Dumb Stupid Animals

Familiar with the carnage on the Western Front (Great War 1914~1918) I was perplexed by the apparent stupidity of youth. Many were the grained images of young men pushing others aside to get through the doors of Army recruitment offices. I wondered if Henry Kissinger might have a point in observing that:

Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.

I was then reminded that few of those young men had ever held a job, worn anything but cast-offs, slept in a decent bed or ate a square meal. The services offered relief from grinding poverty beyond our comprehension. Such was that generation’s deprivation that death might be a symbolic falling on the sword as recompense for being born on the wrong side of the railroad tracks.

US Depression 1 (1)

US Depression 1 (1)World War Two loomed and things hadn’t improved much. The American and British working class were on the road. Seven million Americans with relative numbers in Britain died from hunger-related causes. Churchill’s and then F.D.R’s declared or contrived war on the Workers Reich offered salvation.

Dumb or not, if you’re drafted you are shafted. Of the 16 million American servicemen conscripted into military service during World War Two less than 1/30 (600,000) volunteered. The majority of those who did so jumped before they were pushed. They were smart enough to know that by volunteering they would be better rewarded than those waiting for the ominous envelope to arrive. A volunteer had some choice as to what service branch he served in; conscripts had little or no choice.

Not all rookies were enthusiastic. At the onset of America’s entry into World War Two draftees discovered that bed-wetting earned them an honourable discharge. An unfortunate choice of words, but that is how it was. After this ruse was discovered the incidence of bed-wetting shot up by 1,200 per cent in one Texas training camp alone. It was only stopped when the US War Department issued a circular removing it as a ‘psycho-neurotic discharge.’

The U.S. economy suffered more hours lost through desertion than it did through industrial strikes. During the American Depression the number of unemployed in the United States reached eleven million. With no social security available an alternative life in the services offered three hearty meals a day, comradeship, a clean bunk with shower facilities, new clothes and shoes with no rent to pay. There would be career opportunities, sport, travel, free laundry and $21 a month (a lot of money then). It gets better as there would be no fighting to do. President F D Roosevelt had pledged to the electorate, “We shall not send your sons abroad.”

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Similar social deprivation existed in Britain. Millions of bread-winners were unemployed and also unable to feed their families. There was no such thing as social security or benefits as we know them today. There was the government’s means test. This meant you had to sell your furniture, even your bed before the state would offer a few coins.

Obliged to go cap in hand to a state relief office the soul-destroying humiliation of wending one’s way through the interrogative vetting procedure was such that few took that course for the few shillings it might provide if successful.

Men in such distressing circumstances were dependent upon family support. Many turned their hand to whatever task they could whilst others begged on the streets.

We often see veterans parade. Respect not their fighting for their country but for their fighting for their daily bread. Respect that many of these old men wore uniform not to fight German infamies but the infamies of their corrupt political elite who profit from war.

Source Article from http://www.renegadetribune.com/dumb-stupid-animals/

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