By Sydney Schmied
The first day of the Battle of Somme, July 1st, 1916, was marked as the worst day in World War I (1914-1918). The British Army suffered a staggering 57,000 casualties, according to the National Army Museum. They gained just three square miles of territory (“Battle of the Somme,” n.d.).
The subliminal horror of World War I soared to a high level of impersonal slaughter and shattered the previous optimism of the early 1900s. As the world emerged from a rational, progressive age, it found itself unable to reconcile this hell on earth with its hope for a future. People begged for an answer to the question, “Where is God in this?”
Many soldiers who survived the trenches came home only to succumb to the Spanish Flu. Veterans might have escaped physical death, only to find themselves dying a violent spiritual and mental death. The ones who sacrificed valiantly for their countries found no glory in surviving Hell. There was no glory in bloody sacrifice, and many philosophers found this to be harrowing. Poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon captured the horror, challenging the meaning and purpose of war. The last three lines of Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est say “To children ardent for some desperate glory, / The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori” (Owen 1921).
“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” translates to “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.” It poses this common belief of glory as a lie from the heart of the trenches. Glory is not this flimsy, prideful duty, and Owen wonders if there is any true glory in death at all. Biblically, the Hebrew for glory is kabod, which translates to “weight” or “worth”(Sneller-Vrolijk 2022). There is no weight in the naive glory Owen speaks of, but there is truth in the biblical glory as C.S. Lewis discusses in his book The Weight of Glory, a collection of sermons he wrote during World War II. Glory is not for ourselves; it is for God and others (Lewis 1980). This is the difference between the prideful reach of glory through duty and Lewis’s definition of Glory as “worth”.
Time passes by, whether we want it to or not, and a life truly lived is lived in hope. Hope may not be a tangible thing, but it is clear, even in the darkest days of history and the living hell that our sin-rotten world decides to be. Evil will always be here, but we fight against it by living in hope. We see through the wretchedness to the reward: eternal glory. God is glorious, and we find this worthy glory through seeking him. Becoming more like Christ will ignite true glory within us.
Amidst the horror, there are stories of sacrificial love and faith endured, even if reason could not expand beyond its limits to explain the hope pulsing within. As a quote from the November 6th, 1914 edition of The Western Times states, “We have no atheists in the trenches. Men are not ashamed to say that, though they never prayed before, they pray now with all their hearts”(The Western Times 1914). Men who had never prayed before prayed through the war, and not just on this day. Everyone has heard of the Christmas Truce of 1914, where soldiers emerged from the trenches to sing carols and play soccer. This is just a glimpse of Imago Dei, amidst soldiers on opposing sides of battle.
As the world sought to recover from war and moved into the free and optimistic 1920s, living for the “self” became a popular construct. Some could not reconcile the horrors of war with the materialistic life they must live now. Some of those in the trenches asking, “Where is God in this?” found their answer in the Cross. Many did not. There will be no avoidance of suffering, no preparation for the reality of horror, and no escape from it. But the Cross was God’s answer in the trenches, and as Christ suffered for the sins of the world, the gift of hope in his resurrection was given. The experience of war is something many then–and now– cannot grasp, nor do we want to, but what we can grasp is the hope we are offered during suffering of any sort. Doubt will creep in, and we are not to ignore those doubts, but place them at our Heavenly Father’s throne. As Romans 5:3-5 promises, “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
The darkness is a mirror in which we see the stark contrast of glory. In the ugliest of humanity, there is wrestling, and we reckon how to live. To live for the Truth is the highest achievement of glory.
So where is God in this? He is with the broken-hearted, in the trenches, on the Cross. He redeems us by His Son’s suffering on the Cross. Christ bore the weight of the World’s sin, and He offers a glory that is not false and a hope that won’t be destroyed. So cling to glory, live in hope.
Author’s Note
I wrote this short essay to process the concept of glory during war as I researched for my current manuscript, set right after World War I. I hope this can help recenter your trust, as this is a hard thing to grasp, as it was/is for me. It’s a struggle to have faith a lot of the time, but returning to your convictions can help push through the doubt.
– Sydney
Bibliography:
“Battle of the Somme.” n.d. National Army Museum. Accessed September 15, 2025.
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/battle-somme. Accessed September 16, 2025. Owen, Wilfred. 1921. “Dulce et Decorum Est.” Edited by Siegfried Sassoon. The Poetry Foundation. Accessed September 15, 2025. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46560/dulce-et-decorum-est.
Sneller-Vrolijk, Annechiena. 2022. “Biblical Vocabulary: The Word כָּבוֹד (God’s Honor and Glory) – Part 1 – Biblword.net.” Biblword.Net. March 3, 2022. https://www.biblword.net/biblical-vocabulary-gods-honor-and-glory-part-1/. Accessed September 30, 2025.
Lewis, Clive Staples. 1980. The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses. Scribner Paper Fiction. Accessed September 16, 2025.
The Western Times. 1914. “‘Col. Burn’s Late Son: Torquay’s Expression of Sincere Sympathy.’” November 6, 1914. Accessed September 29, 2025.
