tv Over There CSPAN May 21, 2017 6:00pm-7:03pm EDT
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>> good morning. for those of you that are new to the occasion, welcome to the 22nd writers symposium. it's one continuous century of hostility. we call this year's installment when the war lost the war the centennial legacy of world war i. to establish the theme and suggest a direction. this morning it is my particular pleasure to introduce colonel robert.
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having written extensively in the four centigrade for. currently, he is the acting secretary of the battle monuments commission and former director of the army center of military history. his special interest is suggested by the military insignia especially as worn by the officers and men of the american expeditionary force and the african-american soldier. received the army historical foundation for excellence in writing. a particular note to officers on active duty is his army officers
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guide which was continued to edit. among the favorite hobbies is leaving the battlefield historical sites in the united states and europe. this morning he will speak to us on the american extraordinary force in france. on behalf of both the symposium at the university, we welcome the kernel. [applause] thanks for the kind introducti introduction. i feel very connected to this place because on three separate occasions i worked for general sullivan so i have to hear about it quite a bit. and much like those now i often
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heard about it in very odd hours of the night were the early morning so it is a pleasure to be here and i am very excited to be able to talk to you a little. and i did use the word extraordinary for a specific reason. i was talking -- i'm going to walk to the podium. i'm always asked and i'm sure jennifer has heard this as well like are you interested in world war i. people ask me about it all the time. what would a person like you get involved in world war i for. the matter of the truth is it comes down to the reason i love being here today with young students. it's because i want you to take a look at this photograph. it was taken in washington, d.c. union station and was taken in the end of the war. you see in the photograph
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another is beaming because her son is back from the war. he is holding a baby and you see the one that is returning. this picture to me totally explains why world war i is important to the nation and everybody en route. so this is my centennial commission pitch. that's one is probably the child of a civil war veteran would be my feeling. and that soldier holding the baby, that baby by the way is a member of the greatest generation. that soldier was born in an age of horse and wagon's. he probably hadn't traveled before he went overseas with the american expeditionary forces. he probably had traveled much out of the county that he was born.
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even though he's coming into union station in washington at this point. and that person that was born in the age of horse and wagon that could speak to a civil war veteran is probably going to pass away in the age of jet travel. so think about that for a minute. he passed away in this decade in the last known world war i veteran. think about the world that person grew up in and how america changed in that person's life in so many ways. this isn't really the pitch of my talk i want you to think about this in our daily lives. when we entered world war i, we thought women were too fragile to be in combat, let alone an industry at home in any way. it woulwhat would happen if a wn would have a nervous issue that we put her in in a factory or if
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we put her in a situation she was near. we thought about african-americans. okay. 300 some odd years of slavery. how can we count on this person to fight for america a person that has been told their whole life what to do. they can't think for themselves. what if they gebut if they get n that leaders are dead. hyphenated americans. some 20% of the forces are immigrants. what if we put these people in line. will they be loyal to america or germany? will they be loyal to fighting for the british? thankfully, everyone of these prejudices was smashed by the war. certainly it would be by civil rights, but many of them will be
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in labor positions there but with themselves wonderfully. when you take 2 million some odd people in the armed services is about 4 million people, but we get about 2 million over there when you account the american red cross and other volunteer organizations. when you take 2 million some odd people and you pluck them from that county as i love to say. you put them on a train and a pass from new york and paris and london and they come back, you forever alter the fabric of society. and i think that is why these people were important. when you stick your toe into the world stage, there isn't any going back. you can have the isolationist movement and all these other things but the truth of the
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matter is there is no going back once we get in the war. these are the people that will open in the american century, but the greatest generation and to set up the world we live. if you don't believe it is important after that i don't even want to talk to you anymore. but you are going to have to stay. so that is my opener on this and i want to talk about how the american expeditionary force shaped america by the way it dealt the world we live. anyone that is going to be associated with the army come everything you know comes out of this. we had a wonderful discussion about this with question and answers if we have them. this is my quick refresher for the non- world war i table in the room. so this is one of my national park service maps. this is what the world looks
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like right before we entered now coming in on the side of the allies. so you have these blocs of nations what's going over there before we get there know the plan to very quickly resolve world war i and when the plan fails, the british accent expeditionary force stabilizes so that is all quiet on the western front period. the eastern front kind of going towards germany's favor during the war. we now go to the soft underbelly of europe if he will and in this particular case that doesn't work out we are done and proved to be very costly but fight the french and british and meanwhile back on the united states is mexico.
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i will tell you in the raids occurred on the mexican border, the u.s. intelligence services are convinced that the germans have their hand in long before the zimmerman telegram of years, so it is an interesting thing because number one, talking about prejudice before the war, it is believed in the intelligence services mexicans can't pull anything off on the border. they need some supervision and they are behind everything going on down there so it is a sensation with what is going on in mexico. meanwhile, by 17 the french are on a breaking point and that is a moment to talk about. so the germans realize right before we come to the war that the united states is probably leaning on coming in. a lot of people will say about world war i the united states did do much.
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they were my kind of involved in the last months of the war. essentially 47 days of combat depending on the big flush and how you are counting. but america doesn't do much. that isn't totally true. you will often find the cat in the field of an 18 pounder because of the number of shells that are fired. i will tell you i would give you even odds when you pick one of the mathem out and look at it is either stamped or made in the u.s.. now that was probably fired in july of 1960. and we didn't have any that far north as we have been slightly south around their. but no american fired background, so that this positive that america is
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supplying the allies and she is leaning towards that way. so there is a gamble that needs to be taken which is you can either cut the allies supply line and okay, my slides don't want to cooperate. you can either cut the allied supply lines -- i have a wonderful picture of the ship sinking. i need help. they cut the supply lines and press the united states will enter the war in favor of the allies or you can do nothing. so, thank you. i love that national archive shot. this is the kind of thing that invokes a lot of feeling in the united states and a maritime nation. you've got the guy about to jump off the ship. there's a famous poster and was the first thing i thought when
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the president gave his speech. it's a very famous poster of a woman sinking into the atlantic. she has in her arms a little beautiful baby and of course that's played on the american consciousness. we don't enter the war because the lusitania through a lot of political maneuvering. but the truth of the matter is peace posters in the book he wrote so much passion that poster is one of the ones that helped change america's view of how the world was coming. but if you think about it if you were germany willing to remove unrestricted warfare you got a reason and the reason is if the united states does come into the war if we declare the war you have to have opportunity.
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you don't just because you know your sub captains were mad they are not doing anything. you're going to do it because the risk gives you reward. the risk and reward is you can conquer on the western front you can bring the french and british to the table on the western front for the united states can mobilize. they decided that they can do that and of course it is a bad decision. but i like to say that a lot of this comes from the fact we will talk about it in a minute a lot of this comes from the fact that 1918, the spring of 1918 when the germans think the united states will start getting troops over there as a moment of opportunity not to be a complete on the war, so it's not over and this is another point of why it's important.
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let's talk about that. some oso, the first question whu declare war in april, 1917, the first question is what do you need. so what do you have is the first thing that we come to and right now, 100 years ago there were military officers on a ship headed over to france to look at what was going on. we had people over there before but now they are looking at it seriously and you have to make a couple of assumptions. i am often accused of hating the battle in france and ahead of myself but i have to give this disclaimer. i hate the battle because the marines got credit for it and i think it sends that joined us back 100 years because they were
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so angry that the single service got credit and he took some pretty drastic actions like removing the marine corps officers commanding the army formations which was already happening. it's these forces that include everybody. a point that was made, this is a modern war and we have a phrase in the military i used to travel up in the secretaries office to detail. this is an important thing to bear in mind. how many people do you need behind that person to supply.
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so if you look at the spanish-american war it's about 1-for. so for every person shooting at a german in those days you have for people doing associated labor tests. >> take a guess. you're close. it depends how you calculate it. that looks haphazard but if you think about it we are not fighting in the united states, so the only thing that is american has to be loaded and
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shipped usually new york and it has to be put in one of them then you have to put it on the rail and then sent to the front. so before you pick the first one up in the hospital or something like that. that creates a brand-new organization called the s. o. s. a service of supply. there is no such thing in military history. there are the outfits in the beginning but not to this extent. by the way, this assumes that they do word over which they don't.
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it assumes they work and run on time as we like to say a. they decided by the end they are not going to work out that way. i just put it up for you in round numbers there's 300,000 people hanging around at the national guard or the u.s. army when we declare war so you have a huge dose of air and if you look at the 300,000 it's decided on. then it's decided and i find this interesting and this is one of the points i like to make for the future army officers they take the army and felt the current force structure so there isn't one single army division
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on the eve of world war i. arrange them for the border incursion but they set up just like this the regular army division. what does that mean they are not really regular army divisions. we will talk very quickly about the selective service but they are going to be mostly the cadre of one through 20 will be regular army people sergeant for 20 to 25 years and give the good news he's quick to be a lieutenant. when we do the world war i genealogy, people can figure this out. so it goes from corporal to sergeant major overnight. that's what is happening.
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the national guard is in some ways a little easier. it works in this way. there are those that have been around some of them are quite old. what they do is take the national guard units and pull them regionally into divisions and then they plan a regular army officer at the top of thate decision. but we give you the local. it's created from connecticut, vermont, maine, new hampshire, rhode island. he becomes very cozy with the congressional publications appear so he is very well thought of. they redesignate the outfits, but they are very much linked to the national guard heritage.
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again you can supplement them with draftees and people to volunteer but the core of the national guard outfit are people who've been serving in the state coalitions. in the 76 to 99 rain -- range, you have the new program at fort benjamin harrison will produce officers quickly and they will then align to the training cor corps. so now again the senior officers and regular officers of the national army are drafting regionally arranged in a weird set of situations coming up so it comes from the area around philadelphia, pennsylvania, new
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york but it varies. it's hard for me to understand. okay, so then of course if you were here this morning, this was taken apart wonderfully and i do want to say for those addicted to the morning lecture, the point was made very well the problem is we are not sure you can get the number of people you need to enlist for a lot of different reasons and the most compelling is the situation here in the united states that maybe we shouldn't be in this war at all to begin with. the interesting thing about the selective service draft is that it is as close to universal as it ever will be for this to go. the bottom line is african-american need to
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register and they can be drafted which generates this entire conversation about who needs to be in the war. this is a british poster because i couldn't find the american one but one of the ways to get people to do this is to shame them. what did you do in war, i didn't do anything in the great war because i was a coward, i wasn't going to kill myself. so they tried all kinds of ways to make sure that it didn't work and shaming people, they will run around with you when you need to get in the army because it is cool to be in the army and that is what people like. then of course big brother is always watching if you don't get in the army.
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24 million men ultimately register so that is in that little age group and i want to show you world war ii. it's interesting that as early as world war i, the question asked what is the number of people you can put in uniform before you change the nature of society so in other words, i'm glad think about this stuff. if we put anybody on a certain age group if we put them all in uniform, what is the magic breaking point before you changed the fabric. it's simply a person to the population it's decided 10% is the breaking point number.
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if we took 10% of the people in this room in a small community, almost everybody is going to be related to something. in comparison that is a big percentage of the population. in world war i we are pretty safe, so that is okay. i showed this picture for a number of reasons and they play this whole idea of lafayette. we are paying back the debt to france that we had.
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this is very much in the mind of the french. when we talked about the centennial. the other thing they cared about, i hate to use the word reenactment, but the commemoration at the tomb of lafayette in paris. what they said to me was well educated people that live in the united states that you think there could the appetites and a similar ceremony in the town in virginia, and i thought i was for you what, we are just outclassed by these guys because how many would be able to make that connection between
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lafayette coming to town and world war i and it was right up there. they talk about we should do something in the town, we should do something at crescendo and that whole crowd. that is uppermost in their mind. i love this photograph. this is a second favorite photograph. so this shows the mobilization of americans by the way the flags from 1874 if you count the stars, so this is out and nowhere america. look at everybody. so, the son and listed and the mother, she's not only a nurse that she is knitting a sweater for someone in the field. the daughter is farming for her liberty garden.
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their will be drafted into service but in segregated divisions and only the rare cases with african-american officers also in several regiments, so this is an interesting moment that doesn't play as well in world war ii quite frankly. where we think the world is a fait accompli and those that know about world war i know about the plush and it will be over in november. it's looking at what germany is
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thinking. remember knockout france, then they turned to russia and that doesn't turn out that there are no more so you have all these combat divisions available to you. you couple that with some pretty significant lessons and in a nutshell this is what they learned. when i say they learned this i have to be careful of the fringe audiences, the french are no longer a formidable enemy.
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on the western front is the british expeditionary force. they also learned they need to modify their tactics. they did both defensively and offensively. defensively they decide to build like they never have before. it was good throughout the war defending the terrain and now it is a great example we will talk about in a minute. allowing them when it's conducted to give ground that's not give the lineup so when you hear about the hindenburg line it is a series of lines and a deep series of lines. they learned offensively
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essentially what peopl we will l storm tactics in the later years which is to exploit any breakthrough and forget about having an enemy in your area but it gets to their area as far as they can to defend the control so if you can breakthrough i can exploit this breakthrough and group of people to push out on the initial attack and turn and get back to that area. back to my favorite comment on the detail of law in the logistics at the end of the day if you get somebody 30 or 40 kilometers how do you supply, at some point they run out of ammunition and you cannot just walk up to someone and say give me some ammunition. at any rate they do come up with new tactics and these top pieces
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coupled with the fact that now they are kind of ascendant in germany is decided there is no way that america can mobilize and get over there in time. we can bring them to the table. if you look at france and my wonderful chart and got hard red wine that's the british and that's the french, the most broad brushed one you will ever get, but they are going to come in on the french front near the town of this area so that's where the obligations will begin.
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we've heard talk about pershing not wanting to put america in as a filler and that isn't so true. we will talk about that in a minute. there is going to be some combined arms available to those people but not in the way that we do it today in the brigade combat. but you take a look up and it's about 27 k..
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there will be three or five divisions. we spent so much time making this but to make it a good the t point is talking about this again. in the civil war of these people would all be rifleman. now this is a fascinating chart for this reason. take a look at the way they organized the platoon and it tells you everything about the way that we are thinking in world war i. first section grenadier's. why do you want this as the first principle section because i'm about it how d after you tat
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a machine gun nest, a brigade. so the second section. if you get in trouble with a machine guthemachine gun in theo bring up the second section and then they can go together. part of the rifle platoons in the section and those are the ground guys. look at the fourth section of. it gives the automatic weapons fire so that is a first.
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if yo you tie this to the echel, the commission and brigade and the regimentaregimental commands to artillery. so we have come from the civil war model that has nothing but rifle people to a commander that has the ability to deploy automatic weapons, tapping into the artillery, and in addition to that because there will be a machine gun company, too. so that is a big jump in the combined arms. that is what the battalion into the regimen look like. so it's interesting that notionally speaking they can move around the supply company and the first battalion so it's kind of interesting people often
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ask why there is no j. company and that's because it would be confusing. square division, the regiments in the two brigades. take a look at the triangular division. more artillery available in world war ii. so, what the army came out of this understanding is we need even more artillery for the folks that are fighting. here is another little fun fact. when we shipped over there wasn't one single american-made machine gun at hands of the american expeditionary forces, not one single one. and in fact, artillery wise, the only american manufacturing artillery used in world war i are enabled on.
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used by the heavy artillery. we used all french artillery. we used british and french machine guns, these are british made. they are actually pretty good. so, they will fly through that battle because i want to leave time for questions. the first infantry division, by the way often known as pershing's division if you do not have a great jo do a great n the division were training, they will relieve you, no second chances. this is the first team, no kidding. i'm not just saying that because the first division but these are the ones. so, the lessons learned are this. and this is what you care about. pershing thinks like u.s. grant a lot of times.
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he thinks that americans are better, have higher morale and since they haven't been on the front, they can overcome the weary germans easily. happily, the first division commander disagrees with him as do many of his officers, so what we learn is you may be able to take the place that they will throw repeated attacks against you so think about the german strategy that i mentioned earlier that plays right into this. they have this in-depth flexible defense, they fall back a couple lines, reorganize, pound for pound pieces with artillery and then come back so we learned
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that is the way they pay so you may be able to capture the first or second but they are coming back. we are not finished. and as i told you, we also learned there's a great deal of tension between the five of the battle would look like with the allies and how they think. may and july, this is a game of salient. the operation doesn't matter. what matters is the germans managed to break out again. peres is here, 35 or so miles. it may be 10 miles out of here
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in fact we will hear from some people working on the project. at any rate this is where significant numbers of people go in and the third division is involved. the idea is to reduce and get the line back straight. americans in the second and third managed to stop this and the germans get over here and it's intensified over here where the bottom line is americans pushing back. the more interesting thing that happens in this fight is that the germans capture a number of americans here. it's not world war i or vietnam.
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people speak pretty freely. a couple of the people that are captured or interviewed by and basically say they are not traitors or anything they are around from the third division. the first is up north that's more common. when that information to to the german high command, they are shocked. i'd call this a turning point because if the intelligence is so bad at this point you don't know that there are multiple divisions here, you have a problem but it causes them to abandon the push on paris. i told you they cared about defeating the british but they are having some success so he changes his mind and says we will just capture and be done.
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it causes them to fall back on the next line. we will continually beat him back on the line from their. we are supplementing the french essentially, it is a couple positions. that's the first division gun and that is that the west point museum. they've dragged around the united states for the liberty to her. so the thing you all heard about the most was the type of double double beallou but that is the
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first big one everybody knows about. and i tell you as i mentioned i do believe that's at the operation back 100 years but we are marking the battlefield right now and i would commend me put a quality product together and if you ever are in france or paris it's not that far. it's about an hour away. go there and walk the battlefields. it's very complicate complicated defensive back and forth it's a neat place you should go. it is a beautiful world war ii marine statue. how do you like this map. so, we fight from that offense that i talked about, slowly back
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towards the river and quite frankly, that the americans are doing a fantastic job because we are fighting the rearguard. you will see what happens between july 18 and september 5. by that time look at the division numbers. get the 42nd and the rainbow division, the 28th division pennsylvania, 26, new england, third edition, regular army and ibm, first and second and up north. we've already put a lot, think of how many divisions we are in by september. the first arrived in june of 17. it's not the full division. at any rate i just wanted to show you the map.
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the most famous actually is the army unit. it's generally titled marines fighting in beallou. that is the 23rd regiment i think. this is a neat little less than it is a 37-millimeter cannon and it's the same gun that is on the tang was and this was another thing the regimental commander was in. they are always in the headquarters company. sometimes you will see the caption but it is in beallou towards the end.
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that is one of my favorite photographs for a couple of reasons. they were held off on the other side of the river and that is a french maid machine gun one of the go to the doubl trouble pief engineering. this is a british gas mask so in all of the combat years they probably got the dish helmets that we can tell because of the photo. okay. so, the first big offense in the deal he negotiates with the french high command and says i want to do this major offensive operation in the independent army and they said okay you can
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power. this is the chance where the crowd gets to take out an independent air arm. remember a lot of what we've are using it for wasn't dogfighting that what happens. it was for artillery observation so he could spot his artillery but that doesn't work out. we have supposed fight and what has to be done is about 40 kilometers from the launch point. you've got to take this whole crowd and move them onto the other side some 20 kilometers to the two things that are important about this or that preview of the american airpower
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and the might of the american logistics. it's the logistics of moving an army taking them out of a fight and taking them and re- stationing them north of where they are. this is a rural part of france. the tanks this is where he gets his moment in the sun and it doesn't amount to much. i want to show you the best map of those ever made.
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take a look at these defenses. each of these is a german wine. i had someone ask me in class here's the simple solution that runs beyond. that is the lateral supply line of the german army. the target of the campaign is not the hindenburg line but the town. if you can capture you can cut the line and they will be able to supply the line.
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that is the simplest explanation i can give you and we just pound our heads against the series of lines for the next couple of months to give you an example, the best example i can give you on this one is that it takes about two weeks to do that and this is where all the casualties come from. this is a hard fight. you see the september 26 line, october 15. that is a pretty famous place in france because there is a town and the german and french.
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in a couple of days they make the comment that says they try to buy tickets for over three days. but at any rate, it isn't so easy from the launch. so that is there because eventually we do break through the line. it is taken and there is a wonderful political game where the first edition fights with the french on who will liberate the town you will be out of a
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job and this isn't a good idea said he wants them to take them back in the franco prussian war. i think any world war i person would say this. world war i for the united states wasn't so much in the trenches. it's not the british experience also. i love the art. this is a painting by someone that was embedded in the american expeditionary forces in the magazine and he did some wonderful paintings and they all talk about it like the experience that happened.
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gas, wire, explosives, it is shaped to the generation, those that we showed in the photograph of people that wanted life to be normal again. another thing. it was the great hero of the lost battalion but other than that it is a great story. he holds out the lost battalion for many days being shelled out for his artillery on and off and he is our model.
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all he wants to do is get back to his life and shortly after the war, he is another that questions whether he did the right thing. should he have surrendered in the pocket, what should he have done to ask for aid for the wounded. he tries to go back to his normal life and then he's coming back from cuba not on holiday, does this holiday if you will. he did his colleagues at the dinner table that night and he gets up and walks off and is never seen again. and i think that this want and desire by the world war generation to return to normalcy
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is best expressed in the presidential campaigns that will follow shortly as something that is pervasive in that generation that was a generation of people that wanted to get the job done and get back to normal life. for that reason and many of the things i've talked about, that is what makes this an extraordinary expeditionary force. and i think it applies so much today so thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible]
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