In “The Great War and Modern Memory,” Paul Fussell, a combat veteran of WWII, reviewed the literature and art created by the experiences endured by those who fought during the first World War and wrote about how the shock of millions being killed by high explosives and machine gun bullets affected how we think about the world even today.

In another book, War, he did the same for WWII.

A more personal and poignant examination of the literature: he was wounded during the war, serving as a twenty-year old lieutenant in the 103rd Infantry Division in France, By then the lyricism of “Flanders Fields” and the ironies found in comparing nature to the moonscape of trench warfare that were replaced in novels and poetry by descriptions of being a very small part of a gigantic, remorseless, efficient machine that cared not for which way the poppies blew, but concentrated on the efficiencies of killing and processing death on an industrial scale.