American veterans

[Guest]

I found this interesting:

http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/news/article.ad...110154609990004

We don't hear so much about American veterans. I would be surprised if there are as many as 30 left.

[Mark Crame]

Probably all relatively young compared to other nations. By the time they joined in.

I'd be surprised at 30 though, what sort of numbers came over to Europe?

[Essexboy68]

Folks

The question of the US veterans & their relatively large numbers has been mentioned in passing a few times before I seem to recall. Surely, the number is as large as this due to the size of the US population, the large numbers of men recruited after April 1917 & the fact that many of these men would never have actually served overseas during the conflict. However, that is only an opinion, & not based on any concrete evidence.

Anyone else got other comments?

Cheers

Mark

[Neil Burns]

The number of surviving US veterans has been at 30 for a suspiciously long time, I really think this figure was published within the last few years and simply keeps getting repeated.

As for numbers, according to The War With Germany published in 1920 by the Government Printing office, 4.8 million Americans served in the armed forces. Of those 4 million were in the army. Going from memory, I believe 2 million (and possible change) served overseas.

Hope this helps,

Neil

[Guest Brock]

At the time of my post, the following site lists the number of U.S. veterans as 23.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surviving_Vet...First_World_War

The service career of Harold Gardner is quite interesting. On November 11, 1918 he was on a train to go to boot camp. An officer ordered him off the train and he received a cheque for $1.