I won't deny that World War I is not my specialty, I cannot deny the significance of this event. Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of World War I, died Sunday. It is truly an end of an era. I believe the last major passing of US veterans occurred in the 1950s with the deaths of the veterans of the Civil War. This also got me thinking about our last "doughboy."
World War I is another one of those "overlooked" wars here in America. It did not occur on any US territory and also not one memorialized in D.C. To most Americans, names like Chateau-Thierry and Belleau Wood don't evoke emotions like Pearl Harbor or Valley Forge. That is not to discount the veterans of that terrible conflict do not deserve our recognition and thanks. They endured much in the trenches, gas and for the first time, air attacks.
World War I was a nasty affair. Imagine the linear type tactics of the 19th century meeting the newest technology of the 20th: airplane, gas shell and most lethally, the machine gun. It also saw a new nickname for the US Marines: "Teufelhund"...literally translated "Devil Dogs." World War I invokes words such as "trenchfoot" and "mustard gas." It also led to the collapse of three monarchies in Europe (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia).
What made it even more tragic was when the World War I veterans retired, America didn't want to listen to them. That was in the 1960s during Vietnam. Now, they are indeed a memory of a forgotten, misunderstood war now lost to the annals of American Military History.
No comments:
Post a Comment