WWI - The Last Soldier Killed

Started by bayonetbrant, January 06, 2015, 10:31:31 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

bayonetbrant

dude...

QuoteIt's an unassuming marker, a stone just a few feet high. Someone had placed a bench next to it since the last time I'd visited, but she didn't sit; perhaps she felt that would be irreverent. This, after all, was the very spot where the very last man was killed in the Great War: Pvt. Henry Nicholas Gunther of Baltimore, 23 years old, shot through the head at 10:59 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/28/travel/in-france-vestiges-of-the-great-wars-bloody-end.html


from the rest of the article :)

QuoteBy the time it abruptly ended at 11 a.m. on Nov. 11, 1918, between 15 million and 20 million men had perished in the First World War. That statistic can be difficult to grasp, much less believe; but hike through a couple of forests in the hills of Lorraine, and you begin to see how it happened.

What's now known as Bois Brûlé, or the burnt woods — scorched in four years of fighting — was forest primeval until September 1914, when the Germans came. The month before, just as the war was beginning, they had stormed in and seized the Argonne Forest and the heights above the Meuse River, territory of tremendous strategic value; now they charged into the Woëvre Plain, to the east, and quickly captured a couple hundred square miles of equal importance, cutting the roads from the industrial center of Nancy to Verdun, an old walled city ringed by forts and seen by many as an indispensable bulwark in the east. They killed a great many French soldiers in the process.

They knew the French would try their utmost to take that territory back. And they were prepared: They riddled those 200 square miles with some of the most formidable defenses ever created by man. In Bois Brûlé, they are particularly well preserved. There are French trenches there, too, jagged ditches where the dirt walls were once supported by logs that have long since rotted to splinters. But the German trenches are something else entirely — concrete, extensive, tremendously sophisticated, with steps and drainage systems, snipers' galleries and machine gun shelters. There are bunkers fitted for periscopes, networks of big gun pits and ammunition dumps, sprawling rest camps with superb waterworks, even the remains of officers' villas. Somewhere out there is a majestic cement tabernacle festooned with an enormous Maltese cross. The Germans, it is obvious, came to stay. For four years, despite innumerable French attempts to drive them out — very costly attempts — they did.
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

mirth

Excellent article. The images are haunting. Thanks for the link, Brant.
"45 minutes of pooping Tribbles being juggled by a drunken Horta would be better than Season 1 of TNG." - SirAndrewD

"you don't look at the mantelpiece when you're poking the fire" - Bawb

"Can't 'un' until you 'pre', son." - Gus

steve58

Government is not the solution to our problem—government is the problem.   Ronald Reagan
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.   Thomas Jefferson
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.   George Orwell  The truth is quiet...It's the lies that are loud.   Jesus Revolution
If you ever find yourself in need of a safe space then you're probably going to have to stop calling yourself a social justice warrior. You cannot be a warrior and a pansy at the same time   Mike Adams (RIP Mike)

bayonetbrant

glad y'all liked it.

I just really felt sorry for Pvt Gunther
The key to surviving this site is to not say something which ends up as someone's tag line - Steelgrave

"their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of 'rights'...and lost track of their duties. No nation, so constituted, can endure." Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers