Apr 3, 2017 3 min read

When Charles Miller of Allison Avenue in Washington enlisted with the U.S. Army in August 1918, he was just 20 – not far removed from being in a high school classroom.

His service was brief. He made his way to Europe to fight in World War I Sept. 25, 1918, and died just 10 days later of pneumonia and influenza. His body was buried near the Irish coast, about 3,000 miles from home.

Then there’s Paul Streator, who was a boyish-looking 22 when he sailed overseas in February 1918. He was killed in action on Nov. 9 of that year – just two days before World War I ended.

The lives of other young men in Washington County and throughout the region ended tragically and prematurely thanks to World War I. It was a conflict few of them could have foreseen and a war their leaders promised them they would not have to march off to.

They were claimed by plane crashes, disease and, of course, combat injuries. One died of an infection following surgery to repair a knee that had been injured in an off-hours football game. Another drowned in a bathtub.

The United States entered World War I 100 years ago this week. It had an obvious impact on residents of Washington and Greene counties who went to what was then “the Great War.” A century later, World War I is still affecting our lives. It set the stage for the upheavals of the 20th century, many of which have spilled into the 21st.

Take, for instance, the ongoing dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. The Ottoman Empire, of which Palestine was a part, broke up at the end of World War I. Palestine briefly fell into the hands of the British, and Israel was created when Britain relinquished the territory as its own empire dissolved.

The revolution in Russia that brought the Bolsheviks to power in 1917 can be directly attributed to the steep human and economic losses Russia sustained due to World War I.

And then, of course, there’s the small matter of Germany. The harsh conditions imposed on it at the end of the war led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, and yet more bloodshed on a mind-boggling scale.

All told, 14 million people were killed in World War I, including 5 million civilians. Another 7 million soldiers were permanently disabled. At the Battle of Somme, 60,000 British troops were killed in one day.

The war also led to a movement of people that sparked a flu pandemic that lasted from 1918 to 1921, infected 500 million people and killed somewhere between 50 million and 100 million of them.

Writing for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, historian Steven Mintz pointed out that the conflagration that was World War I underscores “the utter unpredictability of the future.”

He continued, “At the dawn of the 20th century, most Europeans looked forward to a future of peace and prosperity. Europe had not fought a major war for 100 years. But a belief in human progress was shattered by World War I, a war few wanted or expected. …World War I was a product of miscalculation, misunderstanding and miscommunication.”

We can only ponder the lives that Charles Miller, Paul Streator and millions of others might have led had World War I never happened. And we must work to prevent anything like it from happening again. It’s frightening to consider, but the losses we would sustain now would make the toll of World War I seem measly in comparison.