Sowar Sohan Singh, WWI

When World War I consumed Europe, its industrialized destruction was on such a scale that it seemed only comparison with a natural disaster could capture it. In the letters written home by Indian soldiers on the Western Front, the scale of devastation was conveyed through extended similes. Sowar Sohan Singh wrote home, in July 1915: “There is conflagration all round, and you must imagine it to be like a dry forest in a high wind in the hot weather, with abundance of dry grass and straw. No one can extinguish it but God himself — man can do nothing.” ⁠