WWI was also arguably when soldiers became helpless.
Being deployed meant huddling in a trench waiting for an artillery shell to strike you out of the blue.
For about the previous two centuries, the typical soldier's experience was endless marching and then standing in formation with hundreds of others, shooting very imprecise guns at similar enemy formations and hoping that none of the hundreds of enemy bullets hit you despite a complete lack of cover.
Sounds pretty helpless to me.