13. Secret Military History

1918-1015, Health, Spanish Influenza Outbreak.
An Army cook at Camp Funston, a sub post of Ft Riley, KS had a bad cold, he continued to cook, within 2-weeks 40-Soldiers at Funston were dead, that number would raise to 900 dead at Ft Riley within 6-weeks. The 89th Inf. Div, even though 4,500 Soldiers were sick went to France, they took the Spanish avian flu with them.
In 18-months, 40-million people were dead. 47,000 US Soldiers died of the flu, the same number of US deaths in WWI.

1919-0215, Gay, the First Major Homosexual Scandal in the Military.
Newport, Rhode Island had a large Gay community centered on the local Army and Navy YMCA. Navy Chief Machinist’s Mate Ervin Arnold who was a Connecticut state detective before joining the Navy, toured the Gay areas and wrote a report of his findings to the Naval Commander of the Naval Training Station.
During further investigations, seventeen Sailors were court martialed. The real scandal involved the use of fifteen Gay Sailors to infiltrate the Gay community to gather evidence of misconduct. The Gay investigators were not charged.

1919-0615, UCMJ, Death Sentence in WW1.
145 Death sentences in the US military during WW1.
035 Number put to death. All are black.
021 Number executed for murder.
011 Number executed for rape.
003 Number executed for rape and murder.

1920-0109, A Million Horses Went to War 65,000 Came Back.
A million horses were killed serving with Allied troops in the First World War.
Despite many people assuming the conflict was all about brutal trench warfare, the truth is cavalry men still charged into battle on horseback.
Their loyal steeds were also vital for dispatching messages and taking guns, men and supplies to the front and casualties back to safety.
In fact, during the four-year campaign the British Army shipped more tons of animal food overseas than ammunition.
Veterans interviewed after the war say they were very fond of their horses. “If you live intimately with a horse, you form a close bond. You rely on them to keep you alive. If you are on a horse and it stumbles and falls into a shell hole or doesn’t do the right thing at the right moment when you are up against an enemy, you both die.”
The horse would be a soldier’s constant companion. Not only the cavaliers, but gunners and wagon drivers would be working with the horses. If a horse was badly injured, such as suffering a broken leg, they had to be put down, it was very difficult for the men to kill their horse, but it is the last act of kindness you could show them. Horses were great for reconnaissance work, they are quiet. If a man steps on a land mine, he loses his life or his leg and goes home. If a horse steps on a mine, you get another horse. By the end of the First World War, all sides used 8,000,000-horses and 213,000-mules. Of the 1,000,000-horses from England who went to war, only 65,000 came back. Most of the horses who did not return were sold, 500,000-British horses died on the Western Front. The other allies had 542,000-horsed killed. The overall horse fatality figure during WW1 is 2,000,000. Horses were no match for machine-guns. The day machine-guns became common on the battlefield is the day horse cavalry became obsolete. They were replaced by tanks.

1921-1024, Military, Unknown Soldier is Selected.
In the French town of Chalons-sur-Marne, an American officer selects the body of the first “Unknown Soldier” to be honored among the approximately 77,000 United States servicemen killed on the Western Front during WWI.
According to the official records of the Army Graves Registration Service deposited in the U.S. National Archives in Washington, four bodies were transported to Chalons from the cemeteries of Aisne-Marne, Somme, Meuse-Argonne and Saint-Mihiel. All were great battlegrounds, and the latter two regions were the sites of two offensive operations in which American troops took a leading role in the decisive summer and fall of 1918. As the service records stated, the identity of the bodies was completely unknown: “The original records showing the internment of these bodies were searched and the four bodies selected represented the remains of soldiers of which there was absolutely no indication as to name, rank, organization or date of death.”
The four bodies arrived at the Hotel de Ville in Chalons-sur-Marne on October 23, 1921. At 10 o’clock the next morning, French and American officials entered a hall where the four caskets were displayed, each draped with an American flag. Sergeant Edward Younger, the man given the task of making the selection, carried a spray of white roses with which to mark the chosen casket. According to the official account, Younger “entered the chamber in which the bodies of the four Unknown Soldiers lay, circled the caskets three times, then silently placed the flowers on the third casket from the left. He faced the body, stood at attention and saluted.”
Bearing the inscription “An Unknown American who gave his life in the World War,” the chosen casket traveled to Paris and then to Le Havre, France, where it would board the cruiser Olympia for the voyage across the Atlantic. Once back in the United States, the Unknown Soldier was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington, D.C.