Blog 4 --- "The Good War" --- introduction & Bob Rasmus

Bob Rasmus was an infantryman and rifleman in World War II. The most interesting part of his interview was when he was talking about how he felt right before going into battle. When describing his feelings, Rasmus stated, "The reason you storm the beaches is not patriotism or bravery. Its that sense of not wanting to fail your buddies..." I think this is really interesting and relates to the story we read in class, Johnny Got His Gun. In the story, a soldier, Joe, lays in a hospital bed. He is in absolutely terrible condition and has lost his arms, his legs, and all of his face, although his mind is still functioning perfectly. In the story, he questions war and the reasons that soldiers go to fight. Joe questioned fighting for empty words like "democracy", "freedom", and "patriotism". I believe that what Rasmus says is a possible response to Joe's argument. Rasmus agrees with Joe initially by admitting that when he is out in the battlefield, he is not thinking about patriotism, democracy, bravery, or any of those empty words. What he was thinking about when he got into battle was not wanting to fail his buddies. Rasmus knew that a huge parentage of males in their late teens or early twenties were getting shipped off into World War II. He also knew that the enemy he was fighting was the same enemy that had taken lives of some of his best friends, and was still trying to take the lives of more of his friends as well as his own life. So, when Rasmus got out into the battlefield, he wasn't thinking about his country, about democracy, or about freedom. Instead of thinking about words he could not really relate to, he was thinking about the people he could relate to most: his friends that were also in the war and also being attacked by the Axis Powers. He felt a sense of responsibility to protect his buddies, and he felt as if not giving his best effort towards the war could lead to the same enemy hurting or killing some of his buddies, and he didn't want to let them down.

Entry 3 --- Yoders + Peggy Terry and Mary Owsley

The story of Jane and Tom Yoder was yet another way for us to see how terrible life was for a majority of the country during the times of the great depression. There was one part of the their story that interested me most. The part of the story that interested me was when Jane talked about how during the depression, all of the kids in the house actually felt bad going to the grocery store and buying food when they were hungry because were afraid to raise the grocery bill for their father. Jane commented, "I don't remember so much my going to the store and buying food. I must have been terribly proud and felt: I can't do it. How early we all stayed away from going to the store, because we sensed my father didn't have the money. So we stayed hungry." It's really hard to imagine the situation Jane and her brothers and sisters were in. They were only kids, and they were hungry each and every day as their parents failed to get food on the table for them consistently. For a child like Jane to be hungry and in need of food, and then feel too bad to go to the grocery store and spend her parents' money is extremely disheartening. It's one thing for an adult to be put in an extremely difficult position, but it is twice as sad for a child to have to experience what Jane did.

The most interesting part of the story of  Peggy Terry and her mother Mary Owsley was that families of soldiers who had just returned from fighting in World War I ended up in even worse shape than the average American family because of the great depression. When Mrs. Owsley described how her husband, who was a World War I veteran, used to talk regarding the great depression, she explained, "He'd say them damn Germans gassed him in Germany. And he come home and his own Government stooges gassed him and run him off the country up there with the water hose, half drowned him." After coming back from World War I, most people would have thought that soldiers would have been treated especially well. Today, we show great respect for those who are fighting in Iraq as well as those who are survivors of past American wars. But, back around 1930, war veterans ended up living lives that were even tougher than the lives of average Americans. Many veterans suffered from post war syndromes, and even years after they returned from the war, they were not fully compensated for their effort in the war. Instead, they were given certificates that could not be redeemed for cash until 1945. So, in the toughest years of American history, not only were veterans suffering from post war syndromes and struggling to find jobs, but they couldn't even collect their payments for the time they served in the war. This lead to the Bonus Army's march on Washington, where as Mr. Owsley put it, "his own Government stooges gassed him". The bonus army was actually attacked by US soldiers outside the Whitehouse, where members of the bonus army were hurt and wounded. It was amazing how little respect was shown for WWI veterans during arguably the toughest period in American history.

Arthur A Robertson & Clifford Burke (Hard Times)

It was really interesting for me to read two different accounts of the Great Depression, one from a white man and one from a black man. From the Robertson's prospective, who was white, the Great Depression was the worst time of his entire life. Lots of people who were close to Robertson were completely ruined by the Great Depression. Robertson explained, "October 29, 1929, yeah. A frenzy. I must have gotten calls from a dozen and a half friends who were desperate...suicides, left and right, made a terrific impression on me, of course. People I knew. It was heartbreaking. One day you saw the prices at a hundred, the next day at $20, at $15..." Robertson was an extremely wealthy man who had wealthy friends and family, and when he responded to how he was affected by the Great Depression, he naturally focused on how prices of stocks had dropped by 70 or 80 percent. He focused on the fact that friends and family who had everything invested in the stock market now had nothing, and began calling him frantically asking for cash loans to help them out. Another story that Robertson focused on when describing how he was affected by the Great Depression was his story about Jesse Livermore. Livermore was one of his acquaintances, who at one point was valued to be worth anywhere between 400 and 500 million dollars. At one point, he was quoted saying, "Young man, what's the use of having ten million if you can't have big money?" He talked about ten million dollars like it was pocket change. After the market crashed, he was one of the desperate people who came running to Robertson for a 5,000 dollar loan. He had lost everything in the stock market crash. Days later, he was found dead in the bathroom of a restaurant after shooting himself. For white men like Robertson who was able to have a great job and able to work the stock market, the biggest way the stock market affected him was his rich friends and family losing everything they had. But, for a black man like Clifford Burke, the stock market crash had virtually no affect on his life. He claimed, "The negro was born in depression. It didn't mean too much to him, the Great American Depression. There was no such thing. The best he could be is a janitor or a porter or a shoeshine boy...If you can tell me the difference between the depression today and the depression of 1932 for a black man, I'd like to know it..." When we study and learn about the great depression, we always focus on how the depression hit the upper and middle class of the country because that is who the depression clearly had the greatest affect on. The upper and middle class of people are the ones who invested in the stock market, and therefore are the ones who were affected the most. It's interesting to hear about the depression from a black man's prospective because back in 1929, blacks in America were still facing extreme racism and it was rare for a black man not to be apart of the lower class. So, for blacks in the country at that time, life basically couldn't get any worse. They were already the poorest in society. They held the worst jobs and lived in the worst neighborhoods, and they made the lowest incomes. So from a black man's point of view, blacks were already in poverty, and the only thing the great depression actually did was bring whites down to their economic level. Burke explained, "It was a rarity to hear a Negro killing himself over a financial situation. He might have killed himself over some woman. Or getting in a fight. But when it came to the financial end of it, there were few who had anything..." It was interesting to see how for a wealthy white man like Arthur A Robertson, he was affected so greatly because people he knew and were friends with him ended up committing suicide because their lives were so bad. But for a black man, committing suicide over a financial situation was a "rarity". When we study the great depression, we usually fail to study how the African American community was affected simply because they weren't affected at all. The fact that African Americans were not even affected by the worst financial crisis in American history just shows how terrible life was for them in the decades before the stock market crashed.