P'shaw, you lovely people. I was late and only had to respond to such very insightful posts; everyone else had done all the heavy lifting. Thank you, very much, for your kind words.
I'll comment on a personal level that it's less usual for an American to be taken by the Great War; our Civil War and the Second World War seem to have captured more of my countrymen's imaginations, probably becaue WWI didn't exact the same toll, physical and emotional, as it did on the European and ANZAC and other combatants. But the Great War grabbed me and hasn't let go. And next year will be the centennary! It seems so close, in comparison to our Civil War, say, which was the same hundred years before my childhood and seemed like ancient history when I was growing up.
Excuse my ramblings, please!