What the US Fliers at Clermont thought of "Over There"

[mosesr]

In April 1918 Two of these pilots reacted to someone putting on a record of "Over There":

"To show you how sick every one is of this "hurrah" stuff with no real action behind it, the other night our gramophone was going and someone put on a record with "Over There" and some other of that stuff, "The Yanks are Coming, so Beware" and two men from different parts of the room dashed for the machine. The record was swept out in the morning."

[saruffin]

I think this sort of reaction of fighting men to propaganda was pretty typical. They have always taken a dim view of homefront misinformation campaigns.

There's an old story told about an American WWII air combat crewmen who noticed a wartime propaganda ad in a U.S. magazine. The ad depicted a grinning American gunner hosing tracers at a formation of Focke-Wulf 190s, while sneering, “Who’s afraid of the big bad Wulf?”

The airman ripped the ludicrous ad out of the magazine and wrote on it in big red letters, “WE ARE!” He then posted it on the unit’s bulletin board, after which every man—group commander included—signed it. They then sent the silly piece of drivel back to its originator.

Truth may indeed be the first casualty of war, but there's something refreshingly honest about warriors.

[Barrett]

If truth is the first casualty of war, frequently enthusiasm is the second and patriotism the third...

[mosesr]

That's a really great story. It is also interesting to read the advice to little brothers back home about enlisting (finish college instead), and to parents to keep little brothers from enlisting (don't let him enlist-- stall him off until I get back, etc.) . (An effort to emphasize that media portrayals are misleading, to say the least included).

[mosesr]

There are several things I wonder about-- why do the media promote war? I read in James Hall's (the Mutiny on the Bounty one) biography that after fighting w/ the British he came home and wrote a few things, and the Editor of Atlantic Monthly called him and asked him to write a series that would assist in propagandizing Americans to get in the war. (paraphrasing -- can't put my hands on the book at the moment-- the editor told Hall he wanted Americans to realize they needed to join the war). Hall was ambivalent about the mission because he thought war was horrible and didn't want to recruit more people to go into it, the book indicated, but he did want to be a writer.

The aviator in the book with the aviators smashing the record of "Over There" refers disparagingly to the "hurrah crowd" and the "flag wavers". He swears when he gets back he will never read a newspaper again due to the false accounts in the papers that glamourize the US effort.

In fact, my Grandfather, who was a Canadian vet -- initially with the Royal Engineeers but after saving 30 men by dragging them out of the trenches after a gas attack, was offered a change of venue and opted to be a flier. When he saw WWII coming he had a nervous breakdown and his doctor prescribed that he not read any newspapers.

One vet told me that anyone who promotes war should be shot like a rabid dog. So why are those who do always come to the fore, regardless of the experience of those who have been to war? Why are people suckered in each time?

[cameldriver]

From reading many letters written home by combat airmen, it was almost universal that they did not want publicity for the their personal accomplishments. Indeed, many indicated their disapproval when they learned that their families had shared their letters with local newspapers. They felt that they were only doing their duty, and nothing more than the next man. Many expressed disdain for the individuals who glorified their own service in such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly. The indication was that those stories were prone to imagination and exaggeration, written largely by men who never got near combat.
From reading the letters, you get the understanding that those men held greater moral values than are common today.

[mosesr]

I don't know if it was unique to WWI aviators-- it is interesting that you point out the alienation implied by the fliers having to tell their families not to share their letters w/ the papers and the revulsion at self-promotion given the reality of what they have experienced.

Here is a piece from a WWII vet who is also a reporter for the Boston Globe, that appeared in the Boston Globe on 10/03/2000. It well expresses his feelings of alienation from his father who took his son around to bask in his glory, and also-- this is something I have heard alot from Vietnam Vets-- the utter hatred for those who served back of the lines who join in with the rah rah crowd and take on "hero" status when they haven't experienced combat.

This letter seems to speak for the WWI vets and the Vietnam Vets, too, and perhaps all warriors in all times.


War is hell, not a cause for celebration

By Donald M. Murray, Boston Globe Correspondent, 10/3/2000

I marched with the 82nd Airborne in the World War II Victory Parade down Fifth Avenue in New York and hated every long minute of the celebration.
This comes to mind because I just saw a television news report on the veterans who want to build a 7.4-acre World War II memorial on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and the veterans who oppose it.

Count me with the opposition.

My opposition is not because the National World War II Memorial e-store commercializes the memory of those who died in my war. It's not because I am offended by the golf shirts, caps, mugs, and umbrellas sold online, making my war equivalent to a trip to Disneyland.

I am not opposed because the large memorial may or may not obstruct the view of other memorials and crowd the already busy Mall.

I am opposed because what men and women do and survive in combat has nothing to do with statues and fountains and plaques and flags. It has everything to do with men and women, civilian and military, being killed, maimed, or left mentally ill because war became the only way to resolve human differences.

When suddenly the war was over, we were treated like heroes, but there are no heroes in combat, only those who do their terrible duty under difficult conditions.

I was 21 when I marched in that parade in 1946, and had survived only a fraction of what many others suffered. Yet my fury still burns that we could reduce the experience of combat to a parade.

As I looked at the long line of paratroopers marching ahead of me, I imagined legs marching without bodies, arms without bodies swinging to the Sousa tunes, heads rolling along by themselves, the torsos of young men tumbling along without limbs, skulls, or intestines and ...

On that day I was not quite sane. I was glad to be home, and feeling guilty that I had come home. Better men and women on both sides had not come home. I was angry at the old men who run governments and who so failed their responsibilities that war became necessary. I resented those young men who escaped the draft. I hated the officers who more often than not gave orders that cost lives unnecessarily. The higher the rank, the farther from the front and the less their danger. We called General George Patton ''Blood and Guts Patton - his guts and our blood.''

I resented the innocence of those who waved flags and cheered, who grinned with pride as their ''heroes'' marched past, the politicians who spoke of ''glory,'' the clergy of every faith who blessed victory from the reviewing stands.

I rejected my father's pride in me. A buyer for a department store, he had missed his war and wanted me to have mine. Well, I had my war, but I resisted the pleasure he took in his ''hero'' son. He dragged me around Manhattan to see those from whom he bought and others to whom he sold.
True story: Sitting in an office high up in the Empire State Building, a ladies' hosiery manufacturer asked my sympathy for how much American women had sacrificed in not having silk stockings during the war. Father nodded in agreement.

I despised all those soldiers, airmen, and sailors in my war who served far back from the front but, unblooded, were willing to play the hero after serving beer in a PX or checking paper records against the dog tags of the dead.
Only a few of all who served in the war were under fire. Most did important work, but the farther from the front they served, the easier it is for them to see war in simple terms of good versus evil, friend versus enemy, victory and defeat.

No. I don't want any memorials. We did what had to be done, and we found within ourselves the ability to perform acts more terrible than we could have imagined.

Do not make heroes of us. Allow those of us who served at the front to live out the lives we never expected to walk away with, quietly, with our lonely memories and our private, contradictory, and unresolved emotions of pride and shame.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
This story ran on page D03 of the Boston Globe on 10/3/2000.
© Copyright 2000 Globe Newspaper Company.

[Barrett]

To answer the above questions:

Humans keep going to war--however unwillingly--because they insist on organizing themselves into nation-states. Once that national status exists, there's no turning back from Us against Them because kings, tyrants, presidents & parliaments possess the ability to convince or coerce We The People into doing their bidding.

That's not going to change.

The most cogent observation probably comes from the unlikely source of Mel Brooks in History of the World. He described the first national anthem as, "Hooray for Cave 76 and to hell with all the others."

However, comma, some wars (a very very few) definitely need fighting. Our mutual interest--the Great War--was not among them, especially from the American viewpoint. After all, woodrowwilson got elected on the basis of "He kept us out of the war."

Ironic, ain't it?

Apart from greed, envy, ambition, stupidity, etc, the main reason for war is that inevitably one nation-state perceives an advantage over its neighbor and takes action. Because the neighbor is unable or unwilling to defend himself, he finds himself under his neighbor's boot.

So what's the answer?

In a word, preparedness.

That flies in the face of the 20th century's bleating mantra that you can't maintain peace by preparing for war. Just as the libs say you can't enforce democracy at gunpoint, but how'n hell do they suppose it was accomplished in Germany, Italy, and Japan?

The Roman writer Vegetius nailed it in the 4th century: "He who desires peace should prepare for war."

QED.

[mosesr]

I used to believe in the concept of preparedness and defense of one's country, and in fact was associated w/ ensuring that the US maintained tactical capability in the air (which as you probably know, they didn't want to do, favoring "Star Wars" and such-- they said we would never fight another ground war-- that's what they told us).

But I've changed my mind, and believe now that the entire military apparatus needs to be abolished. A covenant has been broken as far as those of us who supported defense. And it is clear that the civilians who make the stuff, and the politicians who buy it, and the money behind those who supposedly represent the people of the US will use whatever we buy them.

What we have now is a mercenary force owned by a power elite, and it has nothing to do whatsoever with defense.

So I would be in favor of reduction DRASTIC reduction of "defense"/military expenditures with a goal of reducing it to 2%. Actual "defense" would be better served by improving our national industries that are not being supported w/ taxpayer dollars. The ones that pigs at the public trough are becoming so huge and fat on taxpayer dollars that they simply write the legislation to enable them to get more and more and wage war. Examples: Lockheed, General Electric (a notorious defrauder of the taxpayers but nonetheless the stream of money hasn't stopped).

The deficits that are caused by the current military expenditures will kill our country (and not just the dollar deficits, but that alone will).

Look at what our net gain to the country is by the current war.

[rabu]

It's not the military or the press that encourages war, it's the greed of those at the top that control the government and everything that's going wrong in the world right now.
Reducing the military isn't going to happen any time soon and won't solve anything until we quit stompping on other countries and robbing them of thier wealth. We, the USA are the biggest offenders, but England and some others are right in there with us. We live in a global, corporate run government in this age that is responsible for the wars and terroism we are seeing while our own country is headed toward a 3rd world status of wealth unbalance, kept under conrol with a money making, but inadequate social service system.