[rollei_list] Re: Veterans' Day/Armistice Day/Remembrance Day

At 12:21 AM 11/12/2008, Peter K. wrote:
>Only one in the US. He is 108 or 9. Just read about him in one of the
>magazines.
Peter is speaking of surviving US WWI veterans, and this depends on how you count "veteran". They pulled three up at the Atlanta celebrations today. But do you mean COMBAT veteran or veteran or someone who, as a kid, picked up some boxes and helped some soldiers.
When I was a lad, back in the longago, we had a next-door neighbor whose family included an old, VERY old, geezer. This was in 1958. We all looked at him with some measure of distrust. One day, on Memorial Day, he called us over, and told us that he remembered the Yankee troops coming home to his Wisconsin hometown in June, 1865. He would have been around 98 or 99 at the time. Some folks live a LONG time.
In my own lifetime, I knew well a WWI German veteran and interviewed possibly a dozen vets of the Russian Civil War. I have interviewed several vets from the Spanish-American War and one from the Boer War, and I spoke at some length with a Marine Corps vet from Haiti in both 1919 and `1921 -- hell, I tried to send his comments on to Ben Frank, the former Chief Historian of the Jarheads, but the both of them died before I could get contact established. But, then, Ben probably would not have approved of this guy, who told me that he only enlisted in the Marine Corps after he was rejected by the Army and by the Navy.
My grandfather, born in 1880, knew his own grandfather, born in 1807, well. And I knew my grandfather, who died in 1977, well. The generations flow together: I live less than three miles from the Jeff Davis Corridor where a number of my relatives wasted two or three years of their lives in convincing the Revolting Southrons to cease being so Revolting.
There are times when I do feel a pull towards the Great Chain of Being! If folks start asking about, they will find their own nexus with the past. We are all part of history. EVERY older person has a story to tell. Stop them and, if they have the time, ask them their tale. "There are a million stories in the naked city, and this is mne." Trust me, this is the truth.
Hell, I was flummoxed a few years back on our sister List, the Leica Users Group, on a person who had claimed to have met a grand-daughter of the brother of the latest recognized Tsar, Nicholas II. It took me a fair amount of research to find out that, wow! this was a proper claim and I was caught beams a-lee, as the Brits say.
Sorry to have rattled on to such an excess. If someone could assist, mayhaps we could set up a Rolei List BLOG? 

Marc


Marc


msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Cha robh bàs fir gun ghràs fir!

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