Horses were used a lot in the Great War. Although this shows four horses, actually six were used to pull a caisson. They were guided not by reins, but by men who were riding them; thus, the saddles.
Airplanes played a small part in the war.
This thing is a far cry from the Bradley my son was in, back during Desert Storm. There's a video you can watch that shows a guy driving a restored tank like the one in the picture.
The war began in 1914, but the United States didn't get involved until 1917. Once they plunged in, they put out plenty of propaganda to get everybody involved.
Even back then, there were Harleys.
There are dozens of firearms of various kinds displayed, but Cliff and I agreed this was our favorite. We want one, just because it looks so cool. Not that we'll every be getting one; we've heard they are highly collectable and very expensive.
We spent about five hours there yesterday, and still didn't see the special exhibit that shows World War I from the German soldier's viewpoint. Our tickets are good for two consecutive days, but we really don't want to spend two days there in a row. If you ever have a chance to go, this is a museum that is well worth visiting.
As we exited the parking lot, I saw something strange ahead of us. "Look Cliff, that looks like a bunch of tents! What are there tents set up in the middle of the city?" I thought of my camera after it was too late, but what we were looking at was the Kansas City "Occupy" bunch. The video above was made in September; the camp looked much colder and damper that this yesterday.
Cliff and I have visited the World War I Museum before, but there was plenty of stuff we didn't see, so today we returned. We arrived around 10 o'clock; unfortunately, so did three busloads of middle school kids. We got herded in with them, and I have to say, it was a little scary.
So we got to watch the opening movie with some of the kids. The movie tells a little about how the big war got started. We toured the place until noon, went out to the car to eat our lunch, and returned to the museum. We still didn't see every single thing, but at three o'clock, Cliff said, "We'd better get out of here, or we'll get stuck in rush hour traffic." "But I wanted to pay a quick visit to Union Station," I said. Cliff was pretty sure we could walk there, so we asked a guy who works at the museum. He told us how to get there.
It looked like a long way down there, and there was light rain falling. Wow, look at all those city geese.
I made up a new game on the way, a game called "See if you can keep from stepping on the goose poop."
After jaywalking across a couple of streets, we arrived at Union Station.
Cliff said that tree must be twenty-five feet tall, but I told him I'm pretty sure it's twenty-seven-and-a-half feet tall.
Santa was at the end of this hall. Since I haven't been a very good girl this year, I didn't wait in line to see him.
Then we had to jaywalk again and walk ALL THE WAY up a hill to Liberty Memorial. Whew. Oh well, we needed our daily walk.
And while rush hour had started when we headed home, there were no delays. It's been a pretty good day, for a rainy one.
