JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
The Illustrated London News published this very sobering image showing the general reader in London in 1933 the absolute strength and weight of the dead--and probably in a way that they had never seen before. The image is entitled “In Memory of the 1,104,890 British Dead of the Great War”, and was drawn by D. Macpherson. It very graphically represents all of the war dead of the British Empire for the period of the Great War of 1914-1918 (not to be called "WWI" or "The First World War" until after the second week in September, 1939, when there was a new World War from which the older one needed to be distinguished). Depicted here are the dead as a line of men, four across, extending from London to Durhham. The column passes from London through Hitchin, through Bedford and Peterborough and Grantham, past Sheffield and Leeds and York, and then on to Durham. An extraordinary column of the war dead: 900,000 of the dead were not soldiers at the beginning of the war, but they sure died that way, and this map shows them all in a line, marching from a point 269 miles distant.
This line of dead soldiers would be 2,690 miles long including all military deaths for the war; 5,380 miles for all deaths overall.
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