Posted on 11/23/2005 12:24:08 PM PST by SittinYonder
May you rest in peace brave Sir.
.
Sacrifice begets Sacrifice.
MEL's -PASSION- sparked by -WE WERE SOLDIERS-
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1085111/posts
...just for the LOVE of it.
.
My great uncle died in that war also.
Those numbers are a bit dated, and the WWI vets are leaving us quickly at this point. The last estimate I saw put the number of living WWI combat veterans at less than 50 in the US, and even that number was drawn up about a year ago.
Lived in three centuries.
Amazing.
Wow. Truly a witness to history. And an end to an era.
Ping
Brings one back to when the last CW vet died in the 50s. My generation still had a few around in the late 40's - 50's. Soon we'll be reading about the last WWII vet. Speak to them now, their stories won't be available in a few more years.
Response: Ave atque vale frater.
I saw an earlier thread regarding this Tommy. He was a witness to the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Christmas in the Trenches
(John McCutcheon)
That is when they had the soccer game. After that incident, both the Germans and the British had to move the troops involved to another area. They basically refused to fight each other.
PS; The Germans still claim they won the soccer match.
I plan to be reading about the next to the last of the Vietnam vets dying.
If you are interested in read a very well researched book on the Christmas Truce, get Stanley Weintraub's, Silent Night, The story of the World War I Christmas Truce.
I often think that of my mom who is 101. She has gone from horse and wagon, horse and buggy, first cars, first planes, etc.
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