications, was so shot up and destroyed, that it was assumed it would never again be fit for human use and agriculture. Verdun, France, was the location of one of the biggest and bloodiest battles on the Western Front in WWI. Everyone’s take on it then was that it would all be over by Christmas. The world was completely different from 4+ years earlier when it all started. The day the shooting stopped and the war ended. Who lived, breathed, and for all too many, died on the battle field.Īs I write this, it’s. Obviously he made it through alive, without being maimed, and eventually found his way back to Sweden.īut somehow knowing he was in the war, makes reading the historical accounts more real, more personal for me. And why he chose to leave the safety of Sweden to cross the Atlantic so he could volunteer to fight in the bloodiest war anyone had ever seen.Īll I know for sure is that he went to Canada and there volunteered to go fight in the Great War. Like when and where and what kind of action he actually saw. I wish I’d found out more about his war experience. Sweden was neutral, so he did the logical thing: Emigrated to Canada and joined up. Being an adventuresome young man (20-something) when the war raged on the European continent, he wanted in on it. My dad was in the Swedish military throughout WWII. Spent the days gardening and watching over his honey bees.Īll very intriguing for a kid. The old business sign was still there on his outbuilding. He’d had his own business, grinding and etching patterns into crystal and glass. Anton and his wife Alma lived on the street I grew up on. So how did WWI make itself remembered in a small town in Southern Sweden decades later?īecause of Anton Olsson. Sweden was neutral during WWI and saw no combat. Even my parents, who were born right before and during WWI, had only the most fleeting memories of the war. In my school history books, WWI was already just a few pages between other events of long ago. I was born long after the Great War became known World War I. So damaging that it would surely forever deter humankind from using war to settle differences ever again. Or the War to End All Wars.īecause modern warfare had become so terrible. The war that became known as the Great War. The day the guns fell silent in Europe, after over 4 years of the bloodiest war ever.
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