[maxwellp]

Well, my father was overseas in WWI - he was fifty when I was born. Anyway, I was working for a company when they asked us to contribute to the Red Cross. I mentioned it at dinner and my father went crazy. He told me that the Red Cross was charging mega bucks for the soldiers who wanted cigarets. He said they were a very crooked organization. Fast forward to another company I was working for years later. My boss told me he was collecting money for the Red Cross in his Westchester, NY town and approached a butcher shop. The butcher, who was overseas in WWII, threw him out screaming about what a bunch of bastards the Red Cross was and how lousy they treated the GI's then. I donated to the Red Cross after 9/11, but never again. I should have listened to my father.

[DreamWeaver]

. He told me that the Red Cross was charging mega bucks for the soldiers who wanted cigarets. He said they were a very crooked organization.

That is what I'm hearing about from many of the vets of WW11, so I have to believe they all cannot be wrong. I believe my father too, and he was adamantly against them for how the soldiers were treated by them. He had no use for them at all.