One Hundred Years Ago Today . . .
. . . Congress declared war on Germany, resulting in US entering World War I.
4.7+ million US personnel served during World War I; 53,402 died during combat.
The last US veteran of that war, Frank Buckles, died in 2011 – at age 110.
Fox has a short article today on the anniversary; it’s worth a read. The article also contains a link to livestream of a service to be held at 1100 EDT today commemorating the anniversary at the National World War I Museum and Memorial.
Rest in peace, elder brothers-in-arms.
Category: Historical
I have a few of my grandfather’s letters home from WWI.
It’s odd thinking of how life has changed since 1917. Reading the old letters will sure bring that home.
I was wondering last week or so whether this country’s media would note the 100th anniversary of our entry into WW I. Time passes and once-significant events become footnotes in history books. Names of places and key dates that rolled off the tongues of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents prompt a Google search from their progeny. And so it goes. The Fox article managed to work both immigrants and women into its small piece. I got a chuckle out of that. That’s the way it goes nowadays. The War to End All Wars had familial significance for me. My maternal grandfather was with the Rainbow Division’s 165th Infantry (formerly, NY’s 69th, a/k/a The Fighting 69th.) He was a mick from NYC and joined at 17. Ten years later he was dead from heart and respiratory failure thanks to the gas he inhaled during the war. And then there the two distant cousins, brothers they were, one a captain and the other an EM. They were Australians and were in the fight early on. They almost made it, too. Both were killed within 24 hrs of one another in separate actions less than two months before the armistice. I have letters. I have records. I share what I have about them with other family. I won’t forget.
In a way, a good reminder that what seems earth-shattering today, in 100 years will be little-noted nor long remembered.
Perspective.
It seems that the release of “Battlefield 1,” set in the Great War, has provoked interest among the gamer generation. The game’s designers apparently expected that it would, and included an in-game historical encyclopedia to go with levels set in the Western Front, the Alps, Gallipoli, and T. E. Lawrence’s desert campaign.
Whatever works, right?
I’m an old guy who likes this game FWIW….sometimes it’s relaxing to sit for a minute and play something that acts as chewing gum for your brain for a little bit….I find it throttles back my thought process to focus on one thing and quiet down those other thoughts that sometime intrude into our lives…and yes it’s not terribly accurate historically but it was generated a lot of interest in the time period and used names that have younger people asking a lot of questions, which is something positive I think.
TOW/VOV. The value of some games in imparting historical fact is beyond question. They teach on the sly, if you will, with folks soaking up info that, if presented by a teacher in school, would cause a great many trips to the lavatory and water fountain.
History geek though I am, I have to admit I hadn’t heard of the Arditi until I played the game. I thought the “War Stories” presentation of the single-player campaign was a very nice touch.
I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t feature the Lost Battalion, Belleau Wood, Verdun, or the Eastern Front, but it was good to see Gallipoli and the Alpine Campaign represented.
Roman Army re-enactors. Renaissance Faires. Full Metal Jousting. It gets better every year.
The English re-enactors are some of the best in the hobby. They re-enact practically every conflict, including the US Civil War. Their Roman Legion from the London area is pretty impressive. One of my re-enactor friends rode with an English Light Dragoon group in the Waterloo reenactment. He was quite impressed with their horsemanship & authenticity. The same group also did Roman cavalry, with no stirrups, of course.
Their is a you tube series called “The Great War” that is hosted by Indy Niedel that is chronologically following WWI since 2014 on the 100th anniversary of the wars start…very interesting, I recommend checking it out
That war led to WW2 and the effects of it are still relevant in this era, aka: The Treaty of Versatile which drew the map of the middle east of today in many ways and is the reason for much of the conflict there now and will probably be a causation WW3 eventually…worst treaty ever
It was the first mechanized war. That alone was significant.
The Civil War and the Crimean War had both demonstrated that technology had surpassed Napoleonic tactics. Nobody in Europe paid attention.
The gigantic cannon (I think it’s German) in this video is incredible. Also, while the Germans had some tanks, the Brits produced many more than Germany.
Most German tanks were captured British/French vehicles, as they only ever got around to building seven or eight A7Vs.
I am pretty sure this was the “War to end all Wars” it would appear 100 years later that not everyone got the memo….
Iron Maiden “Paschendale”
https://youtu.be/c20-fm_WNew
Sabaton “Cliffs of Gallipoli”
https://youtu.be/QE-xjk6hEd4
Sabaton “The Price of a Mile”
https://youtu.be/5rY4OlUCIqY
Sabaton “The Lost Battalion”
https://youtu.be/WEo1Vh-0hjQ
I was recently re-reading info on The Lost Battalion and was reminded that there was no battalion and the soldiers were not at all lost. It was a classic, Alamo-like, action with a happier result.
Here’s a version fo Zajdi, Zajdi done for the Battlefield game, the female voice is quite amazing I think…it starts about 1:57 in for the female voice….it’s a haunting piece of music which I find myself enjoying for some reason.
An interesting thing about World War I was how relatively minor events tended to have a large ripple effect:
The reaction to a Serbian radical’s shooting of an Austro-Hungarian archduke seems way out of proportion. The Germans might have said: Franz who?
And what if the Belgians hadn’t made such a big deal of their neutrality and disrupted the Von Schlieffen Plan:
Belgian Border Guard: Purpose of your visit?
German Commander: We’re on our way to Paris.
Belgian Border Guard (stamps passport): Stick to the roads, stay off the grass, and try the Brie. Next!
The stupid Zimmerman Telegram has to rank up there as a stupid world-class stupid contender in the Stupid Hall of Fame…
My maternal grandfather was the first person from his county in upstate New York to enlist following the Declaration of War. He served in the Sanitary Train of the 76th Division as a mule drawn ambulance driver.
74 years later as I flew on my first sortie of DESERT STORM I reflected on how far we’d come since the war to end all wars. He’d had mule power and I had over 80,000 pounds of thrust at my disposal.
I’ve got his uniform tunic, dog tags and WWI Victory medal. The latter puzzles me a bit. Perhaps someone here can elaborate on how common it is. The ribbon portion of the medal matches the WWI Victory medal. The actual medal differs from the specimens I’ve seen in that it has words on the back to the effect it was presented to those who served by the citizens of his home town
On Sunday there is another noteworthy anniversary. 9 April marks the 75th anniversary of the surrender at Bataan and the subsequent Death March. Maybe I’ll take the kids down to Andersonville to visit the National POW museum.
I reported your nasty comment ;( (so sorry)…
Local recognition medals were very common after WWI. Since the medals did not come out until years after the war ended often they were ordered and given posthumously.
Local inscription IDK about
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know that about the medals. I never heard my grandfather speak of his service during the war. But I was barely eight when he died.
My later searches on line and the few family legends have turned up a little. He served as a drill sergeant when the Division organized at Ft Devens. That matches the stripes on the sleeves of his uniform.
The local paper had a small article right after Pearl Harbor. It basically pointed out that he was the first person in the county to enlist following the Declaration of War in 1817 and his oldest son, my Uncle was the first to enlist on December 8th 1941.
It is sobering to note that this was 100 years ago. I remember seeing WW1 veterans still marching in parades every year. Way back in high school I had a biology teacher who related that in his youth, he’d see Spanish American War veterans still marching every year.
Sad to see them leave us. My ancestors were in the Austro-Hungarian army during WW1; one great uncle survived and moved to Argentina where he worked from roughly 1919-1932 as something of a gaucho before moving to NY City, where he passed away in 1974. His brother went missing in action and was never seen or heard from again sometime around 1915. Never forgotten.
A unique war for my family, had a great aunt in it (there is a section at Arlington for AEF nurses like her) but no male soldiers were in the right age group.