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Who Are The Celebrities Who Were Veterans Of The Great War


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Seeing we're in the Centennial of the Great War, I came up with this idea as a remembrance for this new topic.

 

Celebrities and other Notables on both sides, and in all Armies/Navies who were in Service during the war, There were a lot. Post them here, and if possible, try to also find and post a photo of them in uniform. I'll always add a wiki link to show him, as there are a lot of young members who'll be most unfamiliar with the subject in question.

 

Here the first one.

 

Walter Pidgeon, a Canadian born 1897, served 65th Battery, Royal Canadian Field Artillery. He never saw action, he was severely injured in an accident in training in Canada when he was crushed between two gun carriages and spent seventeen months in a military hospital, and was discharged because of this.

 

 

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Couldn't find a service foto of him, but here he is with Ginger Rodgers in the 1965 T.V. version of Cinderella.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pidgeon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Great topic

Walter Brennan - 101st artillery served on the western front

Raymond Massey- Canadian artillery served on the western front

Ronald Coleman- seriously wounded during the 1914 battle of Messines

Buster Keaton - Us Army

Edward G Robinson - Us Navy

Leslie Howard -Officer on the Western front just to name a few. I'll work on finding photos of them and others in uniform

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North Carolina Senator Sam Ervin 'The country lawyer' who was most notable for his involving the Watergate investigation and the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy served with the 1st Division in WWI and earned the DSC.

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, July 9, 1918, takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Private Samuel J. Ervin, Jr. (ASN: 307891), United States Army, for extraordinary heroism in action while serving with Company I, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division, A.E.F., near Soissons, France, 18 July 1918. During the attack when the leaders of the other two platoons of his company had become casualties, Private Ervin displayed marked courage and leadership in assisting his platoon commander in reorganizing those platoons and in fearlessly leading one of the platoons through heavy enemy artillery and machine-gun fire to the capture of the objective. Upon arriving at the objective they were swept by terrific fire from an enemy machine-gun nest which inflicted heavy casualties. Private Ervin called for volunteers and led them in the face of direct fire in a charge upon the machine-gun nest until he fell severely wounded in front of the gun pit; but two members of the party reached the machine gun, killed the crew, and seized the gun. After being wounded he crawled back to the firing line and organized an automatic-rifle post and refused to be evacuated until danger of counterattack had passed. Private Ervin's gallant conduct in this action exemplified exceptional courage and leadership and was an inspiration to his comrades.

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Walt Disney

 

In WW1, Disney tried to enlist in the US Army in 1917 but was rejected due to his age (he was only 16 at the time). Undeterred, he instead joined the Red Cross and spent a year on the Western Front as an Ambulance-driver.

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Charles Dawes 30th Vice President of the United States who served under President Coolidge. He was also the architect of the famous Dawes Plan to stabilize post war Europe and allocate loans to the former Entante powers mostly Germany who had been hammered with post war reparations. During WWI he initially served with the 17th Engineers but after working his way up the chain of promotions ultimately becoming a Brigadier General he served as chairman of the general purchasing board for the AEF and a recipient of the DSM and CdG.

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Jay Hormel who served with the Service of Supply applied his training in logistics from his time with the AEF where he utilized a tactic to save nearly half the cargo space needed to ship meat to France by boning and freezing it. He went back to the family meat packing company in Austin, MN and revolutionized the industry becoming CEO of the company that would pioneer a WWII G.I. classic- SPAM!

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Salvage Sailor

Edouard Izac - Congressman, inspected WWII concentration camps, early advocate of nuclear disarmament after viewing Atom bomb tests in the Pacific

 

At the time of his death, he was the last living Medal of Honor recipient from World War I. Also my number one choice for true WWI war movies not yet made.....The Prisoner of the U-90

 

Edouard V. Izac: WWI Medal of Honor
January 27, 1990 TIMES STAFF WRITER
SAN DIEGO — The last surviving World War I Medal of Honor recipient, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Edouard Victor Michel Izac, has died in his sleep. He was 100 years old when he died Jan. 18.
Izac, a former California congressman, was aboard the troop transport President Lincoln on May 31, 1918, when a German submarine sank it with three torpedoes.
Captured by a U-boat, he was able to glean strategic information about the positions of German submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. Izac tried several times to escape, once by jumping out the window of a moving train en route to Villingen, Baden. But, having injured his knees and head, he was recaptured.
Izac eventually escaped, trekking through the mountains of southwest Germany and swimming across the Rhine River.
"Even among Medal of Honor winners, Izac stands out as a particularly heroic figure," said retired Rear Adm. Gene La Roque, director of the Center for Defense Information in Washington.
Then-Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt presented the Congressional Medal of Honor to Izac Nov. 11, 1920.
Izac graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1915. He is survived by five children, 19 grandchildren and 25 great-grandchildren. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

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Basil Rathbone the actor who made Sherlock Holmes famous on the silver screen in the 1930s & 40s. He served in France as a Second Lt. in the 2nd Bn, London Scottish and was awarded the Military Cross

 

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Salvage Sailor

One of the 20th century's greatest architects Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, original name Maria Ludwig Michael Mies (March 27, 1886 Aachen, Ger - Aug 17, 1969 Chicago, Ill)

German-born American architect whose rectilinear forms, crafted in elegant simplicity, epitomized the International Style of architecture.

During World War I Mies served four years in the German Engineer corps building bridges and roads in the Balkans.

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post-34986-0-79900100-1454903084.jpg Alfred Eisenstaedt

 

Eisenstaedt was in the German Army in an Artillery Regiment on the Western From from 1916 on, he was badly wounded in December 1917, one source says he was the only survivor of his Battalion.

 

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Eisenstaedt who was Jewish left Germany and came to the U.S. he was the one who took that Iconic photo in Times Square NY NY of the sailor with the nurse on VJ Day. I think he also might of been in the U.S. Navy for a bit, don't remember now.

 

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