Why might the theme of the human disfigurement be especially powerful to the generation that lived through the world war 1?

During world war 1 a lot of soldiers all over the world became disfigured, people lost limbs, eyes, or part of their faces. Many of the people in the generation that lived through the world war would therefore have seen and known people with disfigurement and know how that affected those individuals.

the british won and the germans couldn't invade great brit