W116HIST153

SHEILA TAYLOR
ONLINE CLASS

A DAY IN THE LIFE

Hello my name is Larry Finemen and I was a soldier in one of the greatest wars ever fought, War
World I to be exact, and Im not understanding why I was there, Im was 24 and in the trenches
right and to be quite honest as an American Soldier, I did not agree with this war. I spent my
time cold, alone and wishing I could be at home at each moment, what makes it so bad is that I
should not have been there simply because a war started from the death of an Austrian Archduke
Franz Ferdinand and his wife by a Serbian fellow called Gavrilo Princip, this lead to the July
Crisis which in turn started the war.
At this time there is a lot of balancing out of powers, and I guess the United States is feeling as if
they need to be a part of this, to show strength. Strangely enough when I landed in France in
1918, I was surrounded by African Vietnamese and Chinese troops, which really shifted my
world view of this war. There are modern machine guns, poison gas, tanks and aircraft and
submarines, but many artillery pieces were pulled it position by horses.
Iam a member of the 32rd Division, I use bugle calls as a form of communication, Im also a
accomplished bugle player, prior to getting in this war, that is what I did, and it has come in
handy in this mad war Im in.
I was wounded in 1918, during the Aisne-Marne Offensive by shrapnel in his arms, a notice was
sent to my family that I had been killed in battle, you see this war is not very organized and quite
often, information was lost or mis-handled. I progressed as a cavalry officer in the reserves as

time went on, when I think back, on my life I should not be here, I am now 65 telling my story to
my grand children, because you see mostly all the soldier of War World I are now gone. Many
of the men became political after the war and got involved in local politics, they wanted to have
a voice in political decisions, because they had no voice while in the war. Letters home to the
family help to get you through the day, when you were being shot at, or while you watched your
friends, sometimes your best friend lose his life right next to you.
If you ask me its too many big fish in the same pond, and this war is not going to be over for a
long time, but yet strangely enough I think back on how so many lives were lost based on a
disagreement between only a few, and thousands lost their lives, when they could have sat down
and came to a treaty of some kind and saved us all.

The war was basically Allies vs Central

Powers, the war lasted from 1914 to 1918, it was in 1918 that we decided to join the party,
changing many lives. The very strange thing about war is once I ran up against a German soldier
who was about my age, and he too was scared to death, we looked at each other and decided to
run the other way, we didnt want to die and had no desire to fight, we were just caught up in this
war without a choose. WWI was the war to end all wars but it was also the beginning of many
military and civilian technologies, its no secret war hurts everyone, but WW1 was one of the
most famous wars ever fought, this war pitted Germany, Austria=Hungary and the Ottoman
Empire (Central Powers) against Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Japan known as the
(Allied Powers), which United States join the Allied Powers and made their presence known and
the rest is history. As I aged and look Back on my grand children, what was it all for, and if we
had the chance to do it all again would we the United States get involved again.