World War I | "Heaven, Hell, or Hoboken" | 5

American History Tellers

Wondery

Society & Culture, Kids & Family, History, Education For Kids

4.7 • 18.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2024

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

After the United States declared war on Germany in April 1917, America scrambled to assemble boot camps across the country to train a fighting force to send to Europe. The training was fast, with recruits using old weapons, and sometimes even broomsticks as rifles. The new soldiers then embarked from Hoboken, New Jersey, on a trip across the Atlantic to bolster exhausted French and British forces. Today, Lindsay is joined by Christopher Capozzola, author and professor of history at MIT, to discuss what recruits went through as they prepared for war. His book is called Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wunderry Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American history tellers early and
0:05.1	ad free right now. Join Wundery Plus in the Wundery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's October 1918 and you're a major in the US Army. You and roughly 550 men
0:28.7	under your command are trapped on the north slope of a ravine in northwest France and the situation's bleak.
0:35.0	The Germans have you surrounded.
0:37.0	Ammunition is running low and for the past hour a relentless artillery barrage has pinned your unit down. The worst thing is, it isn't the Germans
0:45.4	bombarding you, but your own sign. Another shell slams into the ground above, causing
0:51.5	dirt to rain down. You ignore it, stay focused on your watch,
0:55.7	timing the gap between shells. Counting the seconds, you realize your hunch is right. The
1:01.4	bombardment has eased. Not much, but enough to give you a chance to get
1:05.7	word to command that it's your unit they're firing on. You race out of the bunker and to the
1:11.5	command hole where the pigeons are.
1:13.6	The private who tends the carrier pigeon salutes.
1:16.5	Major sir, at ease private.
1:18.5	The bombardment has eased.
1:20.1	We need to use this opportunity to send a pigeon to command to tell them to stop shelling our position.
1:24.8	How many birds we got? Just too, sir.
1:27.8	You and the private eyes meet and the silent acknowledgement of how dire this situation is.
1:33.0	Pigeons are the only way to communicate with headquarters.
1:36.0	Your unit has no telephones.
1:38.0	No courier would make it back alive,
1:40.0	and the Germans will do all they can to shoot any pigeon your unit releases.
1:44.0	My private prepare a bird with this message.
	...

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