M14 Forum

pepsi71ocean

Ok guys, my brother is now a Senior in high school, and he has a project about WW1 that he needs to do.

The basics of the project is it can be a diorama or a movie etic but it has to show emotion.

Im currently writing up a script for a movie, but is there anyone who has any stories or can provide information about World War 1, that i could use to help in my research.

I know this is goign to be hard as we don't have any direct veterans, but maybe there are some of you who grew up hearing stories about WW1 that can toss some info into the pot.

As for Period clothes and such im still working on digging some up, but being jobless this makes it slightly harder, but better in the prop department.

I don't think there was any forum around in here that this would fit best under so i threw it in here.

oldflyboy

My Grandfather was a WWI vet. He didn't talk much about except for just a few events.
He was drafted in 1917. He lived on a farm out in the boonies of NE Mississippi...no phone, no tv, no radio, local paper once a month. He did not know he had been drafted until a sherrif's deputy showed up with an arrest warrant for draft evasion. Went pretty smoothly after that.

He was the unit barber while not shooting toward Germans.

At one point, he was THE ONLY guard at the ammo dump. Piles of artillery, grenade, cartridge boxes stacked 10 feet high over an entire acre. It was pitch black that night...no moon or stars visible, no lantern for obvious reasons and orders to shoot at any noise he heard. Well, as luck would have it, he heard a disturbance between himself and the ammo. Not wanting to nail a German at the expense of 10 tons of ammo, he sneaked toward the source and found a very drunk elderly Frenchman. He had the old guy accompany him on his assigned path...until relief arrived about daylight. Took the Frenchman into his CO's office, dreading a royal chewing for not shooting as ordered. Turns out the CO was extremely greatful.

Never heard or saw an airplane....contrary to what Howard Hughes epics might indicate.

Last day of the war.....the US troops heard a loud commotion coming from across no-man's land from the German trenches. They prepared to repel another nasty assault. Hundreds of Gemans poured out of the trenches behind a single soldier carrying a white flag. The Germans all dropped their weapons as they ran toward my Grandfather's trench. The Americans, including my Grandfather, piled out of their trenches (still armed) and met them. The 'assualt' stopped just out of bayonette range....no one had fired a single shot... One German non-com explained in very difficult to understand English that the war was over.
Several hundred German and American soldiers behaved like old friends, talking (such as communication allowed), playing cards and trading food until the German and US co's decided how to handle the situation.
At the end of the day, each side returned to it's own trenches, tore down and packed up their weapons of mass destruction and marched out of no-man's land.

This was a LOT of war stories compared with what my Uncles shared about their time in the South Pacific.

These snippets are not that exciting...sorry...they are all 'Pa' left us about his part of the Great War.

SOCOM42

watch the movie "all quiet on the western front", will give you a good idea what it was like on the german side. it was made during the 30's and starred lew ayers.

TheTurtle

My great grandfather was one of three men to make it out of his company alive. Had some serious PTSD and committed suicide a few years after the war ended.

That's all I know. My grandmother was very young and doesn't remember much else.

Seventh Fleet

My story is very similar to Turtles.

My mother's father was in the trenches during WW-1. His area was gassed by the Germans with mustard gas and it destroyed my grandfathers lungs. He came home after the war to Troy Alabama as an invalid. My mother was the first born and she was born in 1919.

On May 6, 1932 when she was 12 years old, she came home from school one day and found his body. He had taken his shotgun and blown his brains all over the bedroom wall.

This affected my mother for the rest of her life. She died young at 63.

When I was a kid no one wanted to talk about it and it was a deep dark secret that details are still sketchy on. Back in the 40s and 50s when I grew up, divorce and suicide just weren't talked about in polite society. I remember as a small child going with my granny to the cemetery on decoration day and cleaning his grave. She never remarried and she raised her five children on five acres of red, Pike Country clay dirt, during the depths of the great depression by herself.

If there's an angel in heaven, it's got to be my granny. She always wrote me letters when I was in Vietnam and that meant a lot to me, since my mother and granny were about the only family members that did so on a regular basis.

7th

ppcshooter1

You could do some research on the Lost Battalion or the story of the Marines at Belleau Wood. A German General in WW I called the Marines Devil Dogs and the nickname stuck.

Marty

SOCOM42

My mothers father was in the army during ww1, he volunteered, left wife and baby (my mother) at home.

Don't know much about what went on with him over there other than he was with the fighting 69th. He came back a changed man, never spoke to anyone unless absoutly necessary.

Would be drunk every friday till sunday night drinking seagrams 7 and pickwick ale as a chaser. Slept with a 97 trench gun in bed with him.

He died while i was in ait in 1960. After i got out my grandmother gave me the medals he had recieved. Purple heart, croix der guerre, bronze star, leigon of merit. Two others but i don't remember what.

They were lost in a move in 1971. Most of the time he had the "1,000 yard stare", my grandmother would tell me not to bother him that he was thinking.

Wish i could post a picture, it was of grandparents and me home on leave from basic, you can see the stare in anyone i would post. Tough old bas**rd he knew he was dying and never said a word to anyone.

TheTurtle

Very similar actually. My grandmother grew up being raised by a single mom with four other kids in San Pedro CA during the depression.

Both of her brothers were killed in WWII and the name stopped there.
One lost at Pearl Harbor and the other was on a ship that got attacked by a U-Boat.

pepsi71ocean

thanks for the stories guys, i got to read over the requirements for the project and im working on writing a script.

does anyone know what the average combat days was per year in WW1, i heard its 35 per year in Iraq, and my dad said 240 in Vietnam but don't quote me on that)

bigbang

My grandfather, a young 1Lt in a Bavarian Infantry Regiment, caught a .303 bullet on the western front, just 2 inches below the hip joint. To high to amputate the leg. He suffered from this open wound 25 years and died of an inflamation in 1943. In the field hospital he met a nice nurse, they fell in love and he married her, my grandmother.
Wolf

bigbang

The average ( on both sides) was 2 brigades (6500), every day, for 4 years.
Wolf

willriskit

When I first joined the VFW during the mid 60's, the WWI guys were about the same age I am now and we drank a lot of beer together and played many a card game. In fact, we still had two Span Am vets. I recall that they loved liver and onions which usually drove out the younger members once a week. By 1990, most had passed from the scene with the oldest dying at 104. The WWII members ran the show and we Korea or Vietnam vets kept pretty quiet. Both my wife's and my family were still in Europe at that time and served on the other side, which was common where I grew up. We still have various small momentos and a few photos, one of Dad with a group of other NCO's at a rest area in the Somme in 1918. Our families served Bavaria and Saxony. Other than infrequent leaves, it was common for German troops to remain in a combat zone under unimaginably harsh conditions for years and I believe Germany lost 2.2 million men in a war it did not start. Many of the survivors came to the US (legally) during the 1920's and 30's and became some of our community's leading citizens. Ironically, many of their sons served in the US military with distinction during WWII. My wife did a genealogy earlier this year and there were few surprises.

edporch

My uncle (dad's oldest brother) was in WW1 and died in France.

Entered service January 9,
1918, Ft. Leavenworth, Kan.; assigned to Company C, 317th
Field Signal Battalion.
Overseas in July, 1918.
Participated in the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.
Died of pneumonia October 8, 1918, in Evacuation Hospital No. 9. Buried at Vanbacourt,
Bar-le-Duc, Section M, Grave No. 117, France.

His body was moved back to the US in the early 1920's to our local family plot.
Mom told me an uncle went and identified the body.

I've wondered if he was a victim of a poison gas attack and then developed pneumonia as a result of lung damage as I read sometimes happened.
Guess I'll never know.

slamfire1

I had a great uncle, blue eyed blonde haired. A shell landed near him, deafened him, stunned him, shredded his clothes. The Germans captured him, and he claimed later, that he was not killed during capture becase his blue eyes and blonde hair made the Germans think he was German.

Having survived the war, I was told he was murdered for his pension money.

drbub22

I highly recommend you read "Fix Bayonets!", by John W. Thomason, which is one of the finest first hand accounts of WWI you will ever find.
http://www.amazon.com/Fix-Bayonets-J.../dp/1877853690