The Fields of Flanders

The United States didn't get involved in the Great War until late, and the whole thing happened a long way away. So it's easy to overlook the cost of that war in sheer numbers of lives lost. Until you've stood in the middle of the 12,0000 graves of the Tyne Cot Cemetery, or driven through the countryside of northern Belgium and looking out the window to see plot after plot filled with rows of sparkling white, carefully manicured slabs of portland stone, or peered upwards at thousands of names carefully etched on this inside and the outside of the Menin Gate. There's nearly one WWI cemetery per square mile here, and most of the dead were never found or identified. The impact on the landscape (and the conscience) is stark, even though these graves represent only a small fraction of the loss of life on these bloodiest of fields in this bloodiest of wars.

War is hell.