Which war would you least like to serve in as an American?
- Thread starter Jimmy McGill
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I ihad three great-uncles who fought there. One died in combat, one came home but died at age 27 due to exposure to mustard gas, and one lived a long life, dying at age 94. For our family it was tougher than WW2, where 3 also served (my dad and 2 uncles) with no casualties.
Lmfao! The war profiteers ARE the bad guys.
Just to be clear, So Hitler should have been allowed aggression with no opposition? Pearl Harbor? Turn the other cheek?
That was a policy decision of the Obama White House.
It was addressed by a DIA memo that was obtained via FOIA request.
The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these “supporting powers” desired the emergence of a “Salafist Principality” in Syria to “isolate the Syrian regime.”
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092
I live near an historic plantation home that was used as a field hospital for a battle in the Civil War. One of the bedrooms served as an operating room where they chopped off limbs and threw them out the window. You can still see the blood soaked into the wood floor.
Honestly, having gotten pretty deep into a lot more of these wars via history podcasts in recent years...I think I've got to say Vietnam would be one of the better choices. Which is weird to say, since the last 30-40 years of pop culture is about how Vietnam was particularly horrible.
Not to discount the psychological aspect of not being able to identify with the cause, which is not an insignificant factor. But other than that, I think the soldiers in the previous wars had it mostly worse actually.
Not to discount the psychological aspect of not being able to identify with the cause, which is not an insignificant factor. But other than that, I think the soldiers in the previous wars had it mostly worse actually.
I said Vietnam, we know enough about that war to know it was a huge mistake and waste. Ken Burn's documentary and the historical record show that US leaders from IKE thru Nixon made mistake after mistake. Nixon violated the Logan Act in the summer of 1968 and should have been convicted and never president. We ended up bombing and killing a lot of SE asians for bad reasons or no reason at all.
I was 18 all through 1971 and was lucky to have a student deferment draft classification which I dropped late in the year to go through my draft year.
WW2 was the most justified war, the Civil War was tragic but I would have fought for the North against slavery,
The 2nd Iraq War was a terrible mistake by Bush 2 and his warlord cronies Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz. Just a military industrial money grab that needlessly killed and maimed 100s of thousands of people people. I was always against this war but not the war against the Taliban for giving Al Quaida sanctuary.
WWI, by far.
Between the trenches, mustard gas, no man's land, the artillery and using 18th century tactics against 20th century weapons...no thanks.
I mean, just the artillery. Preparatory fires would last hours, even days. And not 1 round per minute for hours, but multiple rounds per second for hours. It has been described as machine gun like.
I've posted this article before, https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/07/01/anatomy-of-a-world-war-i-artillery-barrage/
Between the trenches, mustard gas, no man's land, the artillery and using 18th century tactics against 20th century weapons...no thanks.
I mean, just the artillery. Preparatory fires would last hours, even days. And not 1 round per minute for hours, but multiple rounds per second for hours. It has been described as machine gun like.
I've posted this article before, https://angrystaffofficer.com/2016/07/01/anatomy-of-a-world-war-i-artillery-barrage/
Oh, and I just texted my dad to ask his opinion. He did 3 tours in Vietnam, 1 as infantryman, 2 as an artillery officer, a brother in Korea, his dad in the Pacific in WW2, his FiL in a PIR in Europe.
He said WWI, for pretty much the same reasons I did. His first First Sergeant was a WWI vet who went to France at 16, came home 8 months later at 46 (he told my dad that War aged him 30 years). He'd said WW2 was a breeze compared to the first one.
He said WWI, for pretty much the same reasons I did. His first First Sergeant was a WWI vet who went to France at 16, came home 8 months later at 46 (he told my dad that War aged him 30 years). He'd said WW2 was a breeze compared to the first one.
As horrifying as it was, it wasn’t the biggest killer of Americans:
In the American Civil War, twice as many soldiers died of disease as from hostile action. In the Spanish–American War, nine times as many, largely from tropical diseases such as yellow fever. Among American troops in World War 1, disease deaths were higher than combat deaths, 63,000 to 51,000. To be complete, other armies had much lower rates of deaths from disease, about half of all combat deaths. The Americans joined the war in 1918, and were caught by the Great Flu Epidemic. By World War II, disease deaths in most armies were 10% of battle deaths. Even though it was fought in the tropics, the Vietnam War saw less than half as many deaths from disease as from combat.
i don’t know that history has been particularly fair to that war but we have moved on and would rather pretend that it didn’t happen since we didn’t win
It is a tough call having injured limbs sawed off with no anesthesia and then dying of infection, versus dying in a trench as your lungs burned with chemicals. I guess with former, you have time to write out a will and goodbye letters to loved ones. On the other hand, there was the possibility that you might actually have to shoot and kill a relative.
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It's not about the dying, it's about the exposure to it. Disease didn't scare people, even though it killed more troops. Artillery, at the level it was used during WWI, was horrifying and maddening.
I guess it's a pick your poison situation.
I have to think standing in a battle line 50 yds from another battle line with rifled muskets firing at each other in volley's would be pretty terrifying. The rifles of the civil war were much more accurate and had further range than the ones used in the Napoleonic wars but they were using the same tactics.
I agree a WW1 artillery bombardment would drive you mad.
and who knows, in the former, you might actually say something memorable, like "Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees."
Civil AINEC.
Upon enlisting I know there’s a 25% chance of me dying and a 70% chance of it being shitting blood for the last 5 days of my life.
Upon enlisting I know there’s a 25% chance of me dying and a 70% chance of it being shitting blood for the last 5 days of my life.
