The mixing of the elements of earth and water took place in the slime and mud hell of World War I trench warfare. First-hand accounts of those who were there and wrote about it focus on these qualities. The transformation in both world wars of the natural and cultural environments in the country and the city and shifts in the conduct of industrialised world warfare indicate a change in the conduct of war at the fundamental level of the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. In the case of the WWI, with its heavy artillery and trench warfare, earth and water were mixed to produce what commentators and caption writers called “swamps,” while war photographers documented and dramatized them. The transformation of the air took also place in both wars with aerial weapons. Air became an area of conflict in the third dimension of height (rather than a front in the two dimensions of length and breadth on the land). This shift took place with the development and deployment of chemical weapons during the first year of WWI. These transformations had a dramatic and devastating physical and mental impact on those who experienced them directly and indirectly.