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stevep
Boulder climber
Salt Lake, UT
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Fairly entertaining, though it might have been better to have the French, British and German combatant spill out into the street and roll around in the mud beating the crap out of each other for several hours without gaining anything, as that might be a better reflection of the Western front.
Could also add that several of the combatants develop extremely toxic flatulence as a result of bad beer.
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survival
Big Wall climber
Terrapin Station
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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And shortly after it was finished, America ended up losing its liquor license.
I'm astounded no one else picked up on that line, Chaz. It's brilliant!
The bar fight analogy is, sad to say, more on the mark than many realize. Nicholas II, Wilhelm and George V were all Victoria's grandsons. The saddest fact, to me, was that Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke assassinated in Sarajevo, was a reformer who, had he lived and come to the throne, probably would have modernized Austria/Hungary and we could have been spared both World Wars -- and maybe even the Cold War.
My father missed WWI by a few months; he didn't turn 18 until March of 1919. My mother was imprisoned in Turkey in 1915 for the crime of being Armenian. She was released rather quickly, but my grandfather, a professor and intellectual leader in Ottoman Armenia, was tortured and killed almost immediately.
The human suffering in WWI was so enormous that several generals in Hitler's army thought that if they could only let the German people know that Hitler was about to start another war, the German people would rise and oust him.
My bottom line on Wolrd War One, though, remains sadness in the irony that "the war to end all wars" resulted in "a peace to end all peace." (With apologies to David Fromkin).
John
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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"...several of the combatants develop extremely toxic flatulence as a result of bad beer."
Ever heard of deaths by "friendly gassing?" Sh#t happens, gas follows.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/world-war-remembered-story-scottish-3402480
thinking of scout trips to Forresta
There was in the Padilla cabin there a loft for lots of skiers--was the original idea--but during the sixties it was pretty much used by our guys on weekend trips.
It was like a barracks, but only singles and a steep A-frame ceiling only ten feet high. See, I mean smell, the gas collected up there was pretty awful. We could sniff it if we stood on the cots.
As we lay there fartin'
We considered startin'
The abomination
Of conflagration.
We never tried to light the flame
We collectively denied the blame
For any suggestion, oh so dire,
Which might begin a forest fire.
It became de rigeur to mutter "Sulfur..." whenever we let loose a trouser frog, an air bagel, a barking spider.
A gennulmun's fart fight?
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guyman
Social climber
Moorpark, CA.
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Mouse, thanks for the u-tube.
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