This comic book combines two ways of describing the horrors of World War I, through words and through images. The story is simply the plot of World War I as it slowly turned from normal warfare to something way darker and more terrifying—trench warfare. The reader should know that as the plot goes along, Tardi starts removing color from his illustrations until by the end, the comics are visually dark and monochrome.
World War I saw an increase in technology in warfare that changed the world forever. Now, warfare could include airplanes with bombs, heavy tanks, and most importantly, the machine gun. These technical advancements were being accomplished by many nations simultaneously, though, so although each nation thought they were going into battle with a fairly strong advantage, the truth about World War I becomes revealed, page by page.
One development is that the machine guns are positioned above enemy lines, and both the Germans and the French lines dig trenches into the land. This leads to what has been called trench warfare, depicted by Tardi in all its horror and violence. Even though the land between the two enemy lines was being called "No Man's Land," the armies still continued sending foot soldiers to infiltrate enemy lines, and slowly, both sides realized that foot soldiers simply could not succeed against machine guns.
