Cool 😎 Strange 🤪 or obscure 🙃 / interesting things...

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A poignant historical photo of King George V inspecting new recruits, soon to be sent to the western front in World War 1.

At the far right is Field Marshall Horatio Kitchener famously from the ‘Your Country Needs You’ poster.

We should always remember the bravery and sacrifice of these men.

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I agree with you totally regarding the brave patriotic men on the left.

However, the outright stupidity and callousness of the men on the right is unbelievable. Sending wave after wave of men over the top of trenches into machine gun fire only to be mown down, it’s just staggering. Showing a total disregard for men of a different class, not to mention the poor bereaved families.

If these entitled top brass were so intelligent they should have learnt from the first mistake and developed a better technique quicker. How come it took so long to either go over, under or come up with armour ( tanks) or longer range weapons or go around the back of the enemy or any number of possibilities.

But no, just send more and more to their certain deaths and eventually some will get through. It was so unintelligent.

There will always be casualties and mistakes in war, it was obviously good that the war was won. Sacrifices have to be made but gigantic repeated mistakes by dumb entitled idiots really gets my goat. As you can probably tell.

Lets hope it doesn’t kick off in Ukraine.
 
I agree with you totally regarding the brave patriotic men on the left.

However, the outright stupidity and callousness of the men on the right is unbelievable. Sending wave after wave of men over the top of trenches into machine gun fire only to be mown down, it’s just staggering. Showing a total disregard for men of a different class, not to mention the poor bereaved families.

If these entitled top brass were so intelligent they should have learnt from the first mistake and developed a better technique quicker. How come it took so long to either go over, under or come up with armour ( tanks) or longer range weapons or go around the back of the enemy or any number of possibilities.

But no, just send more and more to their certain deaths and eventually some will get through. It was so unintelligent.

There will always be casualties and mistakes in war, it was obviously good that the war was won. Sacrifices have to be made but gigantic repeated mistakes by dumb entitled idiots really gets my goat. As you can probably tell.

Lets hope it doesn’t kick off in Ukraine.
I used to have the same view as you, word for word to be fair.I visited the Somme battlefields last year and it’s a sobering experience , also an eye opener so I have changed my opinion on the military leadership somewhat. What happened on the first day of the Somme was horrific but as with most events it was a number of contributing factors.
 
When news of the attack on Pearl Harbour reached New York City, Andrew Jackson ("Jack") Lummus, Jr. was already was in uniform - a football uniform. He was playing in the NFL for the New York Giants.

In 1940, he had been an aviation cadet in the U.S. Army Air Corps, but was washed out, and went to play football for the Giants.
In January of 1942, Lummus joined the Marine Corps Reserve, eventually being sent to officer training, then being assigned to the 27th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division.

Landing on Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, Lieutenant Lummus commanded 3rd platoon of E Company in an assault on Kitano Point on the northern tip of the island on March 8th.

Even after a grenade riddled his body with shrapnel, Lummus fought through, eliminating three Japanese defensive positions that had pinned down his platoon.

While leading his men forward, Lummus stepped on a landmine, blowing off both of his legs.

Lying bleeding on the ground, Lummus stayed with his men, encouraging them in the attack until he finally was carried to an aid station.
He underwent emergency surgery and blood transfusions, but the damage done to his body was too great. Lummus went into shock, and died. He was twenty-nine years old.

At the aid station, he famously told the doctor, Thomas M. Brown, "Well, doc, the New York Giants lost a mighty good end today". He was transferred to the field hospital, where he underwent surgery and a transfusion of 18 pints of blood, but died of internal wounds on the operating table. He was buried in plot five, row 13, grave 1,244 in the Fifth Division Cemetery.

His body was later moved to Ennis, Texas.

For his actions that day, Lieutenant Jack Lummus was awarded the Medal of Honour posthumously, "For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty."

"Jack suffered very little for he didn't live long. I saw Jack soon after he was hit. With calmness, serenity and complacency, Jack said, 'The New York Giants lost a good man.' We all lost a good man". - Major John Antonelli (his CO) told Jack's mother and his fiancée.

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In early 1893, a man named Harrison Smith travelled east from his home in Iowa to Vermont to bury his father.

Harrison's father was Dr. Timothy Clark Smith, whose broad travels in life saw him work as a U.S. Treasury employee, a surgeon in the Imperial Russian Army, a diplomat, and a country doctor. Although his travels and experiences set him apart from the vast majority of his contemporaries, Dr. Smith did share one absolute terror that had gripped humans for centuries: taphophobia - the fear of being buried alive.

At the time it was unfortunately a (reportedly) common tragedy for people to be buried alive.To combat this, some people would pay beforehand to ensure they were buried with strings tied to their fingers or toes, with lines running up through tubes to bells affixed on the surface of the grave.

This was only one of many options available to those fearing that horror, but Dr. Smith took his funerary preparations even further, and that's why his son, Harrison, was returning to Vermont. Harrison's task was to oversee the construction of a special tomb for his father: it was a cement and brick vault built underground into a small hill, with a staircase leading from the crypt to a sealed door at the surface. This in itself was not unusual, as tombs of this type were common at the time.

What made Dr. Smith's tomb different was that he had ordered a cement shaft to be built into the ceiling of the crypt that ran to the surface, and was capped with a 14"x14" glass plate through which people could look down into the grave and see Dr. Smith's face, to make sure he actually was dead.

According to legend, Dr. Smith also was buried with a bell in his hand and a chisel close by so that, if he happened to wake up, he could alert the cemetery keeper and chisel his way out of the vault. The glass window on the surface also would let light into the crypt so it would not be pitch black.

Since he was laid to rest in 1893 at the age of 72, Timothy Clark Smith has not stirred from his tomb, and for several decades afterward curious visitors to the old Evergreen Cemetery in New Haven, Vermont, could step on top of the grave, and gaze down through the glass to look upon the skeletal visage of the doctor.

Today, however, the shaft is filled with so much condensation that the glass cannot be seen through clearly.

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