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Sure. Shoot me a message here, email, text message, carrier pidgeon, messenger boy.

I listened to Primo Victoria, and I was remembering Boston, and I was thinking to myself - the idea of an American, a German, a Canadian, and a Brit partying together, singing songs about a violent war pitting three against one in living memory...is incredible. Just...simply incredible. I am so glad to live today, and not a hundred years ago.
 
I had similar feelings. You don't have an idea how odd it sometimes feels when I talk to you guys and something reminds me that a hundred years ago, they'd have made me kill you.
 
I suppose you never traced back to see where you'd have ended up, but I did. The regiment raised from where I grew up was the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. 2nd Ypres, Somme, Mount Sorrel, Vimy, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Cambrai. Against the Prussians in almost every encounter except Vimy. Fuck.
 
Quoth Bruce at Knebworth: "If heavy metal bands were in charge of the world, there would be a lot of songs about wars, but there wouldn't be any wars."

In that sense:

You take my life, but I'll take yours too!
 
LooseCannon said:
I suppose you never traced back to see where you'd have ended up, but I did. The regiment raised from where I grew up was the North Nova Scotia Highlanders. 2nd Ypres, Somme, Mount Sorrel, Vimy, Hill 70, Passchendaele, Cambrai. Against the Prussians in almost every encounter except Vimy. Fuck.
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No, I didn't. Given the massive relocations my family endured during the wars, it's pretty difficult to tell, anyway. Should I go with my Saxon roots? My East Prussian ones? My Silesian ones? I know my great-great-grandfather served as a medic in Warsaw in the First World War. But not much else. Second? Half my family went missing somewhere between Poland, the Volga and the Black Sea.
 
Perun said:
No, I didn't. Given the massive relocations my family endured during the wars, it's pretty difficult to tell, anyway. Should I go with my Saxon roots? My East Prussian ones? My Silesian ones? I know my great-great-grandfather served as a medic in Warsaw in the First World War. But not much else. Second? Half my family went missing somewhere between Poland, the Volga and the Black Sea.
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If I went with my mom's side, they would have served in the Royal Highlanders of Canada - the only unit that held against the first chlorine gas attack at Ypres. Doesn't that sound like fun? Three of my great-great uncles were in the Seaforth Highlanders. They all died at Passchendaele.
 
My grandfather was shot down over Britain in 1940. The other one lost his legs somewhere on the East Front. The East Front, somewhere between Trieste and Stalingrad. I can't imagine anything scarier to anyone than those Russian winters in the forties.
 
Perun said:
My grandfather was shot down over Britain in 1940. The other one lost his legs somewhere on the East Front. The East Front, somewhere between Trieste and Stalingrad. I can't imagine anything scarier to anyone than those Russian winters in the forties.
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One grandfather was too young to serve - the other was torpedoed in the North Atlantic, but his ship made it to Halifax before being scrapped.
 
I guess the difference is, in countries like Canada, you talked about the wars. You didn't fail to mention how terrible it was, but you talked about it. In Germany, it took decades to get the first people to talk about it.
 
There's a lot of national shame in Germany - and a lot of pride, I think, that is even still wounded. It is hard to say which it is, or if it is both. But you already know my opinion - we have to talk about it, teach our children about it, because we can never, ever let it happen again.
 
Yeah, we've had the topic. It's still... you know, you don't have pictures of your grandfather in a Wehrmacht uniform.
 
Perun said:
Yeah, we've had the topic. It's still... you know, you don't have pictures of your grandfather in a Wehrmacht uniform.
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No. I don't. But in the end, it's not like he had a choice, either.

Ariana said:
With them. Bulgaria was their ally.
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I wasn't sure based on the way you wrote it, so I thought I'd best ask. I can honestly state that I am unfamiliar with what Bulgaria did in the Great War.
 
I think I read somewhere once that Bulgaria was one of the countries hit the hardest by the war. That's something you don't hear anything about here.
 
LooseCannon said:
No. I don't. But in the end, it's not like he had a choice, either.
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No, but there are hints in his notes from the time that he wasn't exactly ashamed of it either. And you know what the worst thing is? I caught myself thinking that he looked pretty snappy in that uniform.
 
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