Re[2]: [at-l] Veteran's Day Observations

[tmcginnis@ucclan.state.in.us (Thomas McGinnis)]

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Subject: Re: [at-l] Veteran's Day Observations
Author:  bullard@northnet.org at ima
Date:    11/11/99 9:14 PM
     
I recently finished reading "Liberty", the story of the American Revolution 
based on the PBS miniseries (which I didn't see). If it's any consolation 
to my fellow vets, those who won our independence from the English throne 
were even less appreciated than Vietnam vets. Many of them never even got 
all their back pay. Congress was broke because the States wouldn't give it 
any power to raise money and the soldiers were given promissory notes when 
they were discharged. Most traded the notes to speculators for a pittance 
in order to buy a new set of clothes and go home. They weren't necessarily 
appreciated back home either and often found that their property had been 
destroyed by the British or Loyalists so they had to start all over (no GI 
Bill either). It's not trail related, I know, but it was a great read. I 
wish the history book I had in school had been half as interesting.
     
Saunterer


     ***************And in that vein, Sloe That Toe follows up with:

          It was Cap Huff who said that no business or profession, not 
          even the managing of a distellery, can provide the profusion 
          of delights to be incountered in a good war. I have not 
          found it so; and for my part I want no more of such delights 
          as the powder-blackened faces of the men who died beside us 
          aboard the row-galleys of Lake Champlain, the painted masks 
          of the greasy Indians that laid us by the heels, and the 
          dreadful labors we endured before we stopped the British. 
          Unfortunately, I have others to consider; and it is for 
          their sakes that I recall the burdons of those nightmare 
          days. 
          [first paragraph of _Rabble_in_Arms_ by Kenneth Roberts.]
     
     Curiously, the second and third paragraphs provide first-person 
     narrative of the type of issues Saunterer describes above.
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