OT: Last "Great War" Vet Is Dead

[Lanzfeld]

Salute.

RIP

[MrSpkr]

Well, not the LAST one. Just the last American one, Frank Buckles, of West Virginia. IIRC, there is still a British nurse and, of course, an Oddstraylyun (like cockroaches, that lot, impossible to kill them off no matter how hard one tries).

Steve

[MikeyD]

U.S. WWII veterans have gone from 16 million down to about 2.5 million currently and we're losing more than a thousand a day. Another 8-9 years and there will only be a couple left.

[MrSpkr]

Yeah, I've noticed that too, Mikey. Lost my grandfather, a 1944-45 vet, in January 2009. At the funeral, I noted how few of his contemporaries were in attendance.

Last month, when we buried my father, there was only one WWII generation member of our family in attendance. Hard to believe they are all gone, particularly when they were the center of our family's gravity for so very long.

Steve

[abneo3sierra]

A sad commentary that the next generation "on deck" seems to be those who ran away from service in a war, and grew up running away and protesting,from everything they did not like, instead of standing to face it.

Salute to a fallen warrior!

I think that for the most part my family's WW1 vets were also WW2 vets with only a few exceptions. And yes, the "last" I think is only the "last" American one.

[Stalins Organ]

A sad commentary that the next generation "on deck" seems to be those who ran away from service in a war, and grew up running away and protesting,from everything they did not like, instead of standing to face it.

Always exepting the several million who did no such thing of course.

[Affentitten]

We do have one left living here but he served with the British (RN). Then with the RAN in WW2.

[abneo3sierra]

SO, interesting to see you actually defend an American generation like that....

[hoolaman]

A sad commentary that the next generation "on deck" seems to be those who ran away from service in a war, and grew up running away and protesting,from everything they did not like, instead of standing to face it.

+1. A legacy of selfishness and self-indulgence. OTOH it was the WWII generation that raised 'em.

[Stalins Organ]

SO, interesting to see you actually defend an American generation like that....

I'm not defendng a generation. I'm defending the people you defamed.

Hippies were actually a minority, as were draft dodgers, and I don't see why you would want to dismiss millions of people based upon stereotypes that were either media hype or wishful thinking.

Sadly IMO it is typical of people around the world to lump others together in ways that are BS - the whole generation did not avoid it's responsibilities - that generation fought Vietnam as well as avoided it, it manned nucelar missile silos as well as marched for disarmament, faced off the USSR for 20 years and saw it's downfall, it created today's Republican Party as well as today's Democrats and today's Libertarians and today's socialists and today's militia nutcases.

You yanks are really quick to dismiss your countrymen as evil simply for disagreeing with your own pov.

[abneo3sierra]

You yanks are really quick to dismiss your countrymen as evil simply for disagreeing with your own pov.

Half "Yank" and half "German" here, and I do not mean to imply, ever, that either side is evil. I do see the legacy of the USA in the 1960s as lazy however, but then again, my family was escaping E Germany then for the west, so perhaps I do not know enough about it.

[dieseltaylor]

Amusing to see the list of countries who may have a WW1 veteran vet still alive - not one mention of the Triple Alliance members or of Russia. : )

[MrSpkr]

Amusing to see the list of countries who may have a WW1 veteran vet still alive - not one mention of the Triple Alliance members or of Russia. : )

I wondered about that, Taylor. MY hypothesis is that, given the scourge of WWII being fought through Austria/Hungary, Germany, and Russia, and the much lower mortality rates in Turkey (significantly lower until recently), that it was logical to presume that all of those veterans were already deceased. This would be particularly true of Germany and Austria-Hungary given the callups of middle-aged men to repel the Allies during the final years of WWII. Places like the United States and Australia (in particular) offered much safer environments in which veterans could grow old.

Steve

[Affentitten]

Definitely the last Turkish Gallipoli veteran died about three years before the last Australian one. have no idea about other nationalities there, but at least that's proof that the Allies out-survived the Johnnies!

Given life expectancy rates in Russia are even lower than Turkey, it's doubtful there are any survivors from WW1 there. Wiki has this list but it makes no mention of Russia.

Note of course that many of these last 'veterans' did not see active service, but enlisted at minimum age in the dying months of the war.

[Pešadija]

The worst thing is, before I get old, WW2 veterans will all be dead. Meaning, I'll see a wave of revisionism and nostalgia from people who never got to live in certain regimes and will be full of **** idealists (in a bad, bad way).

People who directly saw things are the closest tie with the past. With them dead, ludicrous things like extermination camp denial will multiply.

[dieseltaylor]

I do agree the odds would be on an Allied survivor - but then we are talking a single exception being needed. Also that post WW1 there were emigrants from old Europe who lived in the US, Canada etc.

So .... depending on pension arrangements for the combatants/or the eagerness of local press there may be Serbians living in the US, or Japanese on the West Coast yet to be recognised. But of course they were Allies. Not forgetting Rumania and Portugal, though I must admit I do not know if any of the above had a front-line troops or naval units active.

[dieseltaylor]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_last_surviving_World_War_I_veterans_by_country

There is a Pole who fought in the Pole vs Soviet wars aged 111 [ well he was younger when he fought]

The Polish–Soviet War (February 1919 – March 1921) was an armed conflict with Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine pitted against the Second Polish Republic and the Ukrainian People's Republic, four states in post-World War I Europe.

[Stalins Organ]

We do have one left living here but he served with the British (RN). Then with the RAN in WW2.

He just celebrated his 110th birthday.

Looking at the article it strikes me that one of hte reasons for the "popularity" of volunteering for war in the 1st half of the 20th century was that no-one actually knew a damned thing about what it actually involved - all teh young men, on all sides, were imbued with the idea that it would all be a bit of an adventure & a glorious lark.

the flip side is that fewer people have that naivety these days!

[abneo3sierra]

He just celebrated his 110th birthday.

Looking at the article it strikes me that one of hte reasons for the "popularity" of volunteering for war in the 1st half of the 20th century was that no-one actually knew a damned thing about what it actually involved - all teh young men, on all sides, were imbued with the idea that it would all be a bit of an adventure & a glorious lark.

the flip side is that fewer people have that naivety these days!

Excellent point, and one that I have noticed alot...not sure it really applies to WW2, as many of the WW1 veterans, who saw absolutely horrible action in the trenches, were still there to take away a lot of the "naivete" of the younger ones...but in my own family's history of WW1, it was definitely that way..marching off for the glory of the Kaiser, without a real idea of what that meant, even in a family with a centuries long military tradition, mainly because war itself changed sometime in the 19th century, and by the 20th, was much bloodier than in the centuries before it.

Ron

[Michael Emrys]

...war itself changed sometime in the 19th century...

The American Civil War is frequently pointed to as the benchmark for that. But even Waterloo was pretty bloody, and in fact there were some bloody one day battles going back to Roman times.

Michael

[abneo3sierra]

The American Civil War is frequently pointed to as the benchmark for that. But even Waterloo was pretty bloody, and in fact there were some bloody one day battles going back to Roman times.

Michael

Agreed..the American Civil War, in the mid 19th Century, was the time I was referring to.

[Stalins Organ]

Just hijacking the thread....

Antietam is referred to as the bloodiest day in America's history - with about 22,000 casualties but less than 4000 dead - is that the case??

It's not actually all that much on the historical scale of things - perhaps 80,000 at Borodino, at least 60,000 roman DEAD at Cannae (minimum....army was supposedly 80,000+, 10,000 survived, 10,000 captured). someone mentioned Waterloo - 50,000 casualties

This page purports to list battles by death toll

And this one by casualties in chronological order

[Michael Emrys]

Antietam is referred to as the bloodiest day in America's history - with about 22' date='000 casualties but less than 4000 dead - is that the case??[/quote']

I wonder how those numbers were arrived at. It looks suspiciously like they are only counting as dead those who died more or less immediately on the battlefield. But in the days before antibiotics and transfusions, it was not uncommon for up to two-thirds of the wounded to die of their wounds within days. I don't know what the percentage of Civil War wounded died of their wounds, maybe they did better, but I am sceptical. Also, I wonder if any of the 22,000 were POWs, unwounded or only lightly wounded.

Michael

[Affentitten]

Well according to the Wiki article, ACW KIA = Union 140,000 + Confed 72,500 = 212,500

Plus of course a lot of non-combatants.

They list The Oxford Companion to American Military History as the source.

[dieseltaylor]

I have a copy, dated 1900, of I S Bloch's "Modern Weapons and Modern War" *in which he correctly predicts that warfare will actually be a matter of economic might. He does suggest warfare will be too deadly to be fought, but does add the caveat about people realising how deadly it is.

* A 380 page abridgement of his 6 volume " The War of the Future in its Technical, Economic and Political Relations" with a discussion with W.T Stead. It is full of facts and figures.

But I see Wikipedia has something:

Ivan Gotlib (Bogumił) Bloch (July 24, 1836, Radom – December 25, 1902/1901, Warsaw; (known in Russian as Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch)[1] ), was a Polish banker and railway financier who devoted his private life to the study of modern industrial warfare. Born Jewish and a convert to Calvinism, he spent considerable effort to opposing the prevalent Antisemitic polices of the Tsarist government, and was sympathetic to the fledgling Zionist Movement. Bloch had studied at the University of Berlin, worked at a Warsaw bank and then moved to St. Petersburg, capital of the Russian Empire (which governed much of the Polish lands at the time). There, he took part in the development of the Russian Railways, both in financing the construction of new railways and in writing research papers on the subject. He founded several banking, credit and insurance companies. In 1877 he was appointed a member of the Russian Finance Ministry's Scientific Committee.

Research and analysis of modern warfare

Bloch was intrigued by the devastating victory of Prussia/Germany over France in 1870, which suggested to him that the solution of diplomatic problems by warfare had become obsolete in Europe. He published his six-volume master work, Budushchaya Voina, popularized in English translation as Is War Now Impossible?, in Paris in 1898.

His mainly detailed analysis of modern warfare, its tactical, strategic and political implications, was widely read in Europe. Bloch argued that:

• New arms technology (e.g. smokeless gunpowder, improved rifle design, Maxims) had rendered maneuvers over open ground, such as bayonet and cavalry charges, obsolete. Bloch concluded that a war between the Great powers would be a war of entrenchment and that rapid attacks and decisive victories were likewise a thing of the past. He calculated that entrenched men would enjoy a fourfold advantage over infantry advancing across open ground.

• Industrial societies would have to settle the resultant stalemate by committing armies numbering in the millions, as opposed to the tens of thousands of preceding wars. An enormous battlefront would develop. A war of this type could not be resolved quickly.

• The war would become a duel of industrial might, a matter of total economic attrition. Severe economic and social dislocations would result in the imminent risk of famine, disease, the "break-up of the whole social organization" and revolutions from below.

Influence

Bloch attended the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, possibly at the invitation of Tsar Nicholas II, and distributed copies of his work to delegates from the diplomatic missions of 26 states, to little avail. The British publicist W. T. Stead also worked to spread Bloch's insights. In each particular, Bloch's theoretical research was rejected or ignored. To the British readers of The Contemporary Review, Bloch wrote in 1901:

Having busied myself for over fourteen years with the study of war in all its phases and aspects, I am astonished to find that the remarkable evolution which is rapidly turning the sword into a ploughshare has passed almost unnoticed even by the professional watchmen who are paid to keep a sharp look-out. In my work on the war of the future I endeavoured to draw a picture of this interesting process.

But writing for specialists, I was compelled to enter largely into details, the analysis of which ran into 3,084 pages. The facts which are there garnered together, and the consequences which flow from them, run too strongly counter to the vested interests of the most powerful class of the community to admit of their being immediately embodied in measures of reform.

And this I foresaw from the first. What I could not foresee was the stubbornness which [it] not only recoiled from taking action but set itself to twist and distort the facts. Patriotism is highly respectable, but it is dangerous to identify it with the interests of a class. The steadfastness with which the military caste clings to the memory of a state of things which has already died is pathetic and honourable. Unfortunately it is also costly and dangerous. Therefore I venture now to appeal to the British masses, whose vital interests are at stake and whose verdict must be final.

Europe's patriots were unmoved. French cavalry and British infantry commanders only learned Bloch's lessons by a process of trial and error once Bloch's impossible war, World War I, had begun. The Russian and German monarchies proved equally incapable of assimilating Bloch's cautionary words concerning revolution, paying the price with summary execution and exile, respectively.

Bloch's foresight is somewhat qualified by what proved an underestimation of the tactical and strategic significance of indirect (e.g., artillery) fire, and his failure to foresee the development of the armoured tank and military aircraft. Bloch also did not realise the potential of non-rail motor-transport. None of these oversights was significant enough to undermine his broadest observations, however, for the period before about 1930.

An International Museum of War and Peace was established at Lucerne, Switzerland, in Bloch's name in 1902.[2] According to peacemuseums.org,[3] it was destroyed in one of the subsequent world wars, despite Switzerland's neutrality.

Role in contemporary theory

Bloch survived long enough after publishing his theory to turn his analytical talents to investigating the institutional barriers which prevented the theory's adoption by the military establishment. He appears[original research?] to have concluded that the military had to be sidestepped, by a more direct appeal to voters.

Contemporary theory treats Bloch as the Anti-(?)Clausewitz of the early 1900s. A review in 2000 in the journal War in History [4] concentrates on the interaction between Bloch's theory and the military professionals of the time. In short, it finds that they tended to dismiss Bloch, on the basis that, while his "mathematics" might be correct, his overall message ran the risk of being bad for morale.