The Gun Counter

AKA Veterans Day 102 years later.

"Only the dead have seen the end of war." MacArthur's speech to West Point

Yes. My paternal grandfather was a WW1 veteran. Also a lifelong functional alcoholic with what we would call serious PTSD, who never spoke a word of his experiences.

The only WW1 vet in my family that I know of directly would be my paternal great grandfather. He was a cavalry officer in the Imperial Russian Life Guards where he served until they broke up in the Russian revolution. He was then briefly a German POW after escaping the Bolsheviks with his family (my great grandmother at al). He was then fought as a cavalry officer with the Latvians in the war of Latvian independence 1918-1920. In gratitude the newly independent Latvian government confiscated most of his property and threw him in jail for a couple years until deciding that being an ethnic German aristocrat was not formally a crime. In a fit of optimism he stayed there until just before the Stalin invaded when he fled to Germany with family. Then in 1941 he was drafted into the Heer (I think they made him a Col. but not sure exactly) to use as liaison with Russian troops that were fighting for the Germans. He was captured in 1945 and later executed around 1947 or so with the formal charge of deserting the Imperial Life Guards back in 1918.

So yeah, it was a ball of suck.

Vonz90 wrote: ↑Sat Nov 14, 2020 4:29 am The only WW1 vet in my family that I know of directly would be my paternal great grandfather... He was captured in 1945 and later executed around 1947 or so with the formal charge of deserting the Imperial Life Guards back in 1918.

So yeah, it was a ball of suck.

My paternal great grandfather was a POHMS in Japan during WW1, when Japan was allied with Britain, so he avoided the trenches. Politics changed between 1918 and 1938 while he was distracted with business and wasn't paying attention, so he died in a Japanese internment camp in 1945.

Good times!