By August 1916, World War I had been raging for two years, and millions of men had perished on various battlefronts in Europe and the Middle East. If, in August 1914, generals and politicians had anticipated a short and decisive conflict, the movement of armies on the Western front had quickly given way to a series of deadly stalemates. At Verdun, German and French armies were embroiled in a siege that would ultimately result in nearly 1 million casualties. In July 1916, the Allies had also started the Battle of the Somme, one of the bloodiest battles in history, that left even more soldiers dead or maimed than the Battle of Verdun.
It was at that time that British essayist Edward Thomas enlisted in the armed forces. For more than a year, he had been torn over whether to volunteer for military service or emigrate to then still neutral United States, where he had numerous friends. One of them, poet Robert Frost, even made Thomas’ indecisiveness the subject of his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken.” “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—/ I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” Thomas did eventually join the army. He was killed in the Battle of Arras soon after he arrived in France.
