11 November 1918 - Ed and Jack’s War

George Rebane

My up close and personal introduction to WW1 came at the knee of my two early mentors Jack Maschmeyer and Ed Egold. Both were WW1 veterans who were sent ‘over there’ and didn’t come home ‘until it was over over there’. Both saw trench warfare at its most horrific and survived going ‘over the top’ several times. In 1953 we moved into an old house (built in 1830s) in rural Marion County, Indiana next to Ed and Mary who were in their early sixties. Today they would be mistaken for being in their eighties; they had lived a long life of hard work and it showed on most folks of that age in those days.

Ed hired the new tall and lanky red-haired teenage neighbor to do all kinds of odd jobs around his house and barn. He saw my dad and me working on rebuilding our old house, and decided that my skill set could also be put to use at his place. Besides the 50 cents an hour that was my pay, I would often linger after work on Ed’s back porch on hot and humid summer evenings and listen to Ed talk about the ‘old days in Indiana’ and his war experiences in Europe. Being a recent war veteran myself, I was very interested to hear the history of America’s involvement in WW1 since we Rebanes had partaken of America’s involvement in WW2. I suspect that not too many people took time to listen to Ed’s stories at that phase of his life, so that he was more than happy to pour his remembrances into my attentive ears. By the age of thirteen I was already expert at asking adults the right questions to keep them talking.

Ed took me through his entire ‘career’ in the Army, starting with being conscripted, through basic training, the travel to New York, embarkation on a troop ship to Europe, and marching to the western front in France. There he served with thousands of other American doughboys under the command of our General Pershing. Ed’s description of life in the trenches during the rains and artillery bombardments brought back my own wartime memories. This undoubtedly had an impact on my choice of artillery when I went into the Army – I’d rather be shooting those guns than being shot at by them.

The scariest time for Ed and his trench comrades came when they knew that early next morning they would be going over the top after our artillery was supposed to have softened up the Germans in their trenches about 100 yards across no-man’s land. Well, by 1917 after three years of war, everyone knew that trenches with dugout side cubbies were excellent protection against artillery bombardments; it would take a direct hit in the trench to do the killing and air bursts were pretty ineffective. So when the order came to go over the top, everyone knew they would be running through a hail of bullets from German machine guns rapidly deployed on the ramparts after the artillery fell silent. Seldom were such charges successful in reaching the enemy trenches, but always they left hundreds of dead and wounded in no-man’s land who often would be hauled back to their own lines under a short flag of truce. In those days wars still had mutually observed rules.

Ed came back a man, like thousands of others, who quietly lived with their private nightmares for the rest of their lives, for it was a time before the invention of PTSD, and ‘shell shock’ was something you just sucked up and got over after coming back home. Ed always stared into space when he talked about the war. I’m sure he was looking back in time, and I suppose his recounting some of it helped a little.

Jack Maschmeyer was a grizzled and wirey old guy, still with some residual good looks from his younger years, after a life of work as a truck farmer growing specialty crops on relatively small acreages. Jack’s wife was also named Mary who was a bit stout. They both worked equally hard in planting, pruning, harvesting, and preparing their produce for trucking to the local farm co-op. Jack and his crew of four or five teenagers (of which I became one) worked mostly in the fields, and Mary managed the production shed. Mary always sent all of us boys home with a pile of vegetables du jour after we finished work in the evenings. But sometimes Jack would invite some of us who lingered to join him on the front porch and have a Coke. There he would open up his past after a couple of carefully composed questions from his eager young audience.

Listening to Jack was a privilege for he was usually a no-nonsense man of very few words. When he taught you something new to do with a piece of equipment or how to handle a specific vegetable, he did it using a sparse language that in military communications is taught as being clear, complete, and concise. You had better listen carefully because Jack didn’t like to repeat himself, and when someone greeted Jack with a ‘How are you Jack?’, he would lock the person’s gaze with his clear blue eyes and respond with a crisp ‘Better!’. That reflected Jack’s total philosophy and perspective of life; for him the entire purpose of it all was to make things ‘better’.

When Jack got into the mood on those evenings, his tales would be told with more enthusiasm and vigor, as if he had just come from hearing his commanding officer’s pep talk to the troops before going into action. To him and many others of that age, the Germans were referred to as ‘Dutchmen’, a corruption of ‘Die Deutchen’. His stories tied closely with those told by Ed, with perhaps the only difference that Jack’s telling showed the Germans respect for their warcraft. Jack was more of a technician and a very smart guy who perceived the war in more than one dimension. But the terror and fear of the artillery and going over the top were the same for both men. When they got home, both Ed and Jack were convinced that they had been in the war to end all wars.

It is memories of those tales told long ago in rural Indiana that first extended my history of the 20th century, and put my own experiences into a more complete framework. In those days WW2 was not even ten years old, and we were all watching programs like ‘Victory at Sea’ on TV celebrating how the allies led by America had vanquished Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. We all were made aware that now we were in the middle of something called a Cold War that would now and again be interrupted by ‘little’ hot wars to stop communism like the one just ended on the Korean Peninsula. And as a young lad, fortunate to have sat at the knee of two weathered war veterans (and historical mentors), I was first made aware that on 11 November 1918 the armistice of a century ago did not really end that war or any wars, but merely served as a preparatory hiatus for an even larger holocaust that would erupt again after two short and tumultuous decades.

All of which asks us to consider what are we looking at today as we see the world again making preparations while America’s Left and libertarians are telling us to pull in (or cut off?) our horns, and assume the prenatal positions of 1914 and 1939 that gave birth to the biggest conflicts in human history.

Comments

[Gregory]

A military castration anxiety, George? Really?

Here's a list of US military installations worldwide:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases

The "world" is not making preparations against us, and it is folly to think that all our worldwide bases are required to forestall the outbreak of WWIII. At some point, it might be reasonable to live more within our means and not keep borrowing on the good credit of our great-grandchildren to keep the train rolling forward. That goes for social spending and military spending.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 114pm - Pray, you’ve not fallen for putting words into other people’s mouths like our liberal brethren, have you?

[Gregory]

"All of which asks us to consider what are we looking at today as we see the world again making preparations while America’s Left and

libertarians

are telling us to pull in (or cut off?) our horns , and assume the prenatal positions of 1914 and 1939 that gave birth to the biggest conflicts in human history."

No, George, I don't think I'm putting any words in any orifice that wasn't said.

[Bill Tozer]

Ed and Jack’s War.

How nice to hear the stories with, at times, that far away gaze. My grandpa, born 1895, served in the artillery in WW1. Dad had his helmet in the garage for years, solid metal. Felt like cast iron to me as a kid. Don’t know what happened to the helmet or ever heard much of Grandpa’s war experience. He came back with a life long limp and a hernia that never got fixed. Guess even the artillery guys took incoming on those damn European fields.

When I settled down in these parts, I met a man and his wife who shared the stories of the Depression and WW2. I listened for years, visiting them often for about 8 years. A man of the backwoods, he got drafted at the age of 29, oldest guy in boot camp and the rifle the gave him was falling apart. He grew up 28 miles from the nearest neighbor and knew how to fix things. Was left behind on some Phillipine Island with five other men with an artillery gun in the hills while McAuthur was saying “We shall return” and left. . Place was crawling with Japanese soldiers and the boys were forgotten about. His wife got suspicious and started hounding Senators after nine months, lol. A year of so later, they got rescued. Backwoods man knew how to hunt at night and the ways of animals. At night, he would bet on cockfights in the villages where the Japanese soldiers went back to their camp to sleep. Knew the ways of birds and could pick the winner just by looking at them, even the small frys. Took the wins to bring food back to his buddies. :). Artillery man. Came back half deaf. His wife and I buried him after he died in his sleep in the yard next to where he buried his horse....in Nevada City. We covered the spot with white quartz rock we got from a quartz outcropping I knew. I ain’t ever telling where he lies, but his death was recorded.
I miss both of them. Wished I asked more questions. Both were more impacted by the Depression. They lost all gleam in their eyes when the Depression was raised.

To Ed and Jack’s War.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215345832336679&set=gm.511218312727006&type=3&theater

[George Rebane]

Gregory 316pm - The world was not “making preparations” against the US in 1914 and 1939. But they definitely are now - I draw your attention to China, Russia, and North Korea. And Friday even the EU included the US as a potential foe as it published a policy statement about Europe having to defend itself without US help. It appears that you and I have quite a different view of the global threat level against America - this is not the first half of the 20th century. Today all our geo-strategic competitors openly talk about and prepare (with weapon systems and platforms already deployed or in advanced stages of development) to assault America’s carrier task groups as our prime instruments of projecting force around the globe.

But I do wish you the joy of your sanguinity on the matter, and hope that you’ll share the basis of your faith with the rest of us (perhaps starting with Mattis).

[Gregory]

George, very little security is purchased by the last dollar being spent on bases in Lower BF, Kytchenzinkistan.

China is an economic competitor who is being met.
Russia used to be a great power, when it was the heart of the USSR.
NorKor is being met appropriately.

We don't have the wealth to waste. And it is being wasted.

And carrier task forces will have a lifetime lasting days or even hours if WWIII breaks out. The USS Maginot Line will probably not be as dominant in the 21st Century as it was in the 20th.

[George Rebane]

Gregory 857pm - Have a hard time following how those arguments follow our discussion thread, especially regarding blatant statements made by our adversaries preparing to confront us with force.

[Russ]

WHEN WE TALK ABOUT THE IMPACT OF WORLD WAR ONE, REMEMBER THIS:

But the most profound transformation wrought in America by the Great War was in the nature of government itself. Woodrow Wilson came to the presidency in 1913 as the prince of the Progressives, and he at once began to assemble the scaffolding of a new administrative state through the Federal Reserve Act. His efforts were aided by constitutional amendments to secure the levy of a national income tax, to institute the popular election of U.S. senators, and to impose a national prohibition on alcohol. Entrance into the Great War widened the scope of administrative control, justifying the creation of a Fuel Administration, a Food Administration, a War Labor Policies Board, a War Industries Board, and a Shipping Board, which created an Emergency Fleet Corporation to build dry docks and piers, commandeer privately owned vessels, and even seize enemy ships. That control reached even into the schools: In Philadelphia, the School Mobilization Committee organized 1,300 public and parochial schoolboys as farm workers. The war, complained Randolph Bourne, licensed the Progressive state to become “what in peacetime it has vainly struggled to become — the inexorable arbiter and determinant of men’s businesses and attitudes and opinions.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/11/12/the-great-wars-great-price/

[scenes]

Gregory "The USS Maginot Line will probably not be as dominant in the 21st Century as it was in the 20th."

Considering how well the Maginot Line worked (ie. very well), I'm not sure if that's a good comparison or not. The funny thing about papers written on the future composition and number of carrier battle groups is that they can come to different conclusions and all seem plausible.

Given the length of time (and filthy lucre) it takes to develop/use/obsolete a big weapons system, my gut tells me that nobody is very good at predicting threats that far ahead. The pile of chips is pretty big for any of these bets and WwII-era short weapon pipelines are long gone.

The lockdown you get from major power nuclear arsenals certainly has changed the nature of war at that level, so the practical argument tends to be about involvement in regional conflicts. At the risk of sounding like a skipping record, where I see civilization killers is in the mass movement of people, not shootin' wars (assuming we are blessed with enough Stanislov Petrovs). That sort of thing can even be weaponized, I don't doubt that there is a floor at the Lubyanka that is interested in sending small arms to Africa and funds NGO ships in Libya.

[Gregory]

Yes, scenes, the Maginot Line was very good indeed at forcing the next great German invasion of France to go around (the Panzers) and over (the Luftwaffe).

[Don Bessee]

Ah the French -

The French President Wants to Defy Nationalism by Creating a Europe-Wide Army. That's One Battle He's Likely to Lose

In recent wars in Libya and Mali, French forces depended on the U.S. military for aerial refueling, early warning systems, and other key operations that the Europeans were simply incapable of doing. In addition, says Shurkin, E.U. governments have for years cut military budgets, “knowing full well that the U.S. would protect them.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/french-president-wants-defy-nationalism-190753552.html

;-)

[Bonnie McGuire]

Most here will probably poke fun at this but it looks like this is what's going on now. We've seen how everything is tampered with by the politically correct but...here goes regarding George Washington's vision about the most terrible third war I'm America.
http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/washington/vision.html
Pay attention to the red cloud coming from Asia, Europe and Africa....and what will save America.