would probably be best to just nuke the first 50-60 pages of this thread and as someone currently TA'ing for a civil rights class, i can say with some confidence that it has not been "pounded into the heads" of most Americans
August 7, 1942, the United States fought its first real offensive battle in the Pacific Theater when the US 1st Marines landed at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The US had fought defensive battles at Midway and the Coral Sea, after being forced to abandon the Philippines. Guadalcanal marked the turning point, after which the US fought on the offense for most of the rest of the war.
My hometown had an inordinate amount of Guadalcanal vets. My grandfather told me the Navy recruiters came into town right after Pearl Harbor and signed up everyone. The Marines were Navy in those days. He signed up for the Navy. My dad is a Vietnam vet. As a kid, the local VFW had a Memorial Day cookout. I remember seeing guys wearing their Guadalcanal mesh hats, but was too young to think to ask them about it.
My grandfather was a marine who was wounded at Okinawa. He was a great husband, father and grandfather, but my grandmother said he was he was never the same person after the war.
My grandfather served on the USS Bunker Hill. They were hit by two kamikazes during the Okinawa offensive. The only time I ever really got anything out of him regarding the war was when my grandmother coaxed him into letting me interview him for a project in middle school. After hearing him tell me about watching his best friend die on the flight deck, I understood why he never liked to talk about the war. I've never been able to fathom the things that generation went through.
My grandfather was a paratrooper in Japan. Plane he was riding in was shot down twice. Second time he almost died from blood loss. He'd be two different people. Mostly great to be around and fun but had weird triggers where he'd fly off the handle about something innocuous. Anyway I think a lot of those guys had PTSD
My great great uncle was killed "in" WWI, died 1918. Always pictured him getting slain in a trench somewhere. Nope, turns out he likely died of Spanish flu before leaving the US
My dad went grouse hunting right after he got back from Vietnam. When you hunt grouse, you basically walk a field and the grouse scare the shit out of you by flying away when you get near their hiding spot on the ground. He jumped his first grouse and shot it about a foot off the ground, basically as a reflex. He gave his gun to his brother after that and never hunted again or kept a gun in the house.
So many questions. Is the pot an ash tray? Why have the cover on it? Why is he using it as an ash tray? Is there food in it? Where is the faucet in the sink? Who thought wood paneling was a great idea? How high is he?
Queen at Wembley Stadium, 1986. Back when people watched a concert instead of fucking with their phone
For a pretty good read chronicling the carnage on all fronts during the first months of WWI before things settled into a trenchy stalemate, read Max Hastings' Catastrophe 1914: Europe Goes To War. I didn't care for his facile treatment of decisionmakers that bordered on caricature (for a better read on why WWI happened in the first place, I recommend Clark's Sleepwalkers), but the chronicle of the frantic mass-casualty fighting with new tech and old tactics is well done
Grandfather fought in WW2 and was a machine gunner with a tank crew. Didn’t tell many stories, but a few of them were insane. At one point a artillery shell fell in the middle of their camp and thankfully never went off. He also was on watch duty one evening and strolled into a graveyard to take a leak and found a small group of Axis fighters and they were able to capture them. Got awarded medals for infiltration to save Americans. He collected a TON of Swiss watches, binoculars, German firearms, etc and left them with a Buddy in a bag when we went to visit some European country and when he got back the friend was gone with all his war memorabilia.
It’s always crazy to me that they began WWI on horseback doing Calvary charges into single shot rifle fire. Then we ended WWI in trenches fighting with machine guns, armored tanks, air bombing, and mustard gassing each other to death.
FWIW IIRC the Enfield, Mauser, and Moisin-Nagant were all bolt action with five round magazines and smokeless powder meant you could see farther after the initial volleys fun fact: both the English and Germans used the same standard issue bolt action rifle in both WWI and WWII, with minor modifications (Enfield Mks, and Mauser Type 98). US was the only country to start the war with a semi-auto standard issue rifle (M1 Garand). Brits fired their Enfields with their middle finger and cycled the bolt with thumb and forefinger so quickly that the Germans frequently thought that the Brits had semi-autos.
was more for the picture, not the history paper caption. As others have mentioned, this scene is more reminiscent of the Napoleonic wars or maybe the civil war than WWI. A short time after this, there were airplanes, machine guns, gas, tanks etc
77 years ago today the Allies initiated Operation Market Garden, in an effort to reach the Rhine river crossings that lead into Northern Germany. It's still the largest airborne operation in history. My grandpa was a C-47 pilot with the 101st; he got shot down near Eindhoven. He managed to hide in a haystack until a pair of Dutch brothers found him, and hid him under a chicken coop until American forces were in the area.
Great uncle was a glider medic for the 82nd. Missed Overlord because of Sicily, participated in Market Garden. Supposedly got his legs shot through by a strafing bf109, spent the next eight months in hospital having his legs put back together
God bless your grandfather and great uncle respectively. My grandfather was there as well. He is still alive and is perhaps my favorite person to spend time with.