Reading the reverse of the cards brings the conflicts of the later part of the 19th century into focus, or at least as much focus as we were allowed to know at the time. We all know what the first casualty of war is. Warfare for the Western World has become a pretty sanitized affair for the viewer. Technology does the messy stuff for the televisual warrior. I mean the last conflict was played out in the desert, sterile war in sterile environment.
War seems to be an exercise in economics nowadays, or at least that is how it is portrayed.
The reality is evolution, has not really improved the human body for taking impacts and blood and bone pretty much looks the same as it did since blood and bone first became a viable evolutionary avenue. I am living in a period of unprecedented peace being the first of the Roberts family for a very long time that have not been involved in warfare, the family has quite a history of globlal conflicts and it is not a family tradition I wish to continue. Now this article can never do justice to the 50 subjects and so I can only pick the bones out of the series. By card two it becomes obvious that being dead does not stop you being in the set. General Wielemans died of pneumonia in Jan 1917, which put his death right in the middle of the compilation process of the set.