World War ONE: A War Forgotten?

My intention when starting this blog post was to feature links to blog writings about the various wars in history. The idea came because of the gentleman who is featuring his grandfather's letters from WW I

WW1: Experinces of an English Soldier

However, I became sidetracked from that idea when I came across This blog post

Tueting's AP US History:World War One Veterans

Go read it. It's a reprint of an article at washingtonpost.com , by Edward G. Lengel, titled Why Didn't We Listen to Their War Stories?


The article starts out speaking about a visit by Frank Buckles to the World War I memorial in Washington,D.C. Frank Buckles is the last U.S. veteran of World War I, and you can read about Mr. Buckles here Frank Buckles, 107, old-school survivor


I have followed stories about Mr. Buckles since the Patriot Guard Riders had a ride to honor him in Sept 2007


and I have been to the DC World War I memorial, and cried over the condition it is in.

AVisit to the Wall, and Other Memorials





Our visit to that Memorial in Feb.2007 led me to read A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918 by G.J. Meyer which was an excellent history of a war I had previously known very little about.


I cried again today, reading the article about the last surviving U.S. veteran visiting the Memorial pictured above, which is not even a National memorial....there is no National Memorial for World War I.



Mr. Lengel says in his article that he has been told World War I has "poor entertainment value" (Mr. Lengel has written a book To Conquer Hell: The Meuse-Argonne,1918 )


and he asks at the end of the article

"Do we honor our veterans for all their sacrifices, or do we care only if they can tell us a good story?"