At a 1932 reception honoring Civil War veterans, a man in his middle thirties came up and asked John Houston Thorpe whether the Civil War was as hard to live through as the fighting in France. When the younger man confirmed that he was a veteran of the Great War, Thorpe explained that while the younger man and his comrades had to go up against larger cannon, machine guns, and poison gas, the Confederates were at a disadvantage when it came to food, medicine, and other supplies. The differences canceled each other out, and Thorpe concluded that war is hard any which way. The man who had been Over There thanked Thorpe for his time.