War Stories

And during the first world war, they didn’t know anything about the concentration camps. Someone told one soldier, along with his fellow soldiers, there is a ‘Jewish camp’ over there, the way they were directly headed. They wondered what the heck that person meant when he said, ‘Jewish camp’. When they came upon the first camp, they were absolutely horrified. I can’t imagine having found out like that.

During WW I, when he was 16, my Dad, John Bryan, ran away from home and joined the Texas National Guard. That particular unit had been called up for duty in France. He was loaded on the train in Waco, headed for overseas training, when his Dad, My Grand Dad, Peyton Bryan, appeared and physically drug him off of the train. It took him 5 years and many letters to finally get a discharge from the Guard so he could join the Marines.

Frequently these days, I get both discouraged and bored by the pointlessness and repetitiveness of the blogosphere and grow tired of responding to the same arguments of the war party. Thankfully, Donkey Cons co-author Robert Stacy McCain has said something new. If I understand McCain correctly, he is embracing a comparison of the Iraq quagmire and the First World War:

The unveiling of the newly restored Vimy memorial this Monday in France is just part of a $30-million federal program to restore Canadian First World War memorials across northern France and Belgium. The four-day battle Vimy Ridge has long drawn the lion’s share of the attention in Canadian histories of the war, and as the site of the main Canadian memorial to the soldiers

Five million soldiers from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales fought in World War One but around 60 per cent of the service records for these soldiers were destroyed during a German bombing raid on the War Office in London in September 1940.

I think it is likely that Edison was in the precarious position of being patriotic and wanting to serve his country, while at the same time abhorring war and violence. Edison seemed to believe that superior technology would do more to prevent wars than to end them. During World War I, this concept may have had merit. But if he had been alive during World War II or subsequent wars, he would have witnessed the creation of military labs whose sole purpose was to use technology to create weapons of mass destruction. Thomas Edison was famous for inventing and developing technologies that improved our lives. What would he think of our military use of technology today?

Those of you looking for some new Howard fixes for 2007 have a lot of choices. Last night I celebrated Howard’s birthday by reading Steve Tompkins’ thought-provoking introduction to Del Rey’s Kull — before Steve, had any of us ever considered the influence of World War I, Jazz Age flappers, and Macbeth on Howard’s Atlantean, and through him on the history of Sword-and-Sorcery? — and then relishing “Exile in Atlantis” and “The Shadow Kingdom.” If you haven’t yet bought this Del Rey release, head on over to Amazon or your favorite local bookstore and snatch it up.

At first, things seemed wonderful for the sodbusters. Grain brought high prices, due in part to demand generated by World War I. Because the market was so good, more and more acres were planted to grain. This effort was aided in part by the advent of the tractor, allowing more land to be planted than ever before. More people came to the area, hoping to make money quickly by growing grain on an acreage.

Now there’s a phrase you don’t see much in the news. Seems the Scottish army is suffering a shortage of man-skirts because their military brass hasn’t awarded a contract for the garments, so the brave men in plaid are having to share.

So let's fast forward to present day. The most crushing defeat for the Islamic cause was the end of World War One and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. The Global Caliphate had already been in retreat from Western colonial powers. Was Islam no longer the True Religion? Could the Prophet (pbuh) not be the exclusive voice of Allah? Unthinkable and intolerable. Islam must eventually rule the world because Allahu ackbar. Then came the worst possible insult. The Western colonial powers set up a Jewish colony in the Fertile Crescent and called it the State of Israel. For the devout believer in the Global Caliphate it was a blessing sent from Allah. It was something Muslims had been lacking for decades, if not centuries: Focus.

A geographer at Middle Tennessee State was at the heart of the discovery of artifacts from battle where Sergent York won his medal of honor in World War I in France. A team from several institutions found more than 1,400 artifacts in Chatel-Chehery, France during a November expedition.