--- title: World War I Anniversary: See WWI Battlefields Then and Now description: These photographs, on view at the National WWI Museum and Memorial, show the surprising ways the Great War left its mark on the landscape. canonical: https://time.com/4690928/wwi-fields-of-battle-photos/ author: Lily Rothman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-03-31T15:00:09.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T04:59:01.570Z article:section: History og:title: World War I Anniversary: See WWI Battlefields Then and Now og:description: The photographs are on view at the National WWI Museum and Memorial og:url: https://time.com/4690928/wwi-fields-of-battle-photos/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt598809c141207112/6988bcf82dce0140909ec82c/170303-wwi-battlefields-02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2560 og:image:height: 1440 og:image:alt: WWI Fields of Battle og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: World War I Anniversary: See WWI Battlefields Then and Now twitter:description: The photographs are on view at the National WWI Museum and Memorial twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt598809c141207112/6988bcf82dce0140909ec82c/170303-wwi-battlefields-02.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # These Battlefields Were Devastated in World War I. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 31, 2017 3:00 PM UTC  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. 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  by [Lily Rothman](https://time.com/author/lily-rothman/)  ## Lily Rothman Rothman is managing editor at TIME. Mar 31, 2017 3:00 PM UTC 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](http://time.com/vault/issue/1975-10-20/page/96/), 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](http://time.com/vault/issue/1937-08-09/page/13/). “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](https://www.theworldwar.org/explore/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/fields-battle-lands-peace). “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 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. 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. Michael St. Maur Sheil  Unexploded shells uncovered by ploughing near Munich Trench Cemetery awaiting collection by the Bomb Squad. Michael St. Maur Sheil  U.S. Aisne Marne Cemetery. 6012 graves and the names of 241 missing Michael St. Maur Sheil  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. 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. Michael St. Maur Sheil  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 Michael St. Maur Sheil ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4690928/wwi-fields-of-battle-photos/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4690928/wwi-fields-of-battle-photos/"},"headline":"These Battlefields Were Devastated in World War I. 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