How WWI changed soldiers and the world...

Anybody that went to the Disciplinary Barracks had to have been convicted in a General Court Martial, and received the equivelent of a Felony Conviction, with a 5 year sentence.

I guess it is possible some got a BCD, but I bet 90%+ got Dishonorable Discharges.

They are?

Surely you can provide something to prove this insane claim, right?

 

But back to the original topic, it did change a lot of people in many ways.

Much like the veterans of the Mexican-American War created the backbone of the 49ers, and the veterans of the Civil War formed the backbone of the "Cowboy Era" of the late 1800's, you had a similar situation after WWI.

Commonly called the "Lost Generation", many became transients. And I do not nessicarily mean bums, but homeless and even stateless people. Many would sign onto steamers and travel from location to location, from the South Pacific to Africa and South America to find a new place to settle down. Or some simply traveled for decades, never really settling anywhere.

Many migrated across Europe, into China and other parts of Asia. Many simply saw no reason to go home after their experience at war.

 

The frogs were bled white beating off the Germans, who were poised to take over the whole world. If you want to blame anyone, (really a mug's game,) try the people who started both wars

I was about to say, personal experience is usually invalid in debate

But he MYTH that Hoosier is spouting with such enthusiasm was one of the main casualties of WWII. Both sides were almost shockingly agreed upon as to how much good war was going to be for all the young men, who would come back with lives invigorated by the stories of bravery and the feeling of national camaraderie and shared heroism. What they got was death on an industrial scale, mass produced slaughter and a grief that had never yet been encountered from war, the grief of hundreds of millions. It led to the Roaring 20's, and the Lost Generation, both of which were the way they were because they had noted the grim fact that machine guns cut down the brave and the cowardly alike and that the good soldiers died as much as the sad sacks

Yeh, you really should read Hemingway, all those people were SOOO happy and NONE of them had the slightest problems in their lives. The fact that you can bring them up as some sort of early hippies is just one more example of how thoroughly deluded most conservatives are nowadays.

 

Did I ever say they were happy? Or that none had problems in their lives?

Do not put words or thoughts into what I said when I said nothing of the sort. I made no judgement on anything other then stating what many of them did.

And where in the hell do you think I came up with the term "Lost Generation" and what many of them did, if not from Hemmingway?



Sheesh, talk about political coprolite inserted where it does not even apply. You must see absolutely everything as political, even when it is not even implied.

 

I didnt' say you did. I just think you misinterpreted the whole idea of the Lost Generation , and this is particularly good thread to clarify that kind of thing The LG is not an easy concept and maybe I'm wrong.

The Protagonist in The Sun Also Rises is a man whose war wound renders him impotent. He is generally seen as a metaphor for the retuning soldiery of WWI. The idea that war was good for the youth never regained any real popularity after WWI. They didn't even really try to push it that hard in WWII, as the menace of Hiltler was more than evident enough to motivate anyone to fight and WWII was actually MORE horrible than WWI. They did try to dust it off during the "Red Scare" but there were enough real veterans to stop it then.

Anybody who pushes that idea on the net nowadays is usually at type of Internet Tough Guy, the War Nerd variety. The only real characteristic I've noticed in guys who've actually BEEN real combat soldiers is they don't really like to talk (or post ) about it and none of them think war is a good thing for anybody.

It isn't just this though. WWI is generally regarded as a really catastrophic event in world history. The Constitutional Monarchies and Republics that existed then had taken centuries to evolve and while certainly not perfect, were providing more people with more freedom and prosperity in a stable and peaceful framework than had ever been seen before. The world was new and the general mood was optimistic. That was all destroyed in WWI and so thoroughly it has never been revived. In many ways it might be why we find post apocalyptic fiction so popular. We have been livng in a post apocalyptic world ever since.

 

Testosterone is the cause of most wars.

 

I can't comment or point to any information which is specific to soldiers and the Great War. But just one point. In Britain the Army used to recruit on a regional basis and take volunteers in great batches from specific areas. For example my paternal grandfather was born in South London and when he was old enough entered the "local" regiment - the East Kent Regiment "The Buffs" - which was garrisoned at Canterbury but which recruited along the highway from Canterbury to South London, the old Pilgrim's Way and into London the Old Kent Road. He and many young men in his district went off to fight. He came back (yeah, I know, I wouldn't be here if he didn't) but many didn't. In fairly large areas all over Britain, there was a whole generation of young men lost. Think about the social implications. The Army stopped regional recruiting after the Great War for that reason.

 

It might be summed up in a popular song of the time- How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm after they've seen Paris.

 

The lie is the conservative one. When some of our soldiers were shellshocked in the Great Wars only the quintessential (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*), Patton, ever slapped one. Mostly, we gave them care and therapy. I don't really know how well that worked but at least they tried. Nowadays we don't give them anything but just say they were defective in the first place if they have any problems returning to regular life after an eternity as stoned killers. This is typical of the repayment for services our soldiery can expect from conservatives, who see them as nothing but expendable cannon fodder for wars to make them rich while impoverishing the rest of us.

 

War solves nothing. No good comes from War.

 

End of slavery.

End of multiple genocides.

Well, those are two things off of the top of my head that were ended by war. I would say those are good things.

Unless of course you like slavery and genocide.