The story, as I understand it, is that my Uncle Willy hightailed it out of Germany as Hitler rose to power, found his way onto a ship, and tried to sneak past immigration into the United States. He was turned away, so he got back on the ship and headed north to Canada, where he was accepted. Safely in Canada, he made his way back into the United States (successfully this time), where he promptly signed up to join the Army and shipped right back to Europe to fight Nazis.
I don’t know all the details, but Willy was assigned to a tank crew. At some point he learned that he was being paid less than his fellow soldiers, so he complained to a superior, who laughed at him and said he was lucky to be able to fight period. “You’re just a German,” the guy said. “You’re not worth as much. Well, that pissed my great-uncle right off, so he went to THAT guy’s superior and made his case for equal pay. Whatever he said, it worked.
I was probably about 8 or 9 years old when I heard this story straight from my uncle. I probably got a few details wrong and Uncle Willy is long gone. But hey, Happy Veterans Day! And while you’re at it here’s some truth about the more recent wars.
If they’d known that his nephew would make harassing phone calls to U.S. Congresspeople, they would have built a moat with crocodiles on the Canadian border to keep him out.
Be fair, I only make those calls to people who deserve it. I have never once bothered Bernie Sanders.
You definitely got some details wrong. Pay in the military, and in civil service as well, is strictly on the basis of rank and service time, your superiors cannot change it without an official promotion. Two privates will make exactly the same amount of money (about $40/month in WW II). Perhaps the others were Pfc’s and he was a buck private and he got promoted to Pfc which would have been fairly routine once one was in combat.
Well, I was only 9 when I heard this. That was 35 years ago.
US Dept of Veterans Affairs
Mark Knopfler’s “Remembrance Day” is dedicated to the British Commonwealth servicemen, and this video is dedicated to the Canadians, but it’s fitting for our own Veterans Day as well:
Also, check out 1916, by Motorhead. Brutal.
War poetry requires trigger warnings these days. How will we ever learn if we don’t really consider the human consequences?
One of the endearing things about Remembrance Day services is that they remind us how dreadful the actual wars really were.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Alexander McCrae, was a field surgeon with the Canadian Expeditionary Force and author of the famous elegiac poem In Flanders Fields:
Imagine that.
I try not to imagine that. I recently watched the documentary series “Apocalypse: WWI”, though, and the horrors of that war struck deep. Am trying to work up the strength to watch “Apocalypse: WWII” from the same filmmakers.