" From the morning of September 24th to the night of October 3rd, I had in all eight hours of sleep.  I kept myself awake and alive by drinking about a bottle of whisky a day.  I had never drunk it before, and have seldom drunk it since; it certainly helped me then.  We had no blankets, greatcoats, or waterproof sheets, nor any time or material to build new shelters.  The rain poured down.  Every night we went out to fetch in the dead of the other battalions.  The Germans continued indulgent and we had few casualties.  After the first day or two the corspes swelled and stank.  I vomited more than once while superintending the carrying.  Those we could not get in from the German wire continued to swell until the wall of the stomach collapsed, either naturally or when punctured by a bullet; a disgusting smell would float across.  The color of the dead faces changed from white to yellow-grey, to red to purple, to green to black, to slimy."

Statistically the great influenza epedemic of September and October 1918 was worse than the war, certainly taking a much higher civilian toll. The war, followed by the epidemic, led to a strong swing toward moral puritanism which brought in the prohibition era. We think of the "Roaring 20's" as a period of wretched excess, but the people of 1919 saw the `teens as a decade of excess.

As with the other subtopics, this site cannot provide a comprehensive source for WWI articles on the Web. Instead the idea is to present core information that will enable you to find specific WWI information.

One final note. When writing about the 20s, or playing a character in the 20s remember that it is not "World War I."  It was called "The World War" or "The Great War." Obviously, we had not yet had World War II.

General Topics

Trenches on the Web

Simply the best WWI site on the Web. If you can only visit one First World War site, make it this one.

More useful than it sounds. Lots of primary source documents from WWI, online. Also: Memorials, Personal Reminiscences, WWI Biographical Dictionary, WWI Image Archive, Special Topics and Commentary Articles, Links to Other Resources

A set of general military references, which include the First World War

An interesting collection of photos of WWI from a single, apparently unknown, source

Fighting the Flying Circus, by Eddie Rickenbacker.

This is the war biography by Eddie Rickenbacker, which contains, among other things, his account of the downing of Quentin Roosevelt. This is interesting because it pertains to the War, but was also widely read in the 1920s.

A collection of for sale prints showing the Airwar.

Apparently the entire online text of a personal diary of the war.

A collection of posters showing the propaganda of the war.

The complete text of the Versailles Treaty. Rather dry, unless you specifically need the official text.