WWI as Known by a Privileged Baby Boomer

On this 100th anniversary of the November 11, 1918, armistice, these are my recollections and impressions of World War I, as a late-era American Baby Boomer, in order as I can recall them.

My maternal grandfather was a veteran of the war. He was about 20 when the U.S. entered the war in 1917, and he served in France with whatever part of the army managed the mule team (artillery?). The only thing I remember specifically was that he and his fellow soldiers would sometimes bite the ears of the mules to get the animals to obey. He knew some French and German songs from his time there.


My paternal maternal great-grandfather was also a veteran of the war, but he was long dead by the time I was born and I never knew about it until a few years ago, when I found his insignia while helping my parents downsize. He died when my father was 15, so I’m not sure how much my dad knew about his service, either.

The first time I specifically remember learning about the war in school is 10th grade social studies, which focused on European history. I’m sure we learned about the archduke’s assassination and the “reasons” for the war, plus how ghastly the trench warfare was, but the part of our lessons that fascinated me most was the Russian Revolution. I went pretty far down that rabbit hole for a while. The movie Nicholas and Alexandra had come out a few years before that, so the Romanovs were my original context for understanding the revolution, but that changed as I learned more.

In 11th grade I took an English elective whose name I don’t remember, but it was basically the literature of war (or, more accurately, antiwar since this was 1975–76). We read Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, which had a huge effect on my world view, and poems like Dulce et Decorum Est, Carl Sandburg’s Grass, and In Flanders Fields (plus a lot of other poems from other war eras). I came out of that class solidly antiwar.

Also in 11th grade, this time in social studies, I did a paper on Woodrow Wilson that included a lot of war information, from the sinking of the Lusitania and the Zimmerman telegram to "He kept us out of war" during the 1916 election to formation of the League of Nations afterward.

In college I was a history major and had a few classes that covered the era, including one focused on 20th century foreign policy. But I can't say I remember a lot specifically about this era.

Hearing John McCutcheon’s song "Christmas in the Trenches" (probably around 1990?) introduced me to the story of the Christmas truce, and still makes me cry most times when I hear it.


Since then I’ve seen various dramatic versions of that 1914 event, from the Minnesota Opera’s Silent Night to local theater and singing group productions of All Is Calm. I recommend listening to McCutcheon or attending any of those performances if you don’t know about this story.

About 15 years ago, I read the Anne of Green Gables books with Daughter Number 3.1. The book Rilla of Ingleside (eighth in the series) gives a Canadian viewpoint of the war. I found it very moving and because I read the series for the first time as an adult, this is probably my favorite among them.

About five years ago on a trip to Europe, I did some research on the German type designer Rudolph Koch, creator of well-known faces like Neuland, Kabel, and Koch Antiqua. (Another way his work is famous—or infamous—is that his blackletter types were adopted by the Nazis as part of their visual ethnic cleansing in the 1930s.) Though Koch was almost 40 when World War I started, and was married with children and an established career in his field, he enlisted in the infantry anyway in 1915, going from Serbia to France to the Russian front. He was almost killed by a grenade in 1917. Overall, the war had a profound effect on him, turning him toward Expressionism and strengthening his religious feelings and informing his creative output. Reading about Koch made me think about the war from the German point of view.

That's all I can remember of my WWI impressions. What are yours?