Posts Tagged ‘World War I’

Today in History, (21 February 1915)… The Battle of Verdun…

Posted: 21 Feb 2012 in History, Military, Military History
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Today, the longest battle in World War I would commence.
The battle of Verdun…

The Battle of Verdun 1916 – the greatest battle ever

The Battle of Verdun is considered the greatest and lengthiest in world history. Never before or since has there been such a lengthy battle, involving so many men, situated on such a tiny piece of land.

The battle, which lasted from 21 February 1916 until 19 December 1916 caused over an estimated 700,000 casualties (dead, wounded and missing). The battlefield was not even a square ten kilometres. From a strategic point of view there can be no justification for these atrocious losses. The battle degenerated into a matter of prestige of two nations literally for the sake of fighting……

The attack started on 21 February on the right bank of the Meuse with the heaviest bombing that had ever taken place in a war. It lasted over 9 hours and was the most horrible that man had ever seen.

In the following days the Germans did not progress as much as they had expected, but on 25 February the unbelievable happened: the Germans occupied the most important fortress on the defence line. This fort Douaumont had been considered impregnable. Verdun lay within reach.

Plenty more here to explore on this great battle.

Frank W. Buckles, The Last American Veteran Of WWI Dies At Age 110

Posted: 28 Feb 2011 in Military, US Army, Veterans
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The last American World War I Veteran has died.
He was 110.
Rest in peace.

This chapter ends…

Mr. Buckles, who was born by lantern light in a Missouri farmhouse, quit school at 16 and bluffed his way into the Army. As the nation flexed its full military might overseas for the first time, he joined 4.7 million Americans in uniform and was among 2 million U.S. troops shipped to France to vanquish the German kaiser.Ninety years later, with available records showing that former corporal Buckles, serial No. 15577, had outlived all of his compatriots from World War I, the Department of Veterans Affairs declared him the last doughboy standing. He was soon answering fan mail and welcoming a multitude of inquisitive visitors to his rural home.

“I feel like an endangered species,” he joked, well into his 11th decade. As a rear-echelon ambulance driver behind the trenches of the Western Front in 1918, he had been safe from the worst of the fighting. But “I saw the results,” he would say.

With his death, researchers said, only two of the approximately 65 million people mobilized by the world’s militaries during the Great War are known to be alive: an Australian man, 109, and a British woman, 110 .

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