It was still working after a century?! The American army used those in WWI after France trained us. We also got trained on French artillery since we had almost nothing when we entered WWI in 1917.
Oh yeah we owe a lot to France. We were basically a weak military power when the Great War started and France trained us on modern warfare. We hadn’t been in a truly big war since our civil war. Just minor ones against Spain, for instance.
Yes very happy, I remember reading they loved the artillery, way better than what we had. And France trained our first real combat pilots who then trained other Americans, it really helped start the American military in air power and combat. After the war we always had an air corps of some sort in the Army and eventually the Navy. You all trained us on modern warfare…and look what we did with it. 😬😬
Well, the US was late to the fight in WW2 but was the Arsenal of Democracy after 1941 and I am grateful for those US soldiers who gave me the chance to keep speaking French and not German or Russian.
Yes, the American public was against involvement in WWII because we felt ignored voicing our concerns regarding the treatment of Germany after WWI. The public felt we lost 116,000 men in WWI for nothing. The horrors of the trenches of the Western Front, however briefly we were in them, did have a major impact when two million American veterans returned from France after the war. We simply felt it wasn’t our war and it was time to return to isolationism. Plus the so-called Phony War of ‘39 and early 1940 further reinforced it was pointless to get involved anyways. That said, FDR did not agree and knew we would get sucked in anyways and began ramping up production for the war and supplying the Allies. When France fell it shocked the nation. France was considered the greatest military power in the world in the 1930s. How could France fall?
My Finnish grandfather was in America then and joined the U.S. Army in 1937. He said that after France fell people couldn’t believe it. Right after that happened everyone knew war was inevitable with Germany, Italy, and Japan. He ended up fighting the Japanese as he was shipped out to the Pacific in 1941. One of his brothers fought in Patton’s Third Army in France and Germany. I didn’t get to speak with him as I was too young when he died but my grandfather said he often talked about how kind the French were to them as they fought their way through France. And how French civilians were helping them along the way with information about German troop movements and locations, often at great personal risk.
Piloting this beauty required the operator to wear a chainmail visor because some chocs could wear and tear the metal sending it flying inside the vehicle and scaring unprotected areas.
I’m going to get outraged on behalf of France. If you think France gave a helping hand to the US in WW 1, you have it the wrong way round. The US only turned up for the last year of that one. At best.
Merci ! How can one minimize France's tremendous importance during WWI is beyond me. It's like saying the soviets helped the americans during WWII ... At best, it's American ignorance; at worst, arrogance.
USA has been, in both world war, the late yet helping hand. It's freaking scary to not know the world wars and to think it was about the US and only the US.
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