In the current issue of WS&S, which focuses on WW1, Mr. Bowers all-too-briefly considers the unique "shadow" the period casts. I don't think we gamers are necessarily flippant about suffering and death in warfare (although we inescapably trivialize these issues to some extent). When it comes to the Great War, perhaps we tend too far in the opposite direction.
TWD, I think you are spot on that we drag along that attitude into wargaming from culture at large. In pop culture, the Great War is rather arbitrarily and unfairly reduced to the slogan that war is futile. Is our little hobby in a position to take on this trope?
I think so, at least among people likely to have any interest in playing miniatures games in 28mm. The scale is very suitable for personal stories of bravey and daring - a nice counter to the dour vision of faceless millions poured into a meatgrinder. As a child, my own interest in the period died down after reading Sassoon - it had been kindled in the first place by the Red Baron PC game!
And it was gaming again (Wings of War/Glory) that brought me back to the period. The air war benefits from being told in terms of colourful planes and personalities. WW1 on the ground could be similarly "colourised," by which I mean recounted in vivid, humanizing terms - we do it with everything else from Ancients down to modern counterinsurgency.