Europe erupts in war.

Battles rage for months, then years, on multiple fronts.

The guileless young men who signed on

for honor and love of Fatherlands

are slaughtered in vast herds,

horribly mutilated,

driven to near madness

by unrelenting bombardment and carnage.

The 'lucky' ones are shipped home,

their bodies and souls scarred and truncated.

From the battered frontline trenches come

to us the dispirited voices

of Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Rupert Brooke,

describing in richly sanguinary language

the endless nights of shelling,

the wanton abandonment

of civilization's highest achievements,

the sacrificing of a nation's youth

for the glory of it ruling classes

and the enrichment of its corporate elite.

Six actors, three men and three women,

portray the civilians,the soldiers, the nurses,

the mothers, and the wives

who fought, suffered, and died

in The Great War 1914-1918.