I'm Indy Neidell, and welcome to another exciting episode of Out of the Trenches,
where I sit here in the Chair of Wisdom
and answer your questions about the First World War
(little Swedish there)
All right. Although the war didn't "invent" a lot of things except war machines like tanks,
the war accelerated the progress of new products that might have been barely prototypes
or not particularly popular before the War. Communications like telephones and wireless radios
were improved and developed
Wristwatches and zippers were more and more common
Stainless steel was now mass fabricated, bloodbanks and portable x-ray machines were created
A new sort of fabric called Cellu-Cotton was developed which not only sanitized hospitals
but was used to make sanitary pads for women and that would be,
they would be on sale, mass sold in 1920 I believe
Daylight savings was introduced in Germany on April 30th, 1916
because of the lack of coal for heating.
AXnd a lot of vegetarian food like the soy sausage came about due to the lack of meat
tea bags became popular. The bag was originally just packaging to save on shipping charges
because it was shipped in big boxes
Well, that's a bunch of things, but there are a bunch more. Look it up!
Look it up!
Yeah, sure. On the Eastern Front, there was Alexander Kaskakov, who shot down over 30 German/Austro-Hungarian planes
and this guy, this guy was nuts, he was an insanely fearless pilot,
who had a panache for ramming his enemies' planes in midair
For the Ottomans, Ahmet Ali Celikten flew
he was likely the first black fighter pilot, he was of Arab-African descent
and he later went on to teach at the Turkish Naval Flight School
For the Italians, there was Francesco Baracca, who downed 34 Austrian planes
with his favorite maneuver, mostly with his favorite maneuver:
which was, flying as close to the enemy plane as possible using blind spots from either below
or behind and then firing his machine gun at point blank range.
Every nation had its aerial hero!
It's true.
Okay.
That was actually a very short question, compared to all of the other questions.
And it's got a hell of an answer too.
Well, this differs of course from country to country
and when I say differs, I mean the difference between day and night
Soldiers all got paid of course, but they were often charged for food
their own accommodations and transport. Some got paid more for services at the front
while some got less as an ordinance soldier.
You could get bonuses for bravery, for saving the life of a comrade, and things like that.
So, where do I start?
Australia: the common private got six shillings per day.
One shilling would go automatically to expenses and of the other five, they could choose how much
they would receive at the front, and how much would go to their family.
Some other British imperial soldiers, let's see...
A private in the British infantry would get from 1 shilling up to 1 shilling, 6 pence per day
While say a wing commander of the royal flying corp could get up to 38 shillings per day
Austro-Hungarian common soldiers got around 12 Heller, which is around 4 crowns a month
One crown could buy five kilos of bread, or one kilo of bacon
In the USA, an American Private First Class would get $30 per month
One dollar a day, generally
which is pretty easy to remember
A quartermaster seargent could earn up to $105 per month.
True story, because of the complexity of their job, quartermasters would often get paid a lot more
than their counterparts in the field
The German soldier was paid three times a month:
The first, the eleventh, and the twenty-first
The privates got 70 Prenning per day
Five Pfennigs would pay for half a liter of beer.
So, for German beer-loving soldiers who didn't eat anything, that would be 7 liters of beer a day!
And if you're wondering, one Deutchmark was equal to one shilling or an American quarter
Quarter of a dollar at that time
A German Feldwebel would earn five Marks per day
As you can see, if you're good at doing math really quickly, American soldiers were much better
paid than their European counterparts.
Let's go back to aerial stuff. Ok, we did a special about some of the planes of the war
and if you want to see that, click right here!
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