OLD family albums can hold a lot of photos like this one. They date back to the First Word War (1914-1918) and capture sad moments when freshly-recruited soldiers got immortalised on film with their families for the last time, or when they managed to get home for a holiday.
The devastating war, which was unparalleled at the time, took a cruel toll on what is today’s Slovakia. Out of three million citizens, 400,000 to 450,000 men went to war. Most of them fought on the Balkan, Eastern and Italian Fronts.
Many of them did not return home. Others who did returned with injuries, which had consequences that accompanied them for the rest of their lives.
