It was a time of shocking juxtapositions. Artillery could kill from seventy-five miles away, yet armies still communicated via messenger pigeon. Suits of armor went up against machine guns. Cavalry charged at tanks. Combat nurses wore corsets and carried gas masks. Primitive hand-to-hand combat with bayonets and trench knives alternated with precisely calibrated artillery barrages, and, famously, generals ran the war from luxurious French châteaux while their men, a scant few miles away, slept in wet, corpse-ridden trenches.
