• PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
    481·
    3 months ago

    Explanation: The Father of the US Army, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, was a gay man, about as openly as one could be in the 18th century. Ben Franklin helped him escape Europe on sodomy charges and puffed up his rank when introducing him to Congress - a damn good thing too, as von Steuben arrived in Valley Forge to find a tattered group of untrained militia, and turned them into a proper military force!

    He spent a week writing the first (and longest-lasting) US Army drill manual, having it translated, and then promptly learned English profanity so he could curse at the troops he was training in three languages (already knowing German and French). The men loved him for it - soldiers dig that roughness in an officer! But he also made a great effort to understand and communicate with the enlisted men under his command, and was instrumental in creating a strong NCO corps and culture of NCO leadership. While Washington led the Continental Army to victory, it was von Steuben who made it into an ARMY!

    After the war was over, he retired peacefully to a country estate in the US with his two ‘adopted sons’, both American officers he met during the Revolutionary War, and left most of his worldly possessions to them.

  • hOrni@lemmy.worldEnglish
    19·
    3 months ago

    They also say that immigrants are destroying America. Ya know, the country that basically started as a migrant colony.

      • Snowyday@startrek.websiteEnglish
        5·
        3 months ago

        There’s a nice statue of him across from the White House, right near the church where Trump held the Bible upside down. I walk past that statue almost every day and have a smile

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      19·
      3 months ago

      Man was a legit noble, fled from Europe, embraced revolutionary US ideals, offered a portion of his estate to his nephew on the condition that he give up being a noble and embrace equality, argued forcefully against plutocratic oligarchy in the burgeoning US, got a nice rural New York estate with his gay polycule, and died peacefully and well-respected by his adopted nation. Also, had pantless parties with the American officers during the Revolutionary War. Livin’ the American dream.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      6·
      3 months ago

      lmao actually very accurate for being inebriated.

      He was kicked out of a minor German state for being gay (Prussia he left because they were downsizing their army and that killed his military career - Prussia’s king at the time was actually gay as well), and the American soldiers were actually very impressed from the very start when Von Steuben showed up - he was this big, imposing, well-fed military man in a fine uniform and a booming voice, and with a massive horse and a brace of pistols on his belt, and they were all a bunch of scruffy, starving militia. One of the American officers said Von Steuben looked like Mars himself, the god of war, to the suffering American troops.