Trench Warfare Today and Now

Over hot coffee
I study faces
From almost a hundred years ago
Torn apart in the First World War
Which was neither the first nor the last
But one of the most horrific.
Trench warfare
Massive artillery bombardments
Machine guns lines of fire
Flame throwers
Poison gas
Rotten corpses unburied by shells
Poison air
Tanks
Barbed wire
Mud
Splintered forests
Rats
Lice
Typhoid
Dysentery
Men lived in trenches
You stand up
Bullets punch your skull
Shell fragments rip your face
Bacteria
Viruses
Fungi
Protozoans
Unseen things breeding
Everywhere on everything
Eating
Septic
Zero privacy
Ahhh….my gut screams!
Extreme high number of injuries above the chest in the trenches marked the
Great War of 1914-1918,
Art blossomed by men deranged,
Painting and writing to liberate themselves from horror.
Masks by a corps of artists covered mangled faces
Rescued from battlefield carnage.
My mind makes a collage of masks and faceless faces
From this Smithsonian magazine article
Over my an image of my own face
Black coffee splashes.



William Dudley Bass
2007 & 2008

Alexander, Caroline. “Faces of War: Amid the horrors of World War I, a corps of artists brought hope to soldiers disfigured in the trenches.” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2007. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/mask.html

© by William Dudley Bass