It was a war that shook the entire world and demonstrated how devastating wars can be. It revealed advances in warfare that no one was prepared for. Dan Carlin has an excellent podcast series on World War I called Blueprint for Armaggedon, and he discusses, in detail, how shocking the war was - unlike anything that had come before; no one could have imagined it. (The series has 6 episodes, each 3-4 hours long, and the introduction is fairly lengthy, but they really are extremely impressive and worth the time - highly recommend). It was an absolute, unprecedented, inconceivable horror. 

We know it was a terrible war - we heard about it; we read about it - but the British experienced it. We were touched by it, but we didn't live through it like they did. We came in late, and we were at a safe distance. For the British, they were in almost immediately from the beginning, and they suffered massively in every way. It was felt sorely by the entire country, and the country still mourns the losses today. There are memorials all over the country - on roadsides, within churches, in city centres, schools, parks. They are integrated into daily life. You will pass by memorials several times a day wherever you go, in any city, and people still talk about them; they aren't just ignored or forgotten. It was only one hundred years ago, and it shook the nation to the core. The effects are still visible today. You can see how houses have been rebuilt and major buildings are still being restored, more commemorations are still being built. World War I was a world war, and it shook the entire world, but it wasn't the same for us, for the US