Word: verdun
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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World War I, the 20th Century's parent catastrophe, echoed faintly when Friedrich Wilhelm, the Hohenzollern crown prince of old Germany, and Henri Philippe Péetain, Marshal of France, died within four days. They had faced each other across the mass slaughter at Verdun; each, after his own fashion, had tried to make his deal with the mass brutality of Naziism that came after, and each died disgraced...
...eldest son of the late Kaiser Wilhelm II, great-grandson of Britain's Queen Victoria; of a heart ailment; in Hechingen, southwest Germany. During World War I, as commander of the Reich's Fifth Army, he took a decisive beating from Marshal Pétain at Verdun, fled to ignominious exile in Holland. In 1923, he returned to Germany, hoping to succeed his deposed father, instead bowed to Hitler, joined the Nazis. Near the end of World War II, the French found Wilhelm hiding in Austria and contemptuously sent him back to his Hechingen chalet...
Jerry Thomas has been in the thick of Marine Corps battles in both wars: Verdun, Belleau Wood, Soissons, Meuse-Argonne; Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Bougainville. A competent desk man as well as a first-class fighter, he was recalled from the Pacific in 1944 to head the Corps' Plans & Policies Division in Washington. Old Leathernecks recall his quizzical understatement during the fight for Guadalcanal : "We want to give them [the Japs] a sense of futility...
...treason, come to live in Spain and enjoy "the hospitality of our wonderful Mediterranean climate, where, until passions die down, he could spend the last years of his life, loved and respected." In Paris, a few World War I veterans, celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Battle of Verdun, remembered their old hero, set up a chant of "Set Pétain free" before police could silence them...
...strive to erect a wall of security for the free world," he said. He recalled the courage of free men in another day-the French at Verdun in 1916, the Italians at Vittorio Veneto,* the British in 1940 "when they stood alone against Hitler." For Americans he recalled Valley Forge. "Indeed, if each of us now proves himself worthy of his countrymen fighting and dying in Korea, then success is sure . . . "Each of us must do his part. We cannot delay while we suspiciously scrutinize the sacrifices made by our neighbors, and through a weasling logic seek some...