Oh lord, Carlin is so very good at this.
Teasers to get you to listen:
Carlin's comparison of something as simple as the uniforms at the beginning and end is great. The initial movements were with these gauche Napoleonic clothes: Red feathers in tall hats, bright blue coats, shiny shoes and whatnot. At the end, all pretense had left. Modern war and the very functional uniforms were here to stay.
Carlin's recounting of the German march into Belgium. He talks of an American account of a Belgian town on the border with Germany. The army that came though had to do so for over a day. There was a long unbroken march that went on for 24 hours, that was how many troops the Germans had come through just one town. The metal on their boots sparked off the cobblestones causing a drumming march of sparks all night.
His accounts of Paschendale. The gas had turned the mud a toxic yellow. He recounts descriptions of the battlefield as a marshmallow. German boys would just sink into the mud and become unable to be pulled out in the toxic sludge. Their screams would last days as they succumbed to the mud. Carlin goes into some detail of the smell of Pachendale as a result. No more true description of Hell itself can be found.
My god, what a good series to scare any person away from war. It really was as if Hell itself came out of the interior of the earth. It was a giant art experiment or something to as accurately as possible make Dante's Inferno real and then improvise. It really is hard to realize the horror.