Military technology has always shaped and defined how wars were fought. The First World War, however, saw a breadth and scale of technological innovation of unprecedented impact. It was the first modern mechanized industrial war in which material resources and manufacturing capability were as consequential as the skill of the troops on the battlefield.

The AEF artists had great freedom to travel about, affording them broad access to events, including combat. Although devoid of the more shocking realities of war that photography captured, their depictions of the battlefield powerfully convey a sense of immediacy and on-the-spot observation. Their art provides a window on their role as both recorders of history and as first-hand participants in that history. Most of the AEF artists were trained and worked as professional illustrators before the war. Their approach placed the viewer on the scene in ways not common in earlier war art.

The AEF artists attempted to capture as full a picture of the war as possible. That of course included the human cost of the conflict, for both military personnel and civilians. During World War I, the battlefield cut through villages and homes and displaced local people to an unprecedented extent.

After the first few months of the war, a relatively mobile conflict settled into the now infamous trench warfare experience so powerfully identified with World War I. Integrated with the trench system were other underground spaces soldiers inhabited for extended periods. These caves, the result of centuries of stone quarrying, were mini cities beneath the surface.

As the war dragged on month after month, year after year, soldiers faced countless hours of idle time in the underground shelters that were their protection from the battle occurring above. They produced carvings on a variety of subject matter into the soft limestone. Among the most common were recognition of their units and expressions of patriotism.

Portraits were another typical subject matter of the soldiers’ carvings, and were among the most artistically rendered. They ranged from famous figures to self-portraits to caricature.

Even in the midst of the hardship and suffering of war, soldiers have always sought respite from battle through reminiscence of loved ones at home, following sports teams, thoughts of female companionship, humor, and comfort from those caring for their wounds. These efforts to take personal and psychological refuge from war found broad expression in the stone carvings left by soldiers on all sides.

The horror and loss of life in war has always been an impetus for solders to examine and embrace their religious faith. Throughout the underground cities are carvings of explicit religious icons, depictions of soldiers expressing their faiths, and carved out chapels and altars used to conduct formal religious services.

On April 6, 1917, the United States entered World War I, setting America on a course to become an important player on the world stage. It was a turning point in the nation’s history that still reverberates through world events a century later. The Museum’s centerpiece presentation in observance of the 100^th anniversary of World War I is Artist Soldiers: Artistic Expression in the First World War, a new exhibition in the Museum’s Flight in the Arts gallery. A collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, the exhibition features largely never-before-seen artwork, produced by soldiers, that sheds light on World War I in a compelling and very human way.

When the soldiers of Europe marched off to war in the late summer of 1914, most expected an adventure that would last mere weeks or months. By the end, in November 1918, millions had been consumed by four years of grinding, mechanized warfare. Casualties, military and civilian, numbered nearly 38 million—more than 17 million dead and 20 million wounded. The psychological and emotional toll was incalculable. Some of the stone carvings capture the enormity of the catastrophe.