The last combat veteran of The Great War passed away yesterday..

 

Combat Veteran Claude Choules Died

So, how many Germans did he score?

RIP

Long life.

I walk past a Great War memorial almost every day, and I try to keep it clean. But to be honest no-one gives a ****. All the trash I find is always sweet wrappers and cider cans. Poor dumb bastards can't even respect the fact that the lads comemorated by the stone were barely a few years older than they are.

 

I sometimes think that part of the problem is that we've eleavted the First World War to such an iconic status that it's lost meaning. It's practically religious.

 

It'd be far more effective to have all 14 year olds put trhough a 'great war experience', where they spend a week in a trench, living on runny tinned beef and crapping themselves inside out, ankle deep in mud, and coughing on arrtificial smoke. Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

The bashing dead with shovels is too personal and unrealistic. A combination of HE shells, mustard gas, snipers and machinegun fire would be better.

The bashing dead with shovels is too personal and unrealistic. A combination of HE shells, mustard gas, snipers and machinegun fire would be better.

 

I thought it would be nice for the Germans, who always seem to have learned their lesson, and probably deserve a break.

A completely pointless exercise, ww1. And after they actually thought that man had learned a profound lesson and would never do anything like that again.

 

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the populations on either side actually had gone past their breaking point for what they would endure and rebelled, as was in the cards had the war gone on much longer. That might well have spared us ww2. Just a thought.

Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

 

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1?

Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

 

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1?

 

Weirdly I thought someone might ask that. I made up the number. I think 18% would be a fairly high dead rate in most battalions. Though that's not counting injured.

Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

 

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1?

 

Weirdly I thought someone might ask that. I made up the number. I think 18% would be a fairly high dead rate in most battalions. Though that's not counting injured.

 

I think on the first day of the Somme that would be a tad on the low side.

On a slightly random note.. I caught a Time Team episode the other week, where they were digging up one of the worlds biggest flamethrowers from the Somme. It was used quite smartly and was one of the few locations where the British made an advance with minimal casualties on their side.

 

They got the Royal Engineers to build one based on the designs and it was seriously nasty-impressive when they tested it.

Then at the end of the week an exchange group of Germans bash 18% of them dead with shovels.

 

Im probably reading too much into this but is that just some percentage you made up or is that the percentage of losses suffered by England's population in WW1?

 

Weirdly I thought someone might ask that. I made up the number. I think 18% would be a fairly high dead rate in most battalions. Though that's not counting injured.

 

I think on the first day of the Somme that would be a tad on the low side.

 

Apparently I was 2% out, overall. But individual battalions did get almost completely destroyed.

What a long and interesting life. Think about this, by the time Beatles got big, he had already been in retirement for 7 years.

I always think about the poor young lads who never got to have a long and interesting life, or even dull and intermediate ones. It's why I don't so much mind kids getting drunk on the war memorial. I figure it would be just the thing they'd want to see, not more tedious bastards in uniform.

 

I don't include that unspeakable s*** who peed on the war memorial last year.