Description

The following article has been excerpted
from a longer manuscript-in-progress,
"Hell Upon Earth, "apersonal account
of the First World War along the Western
Front as witnessed by a representative
group of Island soldiers. It is not
meant as a comprehensive military
record of events at the front. Rather, by
seeing through the eyes of Island soldiers,
it is intended to reveal the human
side of that immense conflict.
In scope and intensity, World War I
was like nothing before it, a carnival of
death that lasted from August, 1914 to
November, 1918 and engulfed virtually
all of the world's great powers. Ten million
soldiers died; another 20,000,000
were wounded. So unprecedented was
the conflict that, until the advent
of another, even greater struggle in
1939, it was known simply as uthe
Great War."
While the war on the ground on the
Western Front settled into a massive,
bloody stalemate, soldiers' eyes turned
to the skies, where a different kind of
war —a war of speed, adventure, single
combat, and even chivalry — was being
fought in machines that had been the
stuff of dreams only a decade before. In
this excerpt, Mr. Morrison writes of
Islanders' involvement in the war in
the air. The manuscript has been
adapted for inclusion here.