World War I veterans.... (1 Viewer)

[Kenneth]

Depends how technical you want to be The hostilities ended with a signed armistice in 1918. Since hostilities didn't break out again and a formal peace treaty was signed in 1919 you could consider (as the history books generally do) the end of hostilities to be the end of the war.

That is also why the Korean conflict remains the longest running "war" since their is no formal peace agreement in place. North and South Korea remain "technically" in a formal state of war.

Kenneth

 

[andrew markworthy]

I think the numbers of WWI veterans left probably refers to the *American* veterans - there are still a tidy number of European veterans (although 100 years + is of course very old it's not quite as rare as folks suppose).

Slightly off topic, but I think it might be of interest to some of you. My grandmother was born at the turn of the 20th century. She remembered as a young girl being introduced to a very old man who could remember the celebrations in Britain after the Battle of Waterloo (1815, for those who are ignorant of history). And when he was a child there were of course many people alive who could remember the USA as a British colony (it's perfectly possible that he met people who'd fought in the war). The past is closer than you think.

 

[Elinor]

Andrew

Neat post.

 

[MarkHastings]

Considering America is basically 230 years old, it's not uncommon to know people, who knew people, during it's "birth".

 

[todd s]

Andrew, that was very interesting. I mean my grandfather was born in 1918. He died in 1996. But, as a kid he could have known people who fought in the Civil War or even known people who remember the old west of the 1860's thru the 1880's.
Using Andrews example. If my Grandfather met someone who was born in 1840. As a child he could have know someone who was around during the Revolutionary War: Figuring he was 10 in 1850. And if someone was 90. That person would have been born in 1760. So they would have been in their teens when the Revolutionary War was happening. Again Andrew you are right. The history is not that far back.

 

[andrew markworthy]

I was going to say 'that's impossible' but it isn't.

Let's assume that a girl of five sees Franklin et al going off to sign the Declaration in 1776. Let's assume that she dies aged 100 in 1871, and on her death bed is introduced to a girl aged 5. Assuming this girl lived to be 100, she would die in 1966 - i.e. easily within the lifespan of adults alive today. Indeed, if both girls in our example died aged 80, it would be possible for folks in their seventies or eighties to have met them.

This means that out there must be a sizeable number of people who have met people who met others alive at the time of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, The Napoleonic Wars, etc.

I guess that the most extreme you could go would be someone aged 110 today who when she [not being sexist, but most v. old people are women] was five [the earliest age you're likely to remember something reliably] met someone aged 100 who when they were 5 met someone aged 100. That would bring us back to 1710. That brings us back to well before the Industrial Revolution, and smack in the middle of the War of the Spanish Succession. One generation of centegenarians back from that and you could have someone being patted on the head by Master Shakespeare.

Sorry, this must all be obvious to most of you guys, but I'd never stopped to think about it in quite such detail before.

EDIT: Todd, sorry, I rambled along a bit and you'd posted before I'd finished. Any duplication in our posts simply shows that great minds think alike, not that I'm copying

 

[MarkHastings]

I don't know how obvious it really is. I never really thought about it until this thread.

This whole thread got me thinking and never really thought about a friend of a friend, possibly knowing Ben Franklin (or a founding-father)...And I live in freakin' New England! I probably met someone like that and never even knew it!

I guess the fact that it isn't obvious is out of my age and ignornace. I mean, we've traveled to the moon before I was alive, so it's really hard to imagine a day when we hadn't...even though that day was less than a year before I was born. The whole notion that I know people, who lived in a time when we hadn't walked on the moon, used to be such a bizarre concept to me when I was young.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Well try this one. A couple of years ago some archaeologists found a body of a bronze age man buried near a village in England. They were able to test his DNA and they found that a sizeable proportion of the current village's inhabitants were his direct descendants. In other words, the same families had lived there since the bronze age. Not the same as knowing someone who knew someone, but our links with the past can be quite amazing at times.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Geez - 6 degrees of William Shakespeare ? Kevin Bacon's got nothing on that one !

My grandfather was a vet of both WWI and WWII (my father of WWII). He passed away in the early 80's at age 92. Of course I was too young and stupid to get to know his fantastic life.....

 

[todd s]

This conversation reminded me of a chat some of my friends once had (I think it was after seeing the Time Machine). Our question was this. If you had a time machine. Where would you go?

-Library of Alexandria (before it was destroyed):So many unknown works of literature that was lost there.
-See the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
-See 1929 Yankees. Ruth, Gehrig.


On a side note. One of my friends wanted to go back and see if OJ did kill his wife.

 

[ThomasC]

Grandfather AND father WWII veterans? Wow.

 

[MarkHastings]

Weird Al: "I had them send me back to last Thursday night. So I could pay my phone bill on time."

Seriously,
-I'd go back only a few years and thank my good friend (whom I lost), for having such an impact on my life the past year.

 

[Gordon McMurphy]

Great War Veterans:

Australia, there are only five (350,000 served overseas) veterans left. Ages range from 104-106.

15 Frenchmen are still alive. (Ages: 103-109 years old)

Last week the Dept of Veterans Affairs estimated that around 100 veterans are left in the USA.

Less than twenty British men are still living.


Most people are aware of the horrors of World War II - and indeed it was a ghastly affair that wrecked untold damage on our species. But the Great War was, as far as I am concerned, equally brutal and was perhaps worse, as it was an utterly futile war that could so easily have been avoided and, of course, led to simmering unrest in Europe and the risr of Nazi Germany and cloak of darkness that we have only recently stepped out of... only to step into another age of darkness.

Psychologically speaking, wars never end - peoples' lives end, governments end, but the psychic trauma that the human race recieves in widespread, lengthy wars takes decades, if not, centuries to recover from. The effects of the American Civil War can still be felt when you encounter certain people in the south. Anguish can, indeed, be inherited.

When reading, thinking and reflecting on the two World Wars of the last Century amd their aftermaths - the obscene violence, reckless carnage and the remaining pain that people still experience, it is indeed deeply shocking that the Nations involved that the key lessons that should have been learned have still to be learned.

The World, as a whole, has never been a 'safe place', but one would at least think that racial, political, sexual, and religious ignorances would have been overcome over the millenia, but they have not.

The International Red Cross estimates that over 100 million people were killed in wars in the last century.

The last century, was, by far, the most violent and destructive period in human history. And that remains true when leaves the wars aside. The day-to-day violence on the streets is just as obscene and disturbing.

 

[andrew markworthy]

Gordon, thanks for the info. The number is less than I thought. I think what I was thinking of were veterans and people who witnessed the combat, which of course would be a much higher number.

 

[Paul_Tesh]

Wow! What an intriguing thread!

How about this: Someone who is alive today who used to meet someone who met someone who was alive during the Rovolutionary War meets a 5-year-old kid today who will live to be 105 years old and pass along his/her story to a 5-year-old kid? That would be in 2105!

 

[Kevin Hewell]

I slightly disagree with this. Yes, WWI was ghastly but, simply due to the incredible numbers of civilians killed, WWII was worse. There is nothing to compare to the Holocaust in the first war.

 

[Michael Warner]

On an absolute scale you're quite right but the Armenian genocide of 1915-1916 committed by the Ottoman Empire killed an estimated 1.5 million out of the 2.5 million Armenians living in what is now Turkey. The Ottomans were allied with the Germans and Austro-Hungarians during the First World War. Still a very touchy subject as no Turkish government has ever admitted to the atrocities.

 

[Grant B]

I once saw a show of 'I've got a secret'....What's my line Basically.
The little old man's secret was that he was at Ford's Theater when Lincoln was shot.
I never in a million years thought someone would have gotten on TV who lived through the civil war.

He was 5 when it happen but all he remembered from it was that he was worried about the guy who fell and hurt his leg (Booth)
He did not find out till later that the president was shot there.
One other strange fact was that the US did not inact a pension for Civil War veterns until most were around 80 to 90 YO. The moment that happened many got married to very young girls 15 to 17 YO.
Those girls, many are still alive, are still recieving the Civil War Pensions Today

 

[MarkHastings]

American Revolutionary War:Note: Daniel F. Bakeman was 109 when he died.

 

[PhillJones]

It is, of course, ridiculous to compare the two most awful wars in modern history and ask which was worse, but it's important to remember that 35 million soldiers died in world war I. During one day at the battle of Verdun, 60,000 were killed.

And for those who accuse the French of cowardice, the french army suffered greater losses during the summer of 1914 than the American Army lost during the entire 20th Century. The population of France was slightly worse decimated during the the so-called great war.