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These Battlefields Were Devastated in World War I. See What They Look Like Today

2 minute read

Today the grass has grown back. A sense of quiet comes through in the images. But a century ago, these landscapes were part of the Western Front of World War I — the reality of which TIME would later describe, in a review of a history of the war, as “hundreds of thousands of young men existing like stupefied moles in the badly shored-up gutters of mud and decaying flesh that zigzagged their way across France.”

When the U.S. entered World War I almost exactly a century ago, on April 6, 1917, the “doughboys” who went to fight encountered that terrible scene. In honor of that centennial, the National WWI Museum and Memorial is featuring a new exhibit of the photographs of Michael St Maur Sheil, who began his work capturing the modern look of World War I battlefields in 2005. The exhibition has been traveling the world since the 2014 centennial of the war’s onset.

Though it is hard to imagine just how different these landscapes looked 100 years ago, it’s clear from the images that the bloody battles left their mark. That’s an unsurprising fact given the epoch-defining scale of the fight.

For example, when President Franklin Roosevelt in 1937 helped to dedicate a series of monuments to those who had given their lives during the conflict, one memorial of which was located at Montfaucon, TIME noted that the memorial was well and expensively earned. “There took place the biggest battle in U. S. History,” the magazine explained. “There was lost the Lost Battalion. There the Tennessee Conscientious Objector Alvin York captured 132 Germans. There, in 47 days of storming into the face of the Hindenburg Line about 123,000 Americans were killed or wounded. Some 900,000 others, nearly as many as the Confederacy mustered in four years, came through unscathed to live to tell the tale of the final break-through to Sedan and draw their bonuses.”

“The Western Front that the American forces saw when they arrived and until they returned home was scenes of environmental degradation, obliterated villages, vast cemeteries, and continuing massive destruction,” the museum explains. “Much of the landscape of the Western Front looked like an uninhabited planet very foreign to them.”

The exhibition Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace: The Doughboys 1917 – 1918 opens on Friday at the National WWI Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mo., and will be on view through Aug. 20, 2017.

Ruined abbey and Gobservation bunker. Montfaucon d'Argonne
Ruined abbey and observation bunker. Montfaucon d'Argonne. This is the ruined church atop the hill with an observation post known as the Tour de Kron Prinz. Michael St. Maur Sheil
Church-yard of old village of Fey-en-Haye on the outskirts of Bois le Pretre.
Church-yard of old village of Fey-en-Haye on the outskirts of Bois le Pretre. Very heavy fighting took place here between Sept. 1914 and July 1915, involving the French 73 and 128th Infantry Division (the Wolves of Bois-le-Prêtre) and the German 121 Infantry Division. Michael St. Maur Sheil
American 371RI Memorial above Bussy Farm. where Cpl. Freddie Stowers won MoH 371 Inf 93 Div. Sept. 28, 1918.
American 371RI Memorial above Bussy Farm. where Cpl. Freddie Stowers won MoH 371 Inf 93 Div. Sept. 28, 1918. Michael St. Maur Sheil
Unexploded shells uncovered by ploughing near Munich Trench Cemetery awaiting collection by the Bomb Squad.
Unexploded shells uncovered by ploughing near Munich Trench Cemetery awaiting collection by the Bomb Squad. Michael St. Maur Sheil
U.S. Aisne Marne Cemetery.
U.S. Aisne Marne Cemetery. 6012 graves and the names of 241 missingMichael St. Maur Sheil
German hospital cut into the side of a hill with a massive protective concrete frontage near Binarville. Argonne.
German hospital cut into the side of a hill with a massive protective concrete frontage near Binarville. Argonne.Michael St. Maur Sheil
American 30.06 caliber unfired rifle clips in the Meuse Argonne “Pocket” where the so-called “Lost Battalion” fought its gallant action.
American 30.06 caliber unfired rifle clips in the Meuse Argonne “Pocket” where the so-called “Lost Battalion” fought its gallant action. This is a steep valley to the west of Apremont where between Oct 2-7th 1918 soldiers of the US 77th Div were cut off from their comrades. Caught in a narrow valley they were totally surrounded but finally managed to fight their way out. The Argonne Massif is a narrow 12km wide band of hills rising steeply to the west of the Meuse valley. For four years of bitter fighting the front line ran east-west across these hills until the American offensive here in the autumn of 1918 which was a major test for the American army for many of whose troops this was their first real experience of battle.Michael St. Maur Sheil
German gun position dugout near Woinville made of cast concrete in the U.S. sector of the St. Mihiel battle.
German gun position dugout near Woinville made of cast concrete in the U.S. sector of the St. Mihiel battle.Michael St. Maur Sheil
Relic German stick grenade in the U.S. action areas in the Champagne region.
Relic German stick grenade in the U.S. action areas in the Champagne region.Michael St. Maur Sheil
Aerial view of the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel, Somme region
Aerial view of the Newfoundland Memorial Park, Beaumont Hamel, Somme regionMichael St. Maur Sheil

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com