From the trenches

It took a child to make the world stop for a minute, a few months ago. In August, a five-year-old Syrian boy named Omran Daqneesh was caught on camera, wiping blood and soot from his face, minutes after being pulled out from a damaged building following an air strike in Aleppo. His grandfather, a soldier caught on the ground in enemy territory during World War I, told him stories that found their way into It Was The War Of The Trenches, an anti-war graphic work published in English in 1993 by Drawn & Quarterly. Some writers like Max Brooks look at specific regiments, like the African American 369th Infantry nicknamed The Harlem Hellfighters by the Germans, while others like acclaimed journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco bring their powerful vision to bear on specific conflicts. Interestingly, this is the first work to draw attention to war and post-traumatic stress disorder, which affects millions of soldiers but was ignored during earlier battles in the 20th century.