It would have been posted ten years ago.

Shows what one can do when he does his research and understands terrain.

 

It would have been posted ten years ago.

Shows what one can do when he does his research and understands terrain.

Yes, but I would think one of the "educational" channels could have made a TV documentary about the story. It would've been a highly interesting thing to watch, as many folks who don't have an iPhone attached to their face seem to appreciate the "then & now" type of history topics.
If any such program was ever produced I must have missed it.

 

I watched a program recently where this Dr. goes around looking for and at these WWI sites. But the program focused on an underground quarry in France where both sides lived. The main focus was on what the soldiers, American, French, and German carved and wrote on the walls. Quite interesting.

 

Saw that one. It was a very interesting & different look at the WWI trenches.

 

Sgt. Alvin York's home town is Pall Mall, TN. which is just north of me and one can visit the home he lived in when he returned from WWI. The State Park Service runs the tour of his home and General Store that he owned and is well worth the visit if you happen to be in that area. The movie staring Gary Cooper is a must see by all.

 

Sgt. Alvin York's home town is Pall Mall, TN. which is just north of me and one can visit the home he lived in when he returned from WWII.

I only knew he served during WWI, didn't know he also served in WWII

 

I'm pretty sure it was featured in 'Infantry' magazine back then - I remember reading it in print, before it was online.

Be wary of the 'educational' channels - especially those European-produced ones featuring reenactments - they're less 'educational' and more for entertainment.

There are a number of British shows dealing with trench warfare and archaeology - one uncovered a buried Livens 'flame projector' and the REME built a model demonstrating how that infernal machine worked.

It worked like your in-ground lawn sprinkler does - popped up and spewed a flammable substance towards the other guy.

 

There is a photo of Alvin York with his son who was in the army in WWII.
York senior is holding and examining his sons 1903 Springfield rifle

 

PBS has a series called the American Experience that just ran a three part series on WWI...

mostly on how Woodrow Wilson tried to keep us out and eventually went full bore into the "Great War"...

Included was how the US Propaganda Machine via the CPI ( Committee on Public Information ) under George Creel

helped with The Draft, War Bond Drives, Poster Art, Rationing, Internment Camps for American Germans, Segregation...

to a point I never realized before.

Quite Interesting if you can catch it... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/wilson/gallery/posters.html/

 

PBS has a series called the American Experience that just ran a three part series on WWI...

mostly on how Woodrow Wilson tried to keep us out and eventually went full bore into the "Great War"...

Included was how the US Propaganda Machine via the CPI ( Committee on Public Information ) under George Creel

helped with The Draft, War Bond Drives, Poster Art, Rationing, Internment Camps for American Germans, Segregation...

to a point I never realized before.

Quite Interesting if you can catch it... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/wilson/gallery/posters.html/

I never realized how much of a racist that Woodrow Wilson was until I saw that show! Additionally, the things done by the Government to virtually eliminate personal freedoms was horrifying - no criticism of the Government or the war was allowed, and you risked imprisonment to do so...

Different subject - my Dad worked for the Army Corps of Engineers building the Dale Hollow dam during and after World War II. One of his jobs was supervising brush cutting and distribution for fishing habitat after impoundment. During one of his many trips up the lake, he met Alvin York and became good friends with him. I got to meet Sgt. York several times, although I was very young at the time and don't remember a lot about him.

Buck

 

Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke in 1919 and it was kept secret. Behind closed doors his wife was, for all intents and purposes, the President and made the decisions until he left office two years later.

I cannot see that happening today regardless of who was in office and what party they belonged to. No matter how fawning the press might be over some Presidents, they couldn't hide it for long. I realize Hillary tried to keep her health issues hidden and to some degree succeeded (and still has) but it did get out enough to cause concern...no matter how much many news networks ignored it.

 

I also caught that American Experience series and was fascinated about it. Wilson was both great and grotesque, at least in the documentarian's view. Seemed like a lot of parallels can be drawn between Wilson's tactics and those of the Bolsheviks and later, Stalin himself. The horrific treatment of the african american soldiers on their return home (The Red Summer) was absolutely despicable...and the fact that the government essentially ignored it was criminal.
I wonder how social media would have handled that back in the day.

 

My Mom's dad was of German descent, while her mother was from a French family - they lived in Flat River, Missouri before, during, & after WWI. Grandpa was a lead mine mechanic. (Flat River was renamed Park Cities sometime in the 1980s, IIRC)

After the US entered the war there was a lot of hatred ginned up by government propaganda against Germany and that unfortunately rubbed off towards the local German ethnic families. So many of them were "run out of town". Although my Grandpa and Mom (she was 7 when the war began) were subjected to considerable verbal abuse by a number of friends & acquaintances, they were allowed to stay because of my Grandma's French ethnic background and the fact that my "German" Grandpa was the only mechanic who could keep the lead mine machinery running.

There was a strong French ethnic population in the counties of Southeastern Missouri at that time.

Mom did tell me how disappointed she was when many of her childhood friends started bullying her quite a bit, calling her names like "Kaiser kid, Heine Hun" & the like. She was never physically abused except for being spit at. After the Armistice all that nonsense stopped and friendships went on as before the war. But Mom never forgot.

 

During World War II, York attempted to re-enlist in the Army, however at fifty-four years of age, overweight, near-diabetic, and with evidence of arthritis, he was denied enlistment as a combat soldier.

Realizing the propaganda value and capitalizing on the recently-released movie 'Sgt York', the Army put him to work in public relations.

He was commissioned as a Major in the Army Signal Corps and he toured training camps as a speaker, and participated in War Bond drives in support of the war effort - usually paying his own travel expenses.

Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway later recalled that York "created in the minds of farm boys and clerks...the conviction that an aggressive soldier, well-trained and well-armed, can fight his way out of any situation."

He also raised funds for war-related charities, including the Red Cross. He served on his county draft board, and when literacy requirements forced the rejection of large numbers of Fentress County men, he offered to lead a battalion of illiterates himself, saying they were "crack shots."

Although York served during the war with the rank of Major in the Army Signal Corps and as a Colonel with the 7th Regiment of the Tennessee State Guard, newspapers continued to refer to him as 'Sgt. York.'

 

Wilson was one of the first Progressives, as was Teddy Roosevelt.
They believed that the Constitution was an outdated relic of another time and was an impediment to the things they wanted to do.
They couldn't repeal it, so they largely ignored it.
Sound familiar?

America has a bad history of Presidents and Congress ignoring the Constitution during times of war.
In the Civil War Lincoln put people in prison as did Wilson. In WWII FDR put American citizens of Japanese ancestry into concentration camps.
In later wars citizens were spied on and harassed.

The Founders noted that during times of war or disturbance the "Tyrant" was most likely to move to limit freedom and the Constitution.
This was best described by Rom Emanuel as "Never letting a good crisis go to waste".

America has also been extremely lucky to have the right soldier at the right time.
Washington, Grant, Eisenhower, and Pershing always appeared when we most needed them.

Pershing should be more honored because he resisted the extreme pressure from the French and British to allow them to use American soldiers as cannon fodder.
They wanted us to send recruits and have them train, equip, and lead them into battle.
Included in that was the inference that they would also be allowed to discipline them, like they disciplined their soldiers by firing squads.
Pershing made sure that American soldiers and Marines fought under American command.

In the PBS series on WWI, you will note that most American Army troops were armed with the Model 1917 Enfield rifle, and that a LOT of troops and Marines carried pistols.
Pershing wanted every combat soldier armed with a pistol but due to the lack of enough pistols many were not.
Of course, the Marines were armed with the 1903 Springfield rifle.

In one scene I noticed a soldier wearing a Model 1917 spike bladed trench knife.
The most common holster I saw was the Model 1916 Dismounted holster, but many troops had the Model 1912 Mounted holster, even though they were not cavalry.

Last, I hadn't really noticed what a physically impressive man Pershing was. The British and French generals looked like weak old men, which many were.
The Europeans marveled at how tall the American soldiers and Marines were, and Pershing was a classic example of a tough soldier.

 

Pershing believed to win WWI the allied troops needed to get out of the trenches and advance. He advocated "open warfare over ground" as the only way to end the war.

 

It must be mentioned that Pershing was also battling depression during his time in country, as he had just lost his wife and two daughters in a fire.

How any man could function in war under that cloud is beyond me.

Also noted...they devoted maybe 5 minutes, if that, on Sgt York...which was what I was really looking forward to. Seen Gary Cooper in the movie...wanted more of real York...who received the Medal of Honor for leading multiple attacks on German machine gun nests, knocking out 35, while killing at least 25 enemy soldiers, and capturing 132... who he and only several comrades walked back to the American lines...

 

I may have posted this before here, but anyone who is at all interested in WWI should check out and subscribe to the YouTube channel called "The Great War." The host does a 10 minute review each Thursday about what was happening exactly 100 years ago in the war this week. There are also usually 2-3 specials throughout the week about various persons of note, tactics, etc. It's interesting, and importantly- told without bias.

That PBS special conveniently, and erroneously, only managed to mention the Germans with respect to using chemical warfare.

 

Until in the 1970's Sgt York's use of the 1911 pistol was the greatest case of combat pistol use known.

Sometime in the 70's a soldier in Rhodesia ?? was ambushed in his armored vehicle and surrounded by communist guerrillas.
Apparently he fired his 9mm Browning through the vision slits of the vehicle and killed a very good number of them.

 

If it's the guy I read about way back when, he was South African, and it wasn't a Browning that he used, it was a Star, I believe a Model BM.

 

There was a show on NatGeo or similar channel a year or so ago which went to all the WWI battlefields and excavated things.
They found orignal trenches and bunkers buried underneath like ten feet of decades old plowed over fields.
They also found a German underground complex that went down like three stories. But the thing was underwater past like twenty feet and too dangerous to explore. However one guy did go down, find a small offshoot tunnel which led back up to a room that was sleeping quarters for the soldiers. It was still semi dry and filled with rotting artifacts. Also a lot of trench art on the timber walls. Was quite eerie to say the least but also fascinating. Could watch that stuff all day long.