World War 1 Quotes

“Two armies that fight each other is like one army committing suicide” – Henri Barbusse, French Soldier

“This is a war to end all wars” – Woodrow Wilson

“Only the dead have seen the end of all wars” – George Santayana, in response to Woodrow Wilson

“If the women in the factories stopped for just 20 minutes, the Allies would lose the war” – French Field Marshal Joffre

“Being shelled is the main work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks about. Everyone has his on way of going about it. In general, it means lying face down and contracting your body into as small a place as possible.” – Louis Simpson

“In no circumstances whatever will the expression ‘shell-shock’ be used verbally or be recorded in any regimental or other casualty report, or in any hospital or other medical document” – British Army General Routine Order No. 2384

“This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it” – H.G Wells

“We had been brought up to believe that Britain was the best country in the world and we wanted to defend her.The history taught us that we were better than other people and now all the news was that Germany was the aggressor and we wanted to show the Germans what we could do.” – Private George Morgan

“Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly” – Wilfred Owen

“When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be waster in futile frontal attacks” – Henry Asquith

“Don’t forget me, Cobber” – Fromelles soldier to Simon Frasier

“We had strict orders not to take prisoners, no matter if wounded. My first job was when I finished cutting some of their wire away, to empty my magazine on three Germans that came out of their deep dugouts, bleeding badly, and put them out of their misery. They cried for mercy, but I had my orders” – A.H Hubbard

“We had a tremendous number of frostbite cases at the beginning of 1917. Their feet were absolutely white, swollen up, dead. Some of their toes dropped off with it.” – Kathleen Yardwood

“All that winter we took in bronchitis and rheumatism cases. Some of the bronchitis patients were as bad ad men who were gassed, but the rheumatism cases were really the worst. It was pathetic to see these young men absolutely crippled with rheumatism, sometimes doubled up as if they were men of eighty instead of boys in their twenties. They suffered terrible pain with it.” – Sister Mary Stollard

“The home front is always underrated by Generals in the field. And yet that is where the Great War was won and lost. The Russian, Bulgarian, Austrian and German home fronts fell to pieces before their army collapsed.” – Lloyd George

“Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country” – Bertrand Russell

“Don’t believe stories which you see in the papers about troops asking as a special privilege not to be relieved. We stick it, at all costs if necessary, as long as ordered, but everyone is glad to hand over to someone else. And anyone who says he enjoys this kind of thing is either a liar or a madman.” – Captain Harry Yoxall

“We’re telling lies; we know we’re telling lies; we don’t tell the public the truth, that we’re losing more officers than the Germans, and that it’s impossible to get through on the Western Front.” – Rothermere to J.L Garvin

“The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell-holes.” – Captain Edwin Vaughan

“One of the enemy soldiers remover his water bottle and passed it around. I will never forget this gesture as long as I live. Those troops o=now occupying our position turned out to be Canadians. After being searched for weapons and documents were led away.” – Gefreiter Fritz Heinemann

“They were pathetic, these shell-shocked boys, and a lot of them were very sensitive about the fact that they were incontinent. The’d say ‘Im terribly sorry about it, Sister, its shaken me all over and I can’t control it. Just imagine, to wet the bed at my age!” – Sister Mary Stollard

“The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, out bodies clay and out eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.” – Erich Remarque

“The brutality and inhumanity of war stood in great contrast to what I had heard and read about as a youth” – Reinhold Spengler

“The newspapers informed us that German soldiers crucified babies. Stories of that kind were taken for granted; to have disbelieved them would have been unpatriotic.” – S Sassoon