OK KCSJ and WWI buffs, kick the knowledge ...

Well ... my cup runneth over.

The National World War I Museum was fantastic. I had high expectations and it lived up to it.

I drove to K.C. from Iowa through thick fog, but the clouds parted right as I drove into the city. That's important because the Museum is located underneath the Liberty Memorial. I have been to K.C. several times, but somehow, had never seen the Liberty Memorial, which is beautiful monument on top of a hill overlooking downtown K.C.

I've always been fascinated with WW I and I was afraid the Museum would be underwhelming because I would already have known the pertinent facts. The Baseball Hall of Fame was kind of like that for me.

Not this time. The sheer amount of WWI paraphenalia was fascinating and presented in a very good way. I've read tons of books about WW I, but had never seen a WWI field gun, or a WWI tank, or a WWI machine gun, etc.

Two things stuck out for me. They created a trench system and split it into approximations of German, British and French trenches. I vaguely knew the difference in construction of the trenches between the powers, but until you see it, you don't really get it.

German trenches were reinforced top to bottom with timber and living quarters were sometimes 40 to 60 feet underground to avoid artillery barrages. Compared to the British trenches, which were much more shallow and reinforced with sticks, and the French ones, equally shallow and reinforced with nothing at all, the German ones were luxurious in comparison.

Another striking feature was an exhibit where they created what an artillery shell hole was like on the western front. Most people think of foxholes as being a few feet deep with enough room to fit a man or two. This shell hole was about 15 feet deep and about 400 square feet in circumfrence.

And this was just the damage one artillery shell could do. It's hard to imagine what the front would have been like at Ypres, Verdun or the Somme considering the hundreds of thousands of shells each side propelled at the other in a typical battle.

The only complaints I have is there was virtually nothing on the Eastern Front (my guess is that material is hard to come by), a small over-emphasis of the American role in WWI (which stands to reason given that it is our National WWI Museum) and there wasn't much on the aftermath of the war, but these are very minor concerns. The truth is, I got there at about 2 p.m. and wished I had arrived earlier so I could truly soak it in. If you're in K.C., I highly recommend it.

Finally, they had plenty of these ...



Der Picklehaubs!

 

Well done, Bubs.

America was involved in WWI for a very short time (declaration of war in April 1917, but first ground troops seeing action in Europe starting in March 1918) but lost 116,000 people in just eight months of fighting. An incredibly bloody war, but one in which our entry tipped the balance.

The aftermath of the war (the crazy reparations imposed on Germany, which sowed the seeds for Hitler) may be the bigger lesson to be learned than the entanglement of alliances which started the war in the first place. Each was unnecessary.

 

Was there a medical section? Like how they treated battlefield wounds? I was just wondering how much adavancement there was since the Civil War, just 50 or so years earlier. I remember going to a Civil War museum in Atlanta and seeing the primitive instruments they had. Basically hacksaws, little ability to knock you out and not much sterilization. Just wondering how much that changed.

 

There really wasn't much to the eastern front. The Germans managed that by helping Lenin get through Germany and into Russia.

One of the interesting facts I remember about World War I is that the war never made it to German soil like World War II did, so the Germans weren't affected like the French were.

 

Dead wrong. The Germans handled the Russians early in East Prussia and Poland, but the Russians and Austrians pushed each other back-and-forth, constantly neccesitating German involvement on the Austrian front.

The Russians had a breakthrough against Austria-Hungary in 1916 with the Brusilov offensive, but didn't have the supplies, nor supply lines, to sustain it. Russian troops were at were the breaking point morale-wise (not unlike the German offensive two years later on the Western Front, when the Germans had initial success only to peter out to the point of surrender) and once the momentum of that offensive slowed, the Russians were in trouble.

Remember, one of the things that led to the collapse of the Kerensky government was its choice to stay in the war. People sometimes forget that there were two Russian Revolutions in 1917.

Even after Russia's supposed capitulation, there was action on the Eastern Front. Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1918 and penetrated deep into today's Ukraine. One of the great ironies of the Armistice was that German troops were further east than they had ever been at any point of the war prior to that point.

The Eastern Front was extremely vital in keeping Germany occupied on two fronts (four if you count German involvement in the Balkan and Italian fronts), thus preventing them from throwing their full weight at the French and British on the Western Front.

One of the reasons why the Museum probably didn't have much on it was not only because of the collective memory of American involvement on the Western Front, but also because the Soviets systematically wiped out much of the archival material of the period. To this day, I'm not sure there's ever been an official Russian-based history of the Eastern Front. It's a great hole in the knowledge of that war.

There was an exhibit on treating wounds. It was far advanced from the Civil War, but obviously, primative by our standards. Trench warfare, with the likelihood of gangrene, etc., made treating wounds difficult. Treating gas-related wounds was also difficult as there was little to no knowledge about how to treat it at the time.

 

According to Wikipedia, there's four World War I veterans left in the world. There's a fifth who claims to have served but is unverified, and a sixth classified as a World War I-era vet who didn't actually take part in the conflict. That's it.

 

If I'm that old, all of those guys have to be in their 100s, I'm going to make shit up too about what I did in the 1970s and 1980s.

"I invented MTV! I was one of the later Apollo astronauts! I am the only man left who snorted cocaine out of Morgan Fairchild's ass-crack at Studio 54!"

 

I just finished reading a book titled (if I remember correctly) "The Greatest Day" about the last few days of the war and the hours leading up to the Armistice.

Amazingly, thousands of soldiers were killed and wounded on Nov. 11, 1918, either due to them not finding out about the Armistice, or them not believing it, or because they were ordered to push as far as they could before the deadline.

Officially, the last U.S. soldier died at 10:59. He had been demoted from a higher rank because he wrote a letter home complaining about the war. Supposedly, he didn't know about the Armistice when he decided to charge a German trench. The Germans, who did know of the deadline, kept trying to wave him back, but when he got too close, they had to shoot him.

 

A lot of companies decided to use all up all their artillery ammunition as the Armistice approached, too. Who knows how many deaths that caused?

There's an eerie chart somewhere, like a seismograph (maybe it is, I forget) tracing the huge amounts of noise/ground disturbance in the minutes leading up to the 11 o'clock Armistice, then flatlining.

 

I saw a cool TV show about the hours leading up to 11 a.m. Some people were astonishingly stupid. A lot of units knew about the Armistice but were ordered into combat anyway. General Pershing thought it was stupid to sign an armistice without pushing into Germany and fought hard that day. Turns out he was right, but that was still damn cold blooded.

You'd literally have to be prepared to shoot me to get me to attack anything at 10 a.m. knowing I'd be sharing a beer with the guys I was attacking at 11.

 

Only one U.S. veteran left. Very neat life story. (Well, except for the malnutrition and beriberi part.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Buckles

When I was a kid growing up, there were WWI vets all over the place, and now they're just about all gone. In another 25 years it'll be the same with the WWII vets.

 

I read an overview of Verdun in a book about key battles throughout history, and it mentioned Le mort homme ("The Dead Man" in English).
Basically, the hill was strategically important. It overlooked most of the battlefield and was a key spot for spotting and artillery. Because it was so important, both sides kept losing it and retaking it. As this went on, the hill was blasted with artillery so many times that whatever bodies were up there were turned into indistinguishable piles of meat. Soldiers couldn't dig in because the ground was frozen, and if they tried they often got whacked by snipers.
Thousands died on this hill. And the kicker? Eventually the fighting shifted to the other side of Verdun and the hill was abandoned as an outpost.
Kind of sums up that whole war.