Europeana

The Americans who fell in Normandy in 1944 were tall men measuring 173 centimeters on average, and if they were laid head to foot they would measure 38 kilometers. The Germans were tall too, while the tallest of all were the Senegalese fusiliers in the First World War who measured 176 centimeters, and so they were sent into battle on the front lines in order to scare the Germans. It was said of the First World War that people in it fell like seeds and the Russian Communists later calculated how much fertilizer a square kilometer of corpses would yield and how much they would save on expensive foreign fertilizers if they used the corpses of traitors and criminals instead of manure. And the English

THE ENGLISH INVENTED THE TANK

invented the tank and the Germans invented gas, which was known as yperite because the Germans first used it near the town of Ypres, although apparently that was not true, and it was also called mustard because it stung the nose like Dijon mustard, and that was apparently true, and some soldiers who returned home after the war did not want to eat Dijon mustard again. The First World War was known as an imperialist war because the Germans felt that other countries were prejudiced against them and did not want to let them become a world power and fulfill some historical mission. And most people in Europe, Germany, Austria, France, Serbia, Bulgaria, etc., believed it to be a necessary and just war which would bring peace to the world. And many people believed that the war would revive those virtues that the modern industrial world had forced into the background, such as love of one’s country, courage, and self-sacrifice. And poor people looked forward to riding in a train and country folk looked forward to seeing big cities and phoning the district post office to dictate a telegram to their wives, I’M FINE, HOPE YOU ARE TOO. The generals looked forward to being in the newspapers, and people from national minorities were pleased that they would be sharing the war with people who spoke without an accent and that

MARCHING SONGS

they would be singing marching songs and jolly popular ditties with them. And everyone thought they’d be home in time for the grape harvest or at least by Christmas.

Some historians subsequently said that the twentieth century actually started in 1914, when war broke out, because it was the first war in history in which so many countries took part, in which so many people died and in which airships and airplanes flew and bombarded the rear and towns and civilians, and submarines sunk ships and artillery could lob shells ten

GERMANS INVENTED GAS

or twelve kilometers. And the Germans invented gas and the English invented tanks and scientists discovered isotopes and the general theory of relativity, according to which nothing was metaphysical, but relative. And when the Senegalese fusiliers first saw an airplane they thought it was a tame bird and one of the Senegalese soldiers cut a lump of flesh from a dead horse and threw it as far as he could in order to lure it away. And the soldiers wore green and camouflage uniforms because they did not want the enemy to see them, which was modern at the time because in previous wars soldiers had worn brightly-colored uniforms in order to be visible from afar. And airships and airplanes flew through the sky and the horses were terribly frightened. And writers and poets endeavored to find ways of expressing it best and in 1916 they invented Dadaism because everything seemed crazy to them. And in Russia they invented a revolution. And the soldiers wore around their neck or wrist a tag with their name and the number of their regiment to indicate who was who, and where to send a telegram of condolences, but if the explosion tore off their head or arm and the tag was lost, the military command would announce that they were unknown soldiers, and in most capital cities they instituted an eternal flame lest they be forgotten, because fire preserves the memory of something long past. And the fallen French measured 2,681 kilometers, the fallen English, 1,547 kilometers, and the fallen Germans, 3,010 kilometers, taking the average length of a corpse as 172 centimeters. And a total of 15,508 kilometers of soldiers fell worldwide. And in 1918 an influenza known as Spanish Flu spread throughout the world killing over twenty million people. Pacifists and anti-militarists subsequently said that these had also been victims of the war because the soldiers and civilian populations lived in poor conditions of hygiene, but the epidemiologists said that the disease killed more people in countries where there was no war, such as in Oceania, India, or the United States, and the Anarchists said that it was a good thing because

WORLD HEADING FOR DESTRUCTION

the world was corrupt and heading for destruction.

But other historians said that the twentieth century actually started earlier, that it began with the industrial revolution that disrupted the traditional world and that all this was the fault of locomotives and steamships. And yet others said that the twentieth century began when it was discovered that people come from apes and some people said they were less related to apes because they had developed more quickly. Then people started comparing languages and speculating about who had the most advanced language and who had moved furthest along the

PATH OF CIVILIZATION

path of civilization. The majority thought it was the French because all sorts of interesting things happened in France and the French knew how to converse and used conjunctives and the pluperfect conditional and smiled at women seductively and women danced the can-can and painters invented impressions. But the Germans said that genuine civilization had to be simple and close to the people and that they had invented Romanticism and lots of German poets had written about love, and about the valleys where there lay mists. The Germans said they were the natural upholders of European civilization because they knew how to make war and carry on trade, and also to organize convivial entertainments. And they said the French were vain and the English were haughty and the Slavs did not have a proper language and language is the soul of a nation and Slavs did not need any nation or state because it would only confuse them. And the Slavs, on the other hand, said that it was not true, that in fact their language was the oldest of all, and they could prove it. And the Germans called the French WORM EATERS and the French called the Germans CABBAGE

EUROPE WAS DECADENT

HEADS. And the Russians said that the whole of Europe was decadent and that the Catholics and Protestants had completely ruined Europe and they proposed to throw the Turks out of Constantinople and then annex Europe to Russia so as to preserve the faith.

The First World War was also called a trench war because after a few months the front became static and the soldiers hid in muddy trenches and at night or at dawn they launched offensives intended to capture twenty, thirty or fifty meters of enemy territory. And they wore green and camouflage uniforms and bombarded and shot at each other. The Germans had mine-throwers and the French had mortars, so they could lob shells at each other. When some detachment launched an

SOLDIERS LOBBED SHELLS AT EACH OTHER

offensive the soldiers had to jump over other trenches and cut barbed wire and avoid mines and the enemy fired machine guns at them. And the soldiers would spend entire months and years in those trenches and they were bored and frightened and played cards and gave the trenches and passages various names. The French devised names like THE SNAIL, PLACE DE L’OPERA, BAD LUCK, THE DESERTER, ILL FEELINGS, and HEADACHE, while the Germans chose names like GRETCHEN, BRUNHILDE,

BIG BERTHA

BIG BERTHA, and BLACK PUDDING. The Germans said the French were vain while the French said the Germans were uncivilized. And they no longer believed that they would be home for Christmas and they felt abandoned and unloved. News came from the military headquarters that the war was nearing its end and melancholy was to be avoided, spirits were to be kept up and patience and a positive attitude were required, and in 1917 an Italian soldier wrote in a letter to his sister I FEEL THAT EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOOD WITHIN ME IS GRADUALLY LEAVING ME AND I FEEL MORE AND MORE CERTAIN EVERY DAY. And it was a great medical mystery that plague did not break out in those trenches because rats lived with the soldiers and ate the corpses and bit the fingers and toes of the living. In the military headquarters they feared that a plague would break out and it would allow the enemy to capture defensive positions, and so a reward was offered for every rat killed, and the soldiers shot at the rats and cut off their tails as evidence and in the evening they delivered them to a special commissary for rats’ tails, who counted them and said how much each had earned but the payment never came because no fund had been created. Lice also lived with the soldiers. Sometimes when the

SOLDIERS LAY IN WAIT

soldiers lay in wait for the enemy at night they would hear an enemy soldier scratching himself and it told them where he was and they would fire in that direction and hurl hand grenades. But there were still as many lice and enemies.

In the twentieth century there was a swing away from traditional religion, because