Last W.W.I. veteran seeks memorial improvments.

[chiapeteater]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/09/world.war.one.memorial/index.html

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- At 107, Frank Buckles must know there is not much time for him to honor the memory of his comrades who served the United States during the first World War. He's the last surviving U.S. veteran of what then was called the Great War.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2008/US/09/09/world.war.one.memorial/art.buckles.gi.jpg Frank Buckles is 107 years old and the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I.



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The old soldier came to Washington on Tuesday hoping to turn a run-down local memorial on the National Mall into something in keeping with other, permanent monuments to Americans who've sacrificed in other wars.
He's getting help from a Texas congressman who said he found the condition of the site deplorable. At a news conference with Buckles on Tuesday, Rep. Ted Poe said he has introduced the "Frank Buckles World War I Act" to renovate and expand the memorial within the next few years.
Poe, a Republican, said his bill would "give this memorial energy, and will be incorporated in a grander, better memorial for all that served in World War I."
The price of the initial renovations would be around $1 million, Poe said, and the site eventually would be upgraded to a national memorial, though design details haven't been determined.
The memorial is currently not national, having been built primarily to honor about 500 veterans from the District of Columbia.
Buckles, who left the Army as a corporal, first visited the gazebo-style structure in March. He told reporters Tuesday that he does not think it's too late to acknowledge the sacrifice of all Americans from that war.
"I think they should be honored by their representatives," Buckles said from his wheelchair. "I am a representative of World War I, simply through longevity."
Also pushing the overhaul and upgrade are the D.C. Preservation League and the World War I Memorial Foundation.
The site of the current monument -- in dense woods not far from the fresh and elaborate World War II memorial -- is hard to find, even in the dead of winter, when Buckles last visited.
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"We just saw it through the trees," tourist Regina Duffy said in March. "I was surprised when we got over here that it was a World War I (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/World_War_I) memorial, because I thought it would be more prominent."
With summer foliage fully in bloom, the city's monument is almost completely obscured.
Zeke Musa of Florida said it "looks like it's been neglected."
"If you just look at the walks here, all the stones are broken and everything. These guys served their country, you know? It's a shame," said Musa, a Vietnam veteran.
According to an autobiography released this year by the Pentagon, Buckles was eager to join the war. Although only 16 in the summer of 1917, he lied about his age to get into the armed services.
He said his recruiter told him "the Ambulance Service was the quickest way to get to France," so he took training in trench casualty retrieval.
Buckles was an officer's escort in France before joining a detail transporting German prisoners of war.
He now lives on his family's cattle farm near Charles Town, West Virginia.

[gleet]

He wins the mother of all tontines.

[LiddyRules]

I don't want my tax dollars to go to this when it can go to Mortgage Companies

[DonTheTrucker]

He wins the mother of all tontines.

Mr burns would be proud.

Give this guy whatever he wants. Ww1 was the most horrific war mankind will ever see.

[WoodenPlank]

Mr burns would be proud.

Give this guy whatever he wants. Ww1 was the most horrific war mankind will ever see.

Agreed on giving him what he wants. I cant whole-heartedly agree with WWI being the most horrific, though.
I find it amazing that he not only survived the war, but it still kicking at 107. Wow.

[LiddyRules]

Agreed on giving him what he wants. I cant whole-heartedly agree with WWI being the most horrific, though.
I find it amazing that he not only survived the war, but it still kicking at 107. Wow. What do you give the most horrific award to? And the A-Bomb doesn't count since those people had no souls.

[DonTheTrucker]

I cant whole-heartedly agree with WWI being the most horrific.

Trench warfare is barbaric. Thousands would die some days to gain just a few feet of ground. Tanks were new and there was little to defend against them and of course it was the first major war with automatic weapons. It truly was brutal.

[gleet]

What do you give the most horrific award to? And the A-Bomb doesn't count since those people had no souls.

I'd say it's the one you get killed in.

[LiddyRules]

Trench warfare is barbaric. Thousands would die some days to gain just a few feet of ground. Tanks were new and there was little to defend against them and of course it was the first major war with automatic weapons. It truly was brutal. And the gas, and the first with flame throwers. And how for four years nothing happened except people dying. The front barely moved, if at all. Just thousands of people stuck in the mud and garbage of the trenches suffering. It was physically and mentally horrific.

[gleet]

Mr burns would be proud.



So would Col. Potter.

[LiddyRules]

So would Col. Potter. And Lee Marvin

And Kirk Douglas

And Cpt. Blackadder

And Mr. Of Arabia

[DonTheTrucker]

And the gas, and the first with flame throwers. And how for four years nothing happened except people dying. The front barely moved, if at all. Just thousands of people stuck in the mud and garbage of the trenches suffering. It was physically and mentally horrific.

Oh crap I completely forgot the gas. I just had pictures of guys getting cut down my primative machine guns and getting run over by tanks.

[WoodenPlank]

Personally, Id say the Pacific theater in WWII and Vietnam were pretty fucking horrific, too. One of my great-uncles was killed in the Pacific, and my grandfather survived it. The Normandy landings and breakout were pretty fucking nasty, too...

War is hell.

[Cunt Smasher]

$1,000,000,000 is SHIT,in govt. money.11,000 men died on the last day of the war,even though everybody involved knew the war was over.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/july-dec04/veteran_11-11.html

TERENCE SMITH: It was the armistice that ended World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, that gave us this date to honor veterans of all wars.

With me now to look at that extraordinary day is Joe Persico, author of the newly published "11th month, 11th day, 11th Hour: Armistice Day 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax."

Joe Persico, welcome.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Good to be here.

TERENCE SMITH: Tell us the story of what happened on that day 86 years ago today.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: On Nov. 11, it's known that the war would end with a ceasefire at 11:00. In the trenches, there was just a pulsing tension as each man hopes to avoid the melancholy distinction of being killed in a war that has been decided-- allied victory, German defeat.

And yet, in those final hours, final minutes, even, the generals are sending men out of the trenches into the face of the enemy with appalling losses. Some 10,900 men on this last day are killed, wounded or missing, slightly more even than D-Day.

TERENCE SMITH: More than D-Day, the assault on Normandy a generation later?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: With this vital distinction: The men who stormed D-Day and lost their lives gave them in a crusade of an allied victory. The men who died on Nov. 11, 1918, are dying in a war in which victory has already been decided.

TERENCE SMITH: Why on earth would commanders send their troops up and out of the trenches if they knew that the armistice, which I guess had been signed at 5:00 in the morning?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: 5:00 in the morning to go into effect six hours later. Well, the reasons are not very admirable, one of which was to be punitive. The head of the allied forces, Marshal Foche, had seen his country, France, laid waste, essentially, as the battlefield of World War I.

Foche instructed his people to keep the sword to the back of the Hun to the very last minute. Another reason was rather political, and that is our commander, the head of the American expeditionary forces, Gen. John J. Pershing, thought this conclusion of the war at this point was premature. He wanted to see the Germans driven back into their fatherland. He wanted an unconditional surrender. He wanted this signed in Berlin.

And he said at the time that if we stop now, the Germans will never believe they were beaten, and with rather chilling foresight, he says, "We'll just have to do it all over again."

TERENCE SMITH: But some commanders, you write in the book, chose not to obey that broad order.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, the only word that the commanders were given was essentially, "cease-fire at 11:00." Not told what to do when they knew the cease-fire was approaching, which left them in kind of a decisional no-man's- land. A

nd the commanders fall into two groups: There is the aggressive school, which see a fast-fading opportunity for victory, glory, even promotion. And they're sending the men out of the trenches to take ground that they could walk into the next day.

And there's a more humane group of generals who just tell their men, "hold fast. Let's wait out the end of the war. There's no point in any of my men dying to take territory that will be meaningless as soon as the armistice takes effect."

TERENCE SMITH: If the armistice was signed at 5:00 in the morning, why was it made effective only at 11:00? I mean, why that gap?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, it's a rather curious mechanical explanation. The negotiations had been going on for three days, and Marshal Foche, the allied commander, delivered an ultimatum. He gave the Germans a deadline. "You have 72 hours. And if you don't sign and we don't have an armistice at that point, this war will go on." That turns out to be the 11th month, the 11th day, the 11th hour.

TERENCE SMITH: Oh, I see. Talk about the carnage in this war, which reading the book, I mean, it's... the numbers are hard to reckon with.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, it's very hard to see them in a sense that we can grasp. There were something like nine million deaths in World War I on all sides.

And it was a bloody conflict with very little rationality behind it to a point where you can say essentially that these casualties, whether they were Tommies in the British trenches; Wallies in the French trenches; American doughboys; German common soldiers. You can say that nine million men died essentially in vain.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, when you look at it when it's all over, when it's good-bye to all that, what did it accomplish?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, the legacy of these massive casualties is essentially cemeteries and the seeds of another even bloodier world war, World War II.

TERENCE SMITH: Was that the fault of the... of the soldiers on the field or the politicians at the peace table in Versailles?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, the attitude... during the war, the attitude was on each side-- "if we just hang in long enough, victory will be ours; why give up at a peace table what we can win on the battlefield?"-- which perpetuated this conflict for four long years.

I love the way the poor British Tommies put it. They used to sing to the tune of "Auld Lang Syne," in trying to find some reason for the suffering they're undergoing. "We're here because we're here because we're here because we're here." It never gets much more sensible than that.

TERENCE SMITH: There were some major historical figures, later historical figures who were on the battlefield as soldiers.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: There was Adolf Hitler.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Who was a soldier.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: He was a corporal in the German army. Harry Truman. McArthur, who was the army's youngest general at that point. George Patton.

I think it's interesting that Hitler is recovering from blindness induced by gas attack at the end, and he goes hysterical when he finds that Germany is beaten, and he later writes in "Mein Kampf" that it was at this point, that he swore that the dishonor of the German surrender must be "erased, eradicated, and, therefore, I shall devote my life to that."

TERENCE SMITH: Finally, you also tell the story of numerous ordinary soldiers. How on earth did you get their stories so many years later?

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: Well, there is a wealth of personal information or diaries. There are journals, there are memoirs. I went to our National Archives in Washington and found this stuff which is very satisfying.

I worked at the Imperial War Museum in London, and here again, you have ordinary soldiers, strikingly articulate, really placing you in those trenches, with what they're writing about.

TERENCE SMITH: Well, Joe Persico, thank you so much for telling us about it.

JOSEPH E. PERSICO: My pleasure.

[gleet]

Oh crap I completely forgot the gas. I just had pictures of guys getting cut down my primative machine guns and getting run over by tanks.

And don't forget getting strafed by those new-fangled flying machines.

[Sprite]

You think this 'ol vet thought he'd even survive the war, let alone live to 107+?? Amazing.

[chiapeteater]

Ok, I think this was posted here somewhere but I can't find it. Basically, its a re posting of letters from an English soldier but it is being done in order that they were written and on the dates they were written. Its actually pretty cool to follow.

http://wwar1.blogspot.com/

Click on the link to the first post if you've never read them yet.

[CougarHunter]

The national WWI museum and memorial is in KCMO and has undergone a multi-million dollar renovation.

http://www.libertymemorialmuseum.org/

I live 30 miles from it and have never been there. Shameful really.

[bethm1b]

In an effort to save the taxpayers money, couldn't we just yes this guy to death. It wouldn't take long.

[bill333]

money going to shit bullshit in this country and we'd say no to this? they'd better fund it.

[Stormrider666]

Trench warfare is barbaric. Thousands would die some days to gain just a few feet of ground. Tanks were new and there was little to defend against them and of course it was the first major war with automatic weapons. It truly was brutal.

I have to agree. They were basically fighting a 20th century war using 19th century tactics. I would love to ask this guy after fighting in "The War To End All Wars", how he felt when WWII broke out.

[LiddyRules]

Because of a suggestion on this board, I read John Keegan's The First World War. Great reading if you're interested in WWI. It's always been my favorite war because of just how futile and empty it was. Actual WWI footage always gives me the heeby jeebies.