100 yeats ago

[10-x]

The US entered WWI 100 years ago. After the Span. AM war it was America's stepping into a position of world power. God bless those that gave all and those that came home. We lost our last WWI Veteran in 2011.
Please excuse the misspelling, tablet is headed for the skeet machine!

[10x]

Ah yes , 100 years since the Canadians did at Vimy Ridge what no others could do

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/first-world-war/road-to-vimy-ridge/vimy5

[Loudenboomer]

Perhaps a little smug. I'll say thank you for your countrymen's service. Canadians doing what no others could do?? I don't care for what you are insinuating.
My great uncle Nels T. Wold was awarded the congressional metal of honor in WW1. He was killed saving many lives in similar circumstances.

[.455 Webley]

Loudenboomer: I just read up on your great Uncle and i must say his story is amazing. You should be very proud of his accomplishments. As a Norwegian-American and Minnesotan i think i will take a little bit of pride in him also.

Lets remember all who served in The Great War and not get bogged down in who's nation could do what fighting where. Men from all nations were asked to do the impossible in horrible places and delivered.

Lest we forget.

[Loudenboomer]

Don't worry I'm not into Mud slinging But Thanks for the kind words.

[M-Tecs]

Ah yes , 100 years since the Canadians did at Vimy Ridge what no others could do

http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/history/first-world-war/road-to-vimy-ridge/vimy5

link is not working for me.

[.455 Webley]

This is what i looked at.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nels_Wold

[bedbugbilly]

10-x - A good reminder to us all to remember the sacrifices of a "Lost Generation".

When I was in high school, I interviewed as many World War I veterans as I could - I spent many, many hours visiting and talking with those who served and it has been a life long love of mine to remember those of that generation. I developed many very close friendships with them and often times, they told me of things that they had never ever been able to talk about with their families. As they passed, I often visited with their children and grandchildren and they had never heard of some of the stories of their loved one that I was able to relate to them. Now, they are only a memory but I still miss them greatly and will always treasure their friendships.

Two in particular - Percy Totten, Co. F, 126 Infantry, 32nd Division (Red Arrow), A.E.F. and his cousin, Paul Totten, Co. F, 339th Infantry, Polar Bear Division A.N.R.E.F. I was very close with and they were like "surrogate grandparents" to me. They were just two of many that I had the pleasure to share many hours with and a number of years ago, I submitted articles on each of them for the American Veterans Project. I am putting the links below to the articles. Please excuse any errors as they occurred when the articles were transcribed to the website. I am still working on the book that is mentioned at the end and the e-mail is no longer a valid e-mail. I just thought that some here may enjoy reading them.

I was fortunate in that I knew a number of "Polar Bears" since many were from Michigan and they (339th Infantry and support units) were broken off from the 85th Division (Custer Division) when they reached France and were then sent to North Russia to fall under British Command as the U.S. representatives toward the Allied efforts taking place there. I spent many hours with Paul Totten from the time I was a very young kid until until his death when I was an adult.

Percy Totten was like a grandfather to me after I made his acquaintance and he had graduated from High School with my grandmother. He had a rough time of it in France as did the others in his Division and they suffered heavy casualties which had a great effect on our county and others since they were activated National Guard.

Here are the links.

Percy Totten - Co. F, 126th Infantry, 32nd Division, A.E.F.

http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/petotten.htm (http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/petotten.htm)

Paul Totten - Co. F, 339th Infantry, Polar Bear Division, A.N.R.E.F.

http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/patotten.htm (http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/patotten.htm)

May God watch over them and all the men and women of their generation who served in The Great War

[10-x]

Bedbug, guess we are very similar in interest and family history. History is in my blood as are firearms. Met very few WWI Veterans when I was educated on the war. My Great Uncle was a Polar Bear, remember him well however he never spoke about his sevice. Knew him as Uncle Charlie. Remember his and hs wif' s passing and only a vague memory of their 1 son who was a teacher. Forward 20 years when I became deeply involved in collecting and part of a group that set up dislays to educate the public on this countrys military. Still bummed out to find that Uncle Charlie had his uniform, 1911 and who knows what else only to have his teacher son turn into a booze hound( drunk) and pawned it all? I would give big $$$$ to get his stuff, was sold somewhere in central Fl. years ago. Pretty sure its safe in someones collection. If I could post pics I would of some displays over the years. Back in the 90' s did one for our local library, they let me bring in all the weapons(during the day), even built a replica of the inside of a dugout with even a rubber rat! Local ( Norfolk, Va. ) fishwrapper did nice article, educated lots of folks for a little while.

[Freightman]

Have you all been keeping up with The Great War on You Tube? he is going week by week at 100 years ago. He also has specials to what did this and who did this very informative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FgaL0xIazk&list=PLB2vhKMBjSxMK8YelHj6VS6w3KxuKsMvT

[Fishman]

Bedbugbilly those are a couple of fine stories. I very much enjoyed them.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Perhaps a little smug. I'll say thank you for your countrymen's service. Canadians doing what no others could do?? I don't care for what you are insinuating.


Insinuating seems a bit more than was intended. The Canadians did what nobody else had done, which is well worth mentioning. I remember an Australian (mostly among the finest of human beings) commenting that in the late stages of the German 1918 offensives Australia had more divisions in contact with the enemy than the British. Indeed it is true, but it was largely a matter of order. One reason for victory was that a lot of British divisions didn't break, and had been ground down while doing some fearful grinding. Any objective way we measure it, I suppose the people who did most of all towards winning the war were the French.

I was a small child among old men who would talk more freely to me, I think, than to adults, and I heard things you couldn't find in books for adults in those days. They had been fearsome technicians of violence, still with a macabre sense of humour, and yet they were convinced to a man that the end of war has to be getting along with former foes. Although not superstitious men back home, they were convinced that "conscript tricks", besides imperilling reconcilation, would make Mr. Luck turn against you. One of their number was extremely embarrassed when the others reminded him how they had once called him "The Mad Bomber of Passchendaele". But they thoroughly approved of his keeping a silver flute for "a young Bavarian laddie" who went to hospital, and sending it back after the war.

They used to say "Oh aye, Ypres... Mind you, they were good times... Ye wouldnae want to be the man that missed it." Apart from a few very localised bad places they thought the mud was unpleasant but bearable when shells sank in before exploding, and on the chalk uplands they were far more dangerous. They were convinced of what a lot of reading has never changed my mind about, that Third Ypres was a monstrous blunder, but the Somme was necessary, and worth it, when nothing but large-scale attrition would do. It probably saved the French from defeat at Verdun, where a breakthrough would have been everybody's breakthrough, and by the end of the Somme battles the German material superiority was gone, never to be recovered.

I can highly recommend also the two books which the last two British veterans, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham, dictated to younger collaborators long after their hundredth birthdays. Patch was the last surviving trench soldier of anybody's, and Allingham was a Royal Naval Air Service mechanic and occasional air gunner. Both books are definitely their own work, with a great deal of intelligence and character.
I can name a couple of sources that are useful. In 1964 the BBC made a 26 episode series, "The Great War", which has a good claim to be the greatest TV documentary ever made. For it was about the biggest subject, the old men and women were still pretty lucid, and with the old film being in black and white didn't matter. The standard DVD set is expensive, but a few years ago a newspaper gave away a DVD a day, and various eBay sellers have got hold of the unused stocks. There is also a collection of the interviews they didn't use. They may be European coded and on the PAL system, but a multiregional DVD player, or a computer drive on which you are prepared to use on of its five lives making the change, will play them.

[johnson1942]

my wife's grandfather came to american during ww1 and went into the army and fought hard and earned his right to be a american when he got out. came from Norway and did not speak english at all. he was a big viking and become a very good farmer after the war. it was a way to become a american. we have a 90 plus danish man in out local church who came to america during the korean war and inlisted in the army and fought many a hard battles and become a american that way also. my young 17 year old son likes to sit next to him at church as he has deep respect for these men who came here and layed their lives on the line for the right to live here. fighting is in these vikings blood and they remember what the germans did to them. the day after the germans left Norway in ww2 all the norwegians who worked with the germans went for a little walk in the woods from which they didnt come back from. Norway did a complete job of it as other countries didnt. the Norwegians killed them all and they did it ASAP.

[10-x]

Johnson, great history. Is your handle named after the Johnson light MG? Got to shoot one a few years ago in N.C., really nice.
WWII trivia, who knows how the US 1st Special Forces got their Johnsons in WWII???????

[Ballistics in Scotland]

the day after the germans left Norway in ww2 all the norwegians who worked with the germans went for a little walk in the woods from which they didnt come back from. Norway did a complete job of it as other countries didnt. the Norwegians killed them all and they did it ASAP.

I always thought better of the Norwegians than that, and I still think it. It isn't the murdering kind of nation. Two out of thirteen ministers of the Quisling government were executed after trial for war crimes, and most of the others had their prison terms commuted in the 1950s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_purge_in_Norway_after_World_War_II

[Screwbolts]

And, that is a Lot of Yeats ago. Thank you for the link.

Ken