WWI - Over There

Thanks chip!

Headline seen on a satirical newspaper while killing time in a bookstore in London.

ARCHDUKE FERDINAND FOUND ALIVE! FIRST WORLD WAR A MISTAKE!

Actually the end had nothing to do with us. We were a minimal player. WW1 was a money war and an attrition war and the losers lost due to running out of toys and money. We needed to get into the war to learn how to perform on a global scale. We had a big Navy and Army and needed to see how we'd do on the big stage. Keep in mind that we're wearing British helmets, driving French tanks and borrowing other stuff as we are literally newbies. We have few gas masks and while Eddie Rickenbacker looks cool in his goggles, he's sitting in a French plane. WW1's end had already been decided prior to us landing.

Now that's not to take anything away from the Navy's railway gun success, Rickenbacker's aerial prowess or ground successes at Belleau Wood and other places, but we came in at a good time. We experienced little of the gas massacres that we would have been unprepared for in 1914 and we had no armor of our own and little else.