Milsurp After Hours

Here is my second addition to this string. Good day for odd WWI stories.

Seems this officer couldn't understand a wife who didn't really understand this military stuff.
And then he went nuts.


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Funny lot the French

1. I know I would be relieved to know that a bomb from an airplane, not a Zepplin, killed me.....
Why is it better to be bombed by airplanes than by Zeppelins???? Did Zeppelins carry more bombs???





2. I guess he thought the phrase, "Love you to death" meant literally.........

Now who will care for his children, what a dumb-ass.

It was only a leg.... ha, ha, ha.

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"This is just a Tommy Atkins in France..."
Didn't know why it was "a Tommy Atkins", so looked it up. Knew the Brits were called Tommys, but never
knew where it came from.
Our closest version was probably Doughboy (WWI) and GI (WWII).


And NO, I would NOT lose a leg for her. It's amazing the propaganda used by both sides......

Who goes there?


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Somehow I don't think so

And I had always thought the Canadian's were know to be polite............


It must be true Duncan, it was printed in the newspaper............... (The internet of it's day!)

Here's a pretty mild German American political stance. Little did they know.... well.... sometimes taking sides for a country is a forgone eventual certainty. Maybe if they only had had a crystal ball they would have just shut up and kept their thoughts to themselves.

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Reminds me of how times do not change much. My local Congressman sent out a story by email with a picture of him next to Israel's head of state telling how he was really the light of the world.....no matter if he is likely to get us into another Arab war.

Werner Van Horn...."terrorist"...and fool. Only they didn't use that word in those days....."terrorist" I mean.

Werner was a German trapped in the new world wanting to go back to Germany to die for his country. He was having a problem getting transportation and only got from South America to New York. He was of the nobility and a reserve officer and the US German consulate thought he was the man for a job he had in mind. So Van Horn said yes to the job and carried an explosive on an American train to the American side of a Canadian bridge. The reason he volunteered for this job is that he was given to believe that the Japs, newly allied to Britain, were going to ship troops through Canada to use in Europe against them . Van Horn's duty was to blow up the single Canadian railway bridge and prevent the yellow peril from getting to war.

Horn ran into some difficulties. Trains kept coming by during the night and he was afraid of hurting somebody. But eventually, when the coast was clear of trains, he lit a fuse that was cut short to limit the time so he wouldn't accidentally blow up any actual trains, and it did explode and make a loud explosion. The explosion was so strong it blew out windows in the nearby town. But it didn't make much of a dent in the bridge. This irritated the American population since it was somewhere below zero degrees outside and blown out windows played hell with the household heating. In any case, he returned to his hotel at 2 AM or there about and woke up the hotel keeper to get in. He went and dressed in his German uniform so he wouldn't be shot as a spy and this pretty much told the hotel keeper all he needed to know to put two and two together and tell the local law.

The upshot was that it was a question of what does the US do as a "neutral" country. They have a hard time turning him over to Canada. So... they put him in jail for a 2 year sentence for carrying explosives on a US train that was also carrying people. Later , after the US neutrality was over, they turned him over to Canada and Canada put him in jail with a ten year sentence for attempting to blow up their bridge... only... he didn't serve but a short time of it. But it wasn't an altogether happy ending for him just the same.

The short version with more details is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1915_Vance ... ge_bombing

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