Public remembrance of the Great War of 1914-1918 continues to flourish, with each new generation adding its own interpretations and understandings of the most influential event of the twentieth century. The last participants may have died, but their war remains alive. Scholars continue to try to make sense of what, in hindsight, still may appear to be, at best, a major caesura and, at worst, a social and cultural disaster.

This book is a collective biography of 984 men and young boys who were among the last soldiers to volunteer for service in World War I but differs from previous studies in it is based on quantitative evidence of a scholarly nature, not just on the war years, but on the decades before.