Europe erupts in war.
Battles rage for months, then years, on multiple fronts.
The guileless young men who signed on
for honor and love of Fatherlands
are slaughtered in vast herds,
horribly mutilated,
driven to near madness
by unrelenting bombardment and carnage.
The 'lucky' ones are shipped home,
their bodies and souls scarred and truncated.
From the battered frontline trenches come
to us the dispirited voices
of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke,
describing in richly sanguinary language
the endless nights of shelling,
the wanton abandonment
of civilization's highest achievements,
the sacrificing of a nation's youth
for the glory of it ruling classes
and the enrichment of its corporate elite.
Six actors, three men and three women,
portray the civilians,the soldiers, the nurses,
the mothers, and the wives
who fought, suffered, and died
in The Great War 1914-1918.