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"The last Tommy", a biography of Harry Patch is similar. He only became noted by winning the "lottery of life" ending up as the last surviving soldier from WW1. Harry was the first to admit he was a bang average soldier, just one of many millions doing their bit. His account of the days after the cease fire and before being de mobbed were amusing. Some officers still wanted to run the army as an army while the mainly conscripted men were not interested The normal punishments for mutiny become ridiculous when the war is over, after charging a few soldiers they decided its best to relax the discipline and get everyone home ASAP.Thanks for the thoughts, gents. I very much appreciate them.
I'm currently reading "The Anger of the Guns" written by a Lieutenant who served alongside George Gamble in the 2nd Battalion, the Rifle Brigade at the time when George was killed. The book is one of the best accounts by a junior officer of life on the front line during WWI. The author documented his memoirs for his family but, after his death, the family decided to publish them. Honest evaluations sometimes suffer in the publishing process when the author focuses on making a statement or strives to gloss over his/her own failings. This book retains an honesty and straightforwardness because it wasn't "written for publishing", with the author freely admitting that he wasn't brave or particularly talented...just an average middle-class young man living through scenes unprecedented in human experience.
That is something I think about every time I see a picture of Civil War dead or any dead soldiers. The 58,479 names on the Wall for example.how many able leaders were lost during the First World War and the impact down the generations for the families they never had the opportunity to raise.
That is something I think about every time I see a picture of Civil War dead or any dead soldiers. The 58,479 names on the Wall for example.
A prime example: Just to mention one, Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley an English Physicist who devised a method to count the number of protons within the atomic nucleus and thus the Atomic Number revising the entire Periodic Table of Elements
When World War I broke out in Western Europe, Moseley left his research work at the University of Oxford behind to volunteer for the Royal Engineers of the British Army. Moseley was assigned to the invasion of Gallipoli, Turkey, in April 1915. Moseley was shot and killed during the battle on 10 August 1915, at the age of 27. Experts have speculated that Moseley could have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1916, had he not been killed not to mention what further contributions to Physics he could have made had he lived.
When someone joins up at 21 he has had time to show that he was a brilliant scientist poet or whatever, we will never know what those who went in their teens could have done.Entirely agree, Mike, although we must remember that not every soldier was a Nobel candidate, a born leader or even a model citizen. I have 2 other relatives who served in the British Army in the 19th Century, one of whom was court martialed TWICE while the second was imprisoned for assaulting a police officer and had his soldierly characteristics summed up in 3 words "Irregular. Intemperate. Bad." That said, all served and put their lives on the line for their country, which must count for something, right? Not all were heroic people but their willingness to serve is an act of heroism itself (IMHO).
WW1 was unique in UK military history. Total deaths were between 1 and 2% of the population whereas the English civil war was upto 10% in deaths from all causes. However the losses were asymmetric. Ideas like the "pals" regiments" meant some communities had 50% of their men killed or injured others hardly suffered at all. Officers were killed at a much higher rate than privates. On a human level a rich educated mans life is not worth more or less than the illegitimate son of a housemaid but no nation can conduct an activity that kills its brightest and best young men at a higher rate than any other. Henry Mosely was shot and killed by a sniper telephoning an order, he was educated so he was an officer and so he gave orders and it got him shot. Maybe making that call was no more or less risky than his company's activities but the statistics show in WW1 officers died more often than privates by percentage.Roughly 1,264,000 Americans have died in wars from the Civil War on. 620,000 in the Civil War alone. It's impossible to say in any meaningful way what effect their non-deaths would have had on today. Interesting to speculate. The good, the bad, fatherless-sons, fatherless-daughters, wives who remarried and had children who otherwise would not have existed and the reverse, wives who never remarried and did not have children that they might have had.
How different would the USA be if Lincoln and/or Kennedy had not been killed. Or Grant had been or Stonewall had not. Boggles the mind