by jacquelyn horkan, editor
But down the entire
street there was whiskey and beer, and nothing else... This was Last Chance Street - last
chance for a drink or a girl before Cuba.
Charles Johnson Post, The Little War of Private
Post
To you from
failing hands we throw The torch;
be yours to hold it high.
In Flanders Fields by John McCrae (1872-1918)
They were the doughboys, young men who left their farms and towns and cities to fight
civilization’s first world war. They held the bridges at Chateau-Thierry, stormed the
Saint-Mihiel salient, and watched friends die in the Argonne Forest. They revolutionized
the art of war with planes, machine guns, and submarines.
Back home, wives, parents, and girlfriends obeyed government war posters urging them to
"Beat Back the Hun with Liberty Bonds." They sang patriotic songs to the
accompaniment of John Philip Sousa and his Navy band. They bought the sheet music for
George M. Cohan’s hit song Over There. On the cover was a drawing by a young
unknown artist named Norman Rockwell.
When the fighting ended on Nov. 11, 1918, 126,000 doughboys were dead, members of the
poignant regiment of 8.3 million who lost their lives during the four years of war.
They are a fading generation, America’s veterans of World War I. Today, there are
fewer than 4,400 left, asking if their youth, courage, and sacrifice will be remembered
after the last one of them is gone.
Nov/Dec 1998 -- Florida Business Insight, PO Box 784, Tallahassee, Fl
32302,
(850)224-7173, insight@aif.com |
