Considering the enormous effect that artists such as T.S. Eliot had on the representation of WWI and its aftermath, it can be hard to separate the established narrative from the narrative that people at the time were telling. Would anyone at the time have disagreed with this narrative - and if so, why or why not?
I don't know too much about this, but Antoine Prost had some interesting ideas about representation after World War I if you are looking for something to help. Remembrance of atrocities or catastrophes is not immediate, it takes years. The Holocaust wasn't truly engaged with as a concept until the 1970s in most of Europe, even later for other countries.
I think also that the emphasis on the geography of the Great War depends on country to country. In countries such as Great Britain and USA, there wasn't such a popular emphasis on the land, because no battles were fought on UK or USA soil. Remembrance days are very much focused on the lives that were lost; the men that sacrificed their lives. In France, say, the most noticeable immediate impact the war had was how it absolutely decimated the land, buildings, farms etc etc. For T.S. Eliot and other artists/poets etc, their emphasis would be more on the land as its more evocative than focusing on lives that were lost.