QuoteFrank Buckles, last U.S. veteran of World War I, laid to rest at Arlington
By Paul Duggan, Tuesday, March 15, 5:42 PM
A lowly corporal of long ago was buried Tuesday in Arlington National Cemetery, ushered to his grave with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp.
Frank Woodruff Buckles lived to be 110, the last of nearly 5 million American veterans of a dimly remembered war — a generation now laid to rest.
In a late-day chill, after hundreds of strangers had paid their respects in public viewings since the weekend, soldiers carried the former doughboy's flag-draped coffin partway up a knoll and set it on polished rails above his plot, a stone's toss from the grave of his old supreme commander, Gen. John J. "Blackjack" Pershing.
A chaplain commended his soul to God; rifle volleys cracked; a bugler sounded taps below the gentle rise. With flags at half-staff throughout the U.S. military and government, it was a fine send-off for the country's longest-surviving veteran of World War I, who died peacefully Feb. 27 in his West Virginia farmhouse.
Yet the hallowed ritual at grave No. 34-581 was not a farewell to one man alone. A reverent crowd of the powerful and the ordinary — President Obama and Vice President Biden, laborers and store clerks, heads bowed — showed up to salute Buckles's deceased generation, the vanished millions of soldiers and sailors he came to symbolize in the end.
Who were they? Not the troops of "the Greatest Generation," so celebrated these days, but the unheralded ones of 1917 and 1918, who came home to pats on the back and little else in an era before the country embraced and rewarded its veterans. Their 20th-century narrative, poignant and meaningful, is seldom recalled.
"I know my father would want me to be here," said Mike Oliver, 73, a retiree from Alexandria, leaning on a cane near the cemetery's amphitheater hours before the burial. Inside, a hushed procession of visitors filed past Buckles's closed coffin in the chapel.
"I'm here for Mr. Buckles and I'm here for what he represents," Oliver said. On his left lapel, he wore a tiny gold pin, the insignia of his long-dead father's infantry division in World War I, the Army's 80th. "I'm here to say goodbye to my dad," he said.
Buckles, who fibbed his way into the Army at age 16, was a rear-echelon ambulance driver in war-ravaged France, miles behind the battlefront. More than 116,000 Americans died, about half in the fighting, most of the rest from illnesses, in the nation's 19-month engagement in a conflict that scorched Europe for four years.
Now the veterans who survived are gone. What's left is remembrance — the collective story of 4.7 million lives, an obituary for a generation.
A financial struggle
Arriving stateside in 1918 and 1919, many of them scarred in mind and limb, they were met by a postwar recession and joblessness.
A lot of vets felt that they were owed a boost, that they ought to be compensated for the good civilian wages they had missed. But lawmakers, year after year, said no.
"Oh, the YMCA did give me a one-month free membership," Buckles recalled when he was a very old fellow. Except for the $60 that most veterans got from the government when they mustered out, the YMCA gift was "the only consideration I ever saw given to a soldier after the war," the last doughboy said.
What he and other vets finally received, in 1924, were bonus certificates redeemable for cash in 1945. And Congress had to override a veto to secure even that.
With the 1920s roaring by then, the young vets tucked away their certificates and went about their lives. Buckles became a purser on merchant ships, traveling the globe.
Then the Depression hit, and their generation's legacy took on another aspect, one of activism that helped propel a reshaping of the nation's social landscape.
Thousands of ruined veterans were left with nothing of value but the promise of eventual bonuses. In 1932, while Buckles was at sea, a ragtag army of ex-servicemen descended on Washington with their wives and kids to lobby for early redemption of the certificates, and a disaster ensued that would long reverberate.
Living for weeks in a sprawling shantytown on mud flats in Anacostia and in tents and hovels near the U.S. Capitol, the dirt-poor "Bonus Army," numbering more than 20,000, defied orders to disperse. So the White House unleashed the military.
Infantrymen, saber-wielding cavalry troops and a half-dozen tanks swept along the avenues below the Capitol, routing the veterans and their families in a melee of blood and tear gas. Then soldiers cleared out the Anacostia shacks and set them ablaze.
Two veterans died and hundreds were injured. Four years later, after a Florida hurricane killed 259 destitute vets at a makeshift federal work camp, political support tipped for the bonuses, and the generation that fought World War I finally got a substantial benefit.
"I think mine was $800," Buckles said of his bonus, equal to $12,000 today. He said he gave it to his father, an Oklahoma Dust Bowl farmer barely hanging on.
The Bonus Army debacle weighed on Congress and the Roosevelt administration during the Second World War. With 16 million Americans in uniform — more than three times the World War I total — policymakers feared massive unrest if the new vets got the same shabby treatment that Buckles's generation had received.
The result, in 1944, was the GI Bill, widely viewed as the most far-reaching social program in U.S. history. It made college and home ownership possible for the great wave of returning World War II vets, when such luxuries weren't the norm, and spurred a vast, decades-long expansion of America's middle-class.
Unfortunately for the vets of Buckles's era, the bill wasn't retroactive.
Tuesday's hours-long viewing in the amphitheater chapel was a consolation. Buckles's family and members of West Virginia's congressional delegation had wanted him to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda, but the Senate and House leaders said no. The old corporal just didn't rate it.
So the people came to Arlington to say goodbye.
A generation's end
When Murial Sue Kerr met Buckles, in the 1970s, she was a secretary at the Alexandria headquarters of Veterans of World War I of the USA, which had a large office staff at the time, scores of chapters across the country and a quarter-million members out of 750,000 surviving vets of the war.
"The commander," Kerr calls Buckles, who assumed that title in 2008 when the only other living member, a Florida man, passed away.
The group was formed in 1948 after millions of World War II veterans swelled the ranks of the American Legion and similar organizations, pushing agendas that were tailored more to their needs than to the needs of the older vets, Kerr said.
"The World War II guys had business loans, home loans, education, all kinds of things," she said. "My World War I guys? Nothing. So they said, 'Okay, you young whipper-snappers, we'll go start our own bunch.' "
Which included Buckles, who had been captured by the Japanese while working in Manila at the outbreak of hostilities in the Pacific. Although he spent World War II in an enemy prison camp, he was a civilian, so the GI Bill didn't extend to him.
In 1974, when Kerr was hired, most of the men were retirees.
"Every year they'd come to Washington, bus loads of them, and testify before Congress," she recalled. They wanted money for eyeglasses, hearing aids, dentures. "And a little pension," she said. "Good ol' H.R. 1918 — it was a bill they were always putting in to give them $50 a month. But, of course, it never, ever passed."
Just a lot of memories now — the lobbying, the quarterly magazine, the big annual conventions in Hot Springs and Daytona Beach. Time ran out for all but the heartiest of the Veterans of World War I of the USA, and they died fast. By 1993, when the office shut down for good, Kerr, then in her 40s, was the only staff member left.
And occasionally she got phone calls from some of the few remaining members whose frail voices broke her heart. "The typical sad things you'll hear from the elderly," she said.
"I had one of my guys, he was absolutely in tears. He was from Nevada, and his new nurse wouldn't cut the crust off of his sandwich."
They were buried with honors Tuesday as scores of somber onlookers crowded the hillside, a distant generation borne to the grave with the last old veteran, who was cared for lovingly by his family to the end.
In the waning afternoon, the soldiers of the burial detail strode in formation up the avenue from the grand marble amphitheater to Section 34 of the cemetery, escorting the horse-drawn caisson with Buckles's metal coffin, the procession slow and deliberate, like the march of time.
After the prayer and the echoes of the bugle and the rifles, the Army's vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, knelt to Buckles's daughter, seated by the grave, and handed her a tri-folded American flag. He whispered words of comfort, then stood and walked away.
No more Doughboys now.
So long. Rest in peace.
At least he was honored by a thread without a stupid one liner comment. Fuck you Tim.
My great uncle was named for Pershing. :cool:
Quote from: Caliga on March 15, 2011, 07:31:55 PM
My great uncle was named for Pershing. :cool:
A name like Black Jack would probably get him lynched in your neck of the woods.
Quote from: Ed Anger on March 15, 2011, 07:18:04 PM
At least he was honored by a thread without a stupid one liner comment. Fuck you Tim.
So you want him not to post any comments is that it?
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 06:21:39 AM
So you want him not to post any comments is that it?
If they don't take him at least 15 seconds to think up they're generally not worth including.
While Buckles well deserves to lay in Arlington, it's outrageous that the Speaker denied permission for his body to lay in state at the Capital building. Boehner should be ashamed of himself.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on March 16, 2011, 06:30:31 AM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 06:21:39 AM
So you want him not to post any comments is that it?
If they don't take him at least 15 seconds to think up they're generally not worth including.
When he didn't post any comments you people keep crying about it, now that he does you are still crying.
Bunch of emotweens.
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on March 15, 2011, 07:37:58 PM
A name like Black Jack would probably get him lynched in your neck of the woods.
:sleep:
His name was Jack Pershing Henry. :cool:
His unbowdlerized nick was Nigger Jack.
Great Uncle Jack was a PIMP. Scott Paper relocated him to Seattle and when he retired he ran their operations in the Pacific Northwest. Had a house in Redmond, and a house on Maui.
He also bore a strong resemblance to Uncle Junior from the Sopranos, even though he didn't have a drop of Eyetalian blood in him. :cool:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2011, 06:31:34 AM
While Buckles well deserves to lay in Arlington, it's outrageous that the Speaker denied permission for his body to lay in state at the Capital building. Boehner should be ashamed of himself.
Waste of government funds. We need that money for Congress's pay raise.
For some reason I was sadder when Dick Winters died. :hmm:
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 08:48:41 AM
For some reason I was sadder when Dick Winters died. :hmm:
He killed Slarg's heroes, that is why.
I think it might be because he reminded me of my Great Uncle, who was also a war hero. :)
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 08:55:11 AM
I think it might be because he reminded me of my Great Uncle, who was also a war hero. :)
Tell us more.
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 08:48:41 AM
For some reason I was sadder when Dick Winters died. :hmm:
Dick Winters was a more significant vet than Buckles. He served much more heroically during his war and he was more forthcoming after his war.
Why Buckles should have rated a formal lying in honor simply for outliving someone else is a mystery to me. Only 3 people have laid in honor in the rotunda: Rosa Parks, and capital policemen Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, who were killed on duty there. A REMF ambulance driver isn't in their league.
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 09:10:35 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 08:48:41 AM
For some reason I was sadder when Dick Winters died. :hmm:
Dick Winters was a more significant vet than Buckles. He served much more heroically during his war and he was more forthcoming after his war.
Why Buckles should have rated a formal lying in honor simply for outliving someone else is a mystery to me. Only 3 people have laid in honor in the rotunda: Rosa Parks, and capital policemen Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, who were killed on duty there. A REMF ambulance driver isn't in their league.
While I agree with that. I think it's a symptom of what the article is trying to point out. We didn't honor our WWI veterans enough & now it's too late. Having the last one lye in honor in the rotunda might have somehow make up for that. Now it's too late. It's a trully forgotten sacrife that a generation made, almost 100 years ago.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 09:50:02 AM
While I agree with that. I think it's a symptom of what the article is trying to point out. We didn't honor our WWI veterans enough & now it's too late. Having the last one lye in honor in the rotunda might have somehow make up for that. Now it's too late. It's a trully forgotten sacrife that a generation made, almost 100 years ago.
I assume that you are speaking here of Canada when you talk about "we" and "our" and "truly forgotten."
In the US, we have a holiday every Nov 11th, which recalls WW1 (though certainly American soldiers made nowhere near the sacrifices that Canucklehead ones did during the great War). Having this guy lie in honor in the rotunda wouldn't have changed anything about how Americans think of the US veterans of WW1, IMO. Certainly, this guy did nothing extraordinary that would warrant an extraordinary honor (an argument that could probably be made for Chestnut, who likely died instantly and never knew there was an incident, I know, but still there is a difference between LOD deaths and natural ones).
The practice of elevating the mundane to phony greatness so that one feels better about one's self should be resisted. It was resisted, properly, in this case.
Quote from: Caliga on March 15, 2011, 07:31:55 PM
My great uncle was named for Pershing. :cool:
My great grandfather was named after Sherman :punk:
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 16, 2011, 09:00:00 AM
Tell us more.
I know I've mentioned this before when we've had "What did your ancestors do in the great WWII" threads, but I like talking about my grandfather and his twin brother, so here goes:
My grandfather and his identical twin were college students (West Chester University in Pa.) when Pearl Harbor took place. They tried to enlist shortly thereafter. They both wanted to be fighter pilots and reasoned that if they were in different branches of the service there was a lesser chance of them both being killed, so Uncle Nelson picked the Navy because his name began with an 'N', and my grandfather (Ernest) picked the Army.
Oddly, my grandfather failed the vision test for pilots, but Nelson passed. My grandfather became a radioman in the USAAF and was sent to Europe. His first assignment was as a radioman on B-17s and he participated in several bombing runs over occupied France. Then something bad happened (he never would talk about this but my grandmother thought his plane was hit by flak and some of the other crewmen killed) and he somehow was able to get out of flight duty. Next he was an ATC at RAF Sheffield (where he'd been stationed), but at some point ended up on the SHAEF and worked under Ike in some capacity. I don't know exactly what he did but my grandmother liked to repeat his ancedotal quote that "everyone loved Ike, but especially Kay Summersby" all the time. I know he was in Egypt on official business because my mom has some Egyptian relics that he smuggled out of there and mailed to my grandmother--not sure how he pulled that one off.
Uncle Nelson ended up stationed in the Pacific as a PBY Catalina pilot. I know less about his WWII service record... by the time I was old enough to remember conversations with him he had Alzheimer's so I don't know what was true and what wasn't, but his daughter confirmed some of it for me at a family reunion: he was shot down off New Guinea during the war, but managed to crash-land the Catalina right off a beach, only the beach was behind Japanese lines. So he and another guy (I think most of the crew were actually killed in the crash) managed to evade the Japs and reach Australian lines. They got medals for this but can't remember which now--nothing badass like the Navy Cross or anything.
Quote from: derspiess on March 16, 2011, 10:46:30 AM
My great grandfather was named after Sherman :punk:
Fred Sherman? :)
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 10:39:18 AM
though certainly American soldiers made nowhere near the sacrifices that Canucklehead ones did during the great War
Hey wait a sec... my Great Great Uncle Lehman was gassed during WWII. :contract:
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 10:49:32 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 10:39:18 AM
though certainly American soldiers made nowhere near the sacrifices that Canucklehead ones did during the great War
Hey wait a sec... my Great Great Uncle Lehman was gassed during WWII. :contract:
Was he Jewish?
I meant WWI, sorry. :Embarrass:
But no, he wasn't Jewish. :)
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 10:59:25 AM
I meant WWI, sorry. :Embarrass:
But no, he wasn't Jewish. :)
My great grandfather was shot about an hour after WWI. I wonder if it was still considered a war wound.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 09:50:02 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 09:10:35 AM
Quote from: Caliga on March 16, 2011, 08:48:41 AM
For some reason I was sadder when Dick Winters died. :hmm:
Dick Winters was a more significant vet than Buckles. He served much more heroically during his war and he was more forthcoming after his war.
Why Buckles should have rated a formal lying in honor simply for outliving someone else is a mystery to me. Only 3 people have laid in honor in the rotunda: Rosa Parks, and capital policemen Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson, who were killed on duty there. A REMF ambulance driver isn't in their league.
While I agree with that. I think it's a symptom of what the article is trying to point out. We didn't honor our WWI veterans enough & now it's too late. Having the last one lye in honor in the rotunda might have somehow make up for that. Now it's too late. It's a trully forgotten sacrife that a generation made, almost 100 years ago.
Perhaps you missed all the huge cenotaphs, the national holiday on the anniversary of the WWI armistice, the poppies everyone wears...
I haven't (altho it doesn't the same reach here then in the rest of Canada).
Ceremonies are all well in good but that's not what I meant. I don't know the situation in Canada but from the article it's clear the WWI vet never got the treatment the WWII vet got.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 11:32:36 AM
I don't know the situation in Canada but from the article it's clear the WWI vet never got the treatment the WWII vet got.
Neither did the Korean War veterans, the US Civil War vets, etc. The WW2 vets generally went through a lot more, and for longer, than the WW1 vets.
Yeah, let's not talk about the Korean Wars vet, those guys got screwed. The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 11:32:36 AM
I haven't (altho it doesn't the same reach here then in the rest of Canada).
Ceremonies are all well in good but that's not what I meant. I don't know the situation in Canada but from the article it's clear the WWI vet never got the treatment the WWII vet got.
But you live in Canada...
WWI vets in this country received a lot of attention. As I mentioned, Rememberance Day and the poppy go back to WWI, not WWII.
Now they didn't get as good a financial deal as returning WWII vets did, it is true. But the world kind of went into a large recession in 1919.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 12:13:57 PM
Yeah, let's not talk about the Korean Wars vet, those guys got screwed. The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
Did many Canadians go off to fight for the Nationalists?
Quote from: Habbaku on March 16, 2011, 01:34:46 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 12:13:57 PM
Yeah, let's not talk about the Korean Wars vet, those guys got screwed. The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
Did many Canadians go off to fight for the Nationalists?
If any did they hid it better then those on the Republican side did.
Makes sense that they didn't receive any adulation, then--they were too humble.
You know it's a bad troll when you have to use a second post in the hope of getting a bite.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 06:34:28 AM
When he didn't post any comments you people keep crying about it, now that he does you are still crying.
Bunch of emotweens.
Maybe, and this might just blow your mind, it's different people making the different complaints.
I don't care at all if people choose not to comment on a news story they post. If the story is interesting it speaks for itself. Tim's comments-because-I-have-to can be slightly annoying at times, but not really worth mentioning- I only said something because you brought it up.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 12:13:57 PM
The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
:huh: I wasn't even aware Canada was a belligerent in the Spanish Civil War! Which side did Canada take?
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 02:29:04 PM
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 12:13:57 PM
The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
:huh: I wasn't even aware Canada was a belligerent in the Spanish Civil War! Which side did Canada take?
:hmm:
Quote from: grumbler on March 16, 2011, 02:29:04 PM
:huh: I wasn't even aware Canada was a belligerent in the Spanish Civil War! Which side did Canada take?
:D
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 16, 2011, 12:13:57 PM
Yeah, let's not talk about the Korean Wars vet, those guys got screwed. The worse remains the Spanish civil war vets, atleast here.
Please elaborate.
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 15, 2011, 07:14:15 PM
QuoteFrank Buckles, last U.S. veteran of World War I, laid to rest at Arlington
By Paul Duggan, Tuesday, March 15, 5:42 PM
A lowly corporal of long ago was buried Tuesday in Arlington National Cemetery, ushered to his grave with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp.
Frank Woodruff Buckles lived to be 110, the last of nearly 5 million American veterans of a dimly remembered war — a generation now laid to rest.
Wtf. 5 million ?
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
Quote from: Zoupa on March 17, 2011, 01:55:32 AM
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
4.5 million, I think? Something like that.
Edit: 4.7? Fuck I don't remember. Eh. Couple hundred thousand plus or minus. No biggie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhnUgAaea4M :D
Quote from: Zoupa on March 16, 2011, 09:44:26 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 15, 2011, 07:14:15 PM
QuoteFrank Buckles, last U.S. veteran of World War I, laid to rest at Arlington
By Paul Duggan, Tuesday, March 15, 5:42 PM
A lowly corporal of long ago was buried Tuesday in Arlington National Cemetery, ushered to his grave with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp.
Frank Woodruff Buckles lived to be 110, the last of nearly 5 million American veterans of a dimly remembered war — a generation now laid to rest.
Wtf. 5 million ?
That's what the Germans said.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 17, 2011, 01:55:32 AM
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi58.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fg251%2FTim811%2Fforward-america-wwi-poster.jpg&hash=47cb165f46625384595b24be6934566b687736c5)
Quote from: Zoupa on March 17, 2011, 01:55:32 AM
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
Something like 32 million Americans registered for the draft. The US troops deployed to Europe in 1917? That was the advance team. The Hun quit before we really got going.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 16, 2011, 09:44:26 PM
Wtf. 5 million ?
WTF? Why does that figure surprise you? Too low, or too high? Don't Euros learn history any more?
I can see why Capt Wolfe thinks these people were forgotten, though. The francophone world seems to have a short memory for some things.
Capt. Wolfe, That's a new one. I like it.
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2011, 06:35:52 AM
The francophone world seems to have a short memory for some things.
DeGaulle--"I want US troops out of France."
LBJ--"Does that include the ones buried there?"
Quote from: Zoupa on March 17, 2011, 01:55:32 AM
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
It takes a while to get started. In WWII we had 15 million. We kept the numbers deliberately low so more men would be working in industry. If
really pressed we could probably have several million more.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 17, 2011, 02:17:36 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 16, 2011, 09:44:26 PM
Quote from: CountDeMoney on March 15, 2011, 07:14:15 PM
QuoteFrank Buckles, last U.S. veteran of World War I, laid to rest at Arlington
By Paul Duggan, Tuesday, March 15, 5:42 PM
A lowly corporal of long ago was buried Tuesday in Arlington National Cemetery, ushered to his grave with all the Army's Old Guard solemn pomp.
Frank Woodruff Buckles lived to be 110, the last of nearly 5 million American veterans of a dimly remembered war — a generation now laid to rest.
Wtf. 5 million ?
That's what the Germans said.
:D
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2011, 06:35:52 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 16, 2011, 09:44:26 PM
Wtf. 5 million ?
WTF? Why does that figure surprise you? Too low, or too high? Don't Euros learn history any more?
I can see why Capt Wolfe thinks these people were forgotten, though. The francophone world seems to have a short memory for some things.
Hey grumbler: go fuck yourself, you sorry piece of shit. Pathetic motherfucker.
Quote from: jimmy olsen on March 17, 2011, 06:16:41 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 17, 2011, 01:55:32 AM
You guys were at war for a year and had a 5-million strong army/navy/air force?
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fi58.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fg251%2FTim811%2Fforward-america-wwi-poster.jpg&hash=47cb165f46625384595b24be6934566b687736c5)
:hmm: Should I make this the background of my work computer? If I do this kids will see it when I hook up my computer on the projector.
Do it! It's a good reason to talk about WWI. Teach the Asian something about the greatness of america!
Quote from: Zoupa on March 18, 2011, 01:02:59 AM
Quote from: grumbler on March 17, 2011, 06:35:52 AM
Quote from: Zoupa on March 16, 2011, 09:44:26 PM
Wtf. 5 million ?
WTF? Why does that figure surprise you? Too low, or too high? Don't Euros learn history any more?
I can see why Capt Wolfe thinks these people were forgotten, though. The francophone world seems to have a short memory for some things.
Hey grumbler: go fuck yourself, you sorry piece of shit. Pathetic motherfucker.
Don't forget to flick your cigarette at him. :frog:
I'm just sayin'. Our favourite golden girl is always so condescending and know-it-all over the interweb. It's pretty easy to do that. Why is it assumed a random person (me), educated in France, would know the number of americans that signed up for World War I? :huh:
Of course, that's not the why grumbler answers. He answers the way he does to take a cheapshot. It's lame, it's tiring, it's not even witty. That's why he's a pathetic motherfucker, a sorry piece of shit, and he should go fuck himself. :smarty:
QED.
Quote from: Grey Fox on March 18, 2011, 06:26:36 AM
Do it! It's a good reason to talk about WWI. Teach the Asian something about the greatness of america!
You have convinced me good sir.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 18, 2011, 10:08:48 PM
Why is it assumed a random person (me), educated in France, would know the number of americans that signed up for World War I? :huh:
It's not assumed that you would know it, but when you respond to the number with a "WTF" it's clear that you had some preconceived notion of what ballpark the number would be in.
Not really, just surprised.
Quote from: Zoupa on March 18, 2011, 10:38:24 PM
Not really, just surprised.
You just keep reminding me why we shouldn't have saved your ass in WWI or WWII!
We all have our parts to play. I feel more indebted to the Russians. :sleep:
The one Entente member who managed to lose the Great War. :P