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HEY GAL posted:It amuses me that the French are so goddamn French. A dude said "incroyable" about me at a reenactment once. Well, not "at." In the same city, at the same time. Some of us were wandering around Prague, drunk off our asses, in our outfits, and we ran into some French people. He was trying to say employable and here you are making fun of his speech impediment.
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Dec 9, 2014 08:32
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Frostwerks posted:He was trying to say employable and here you are making fun of his speech impediment. twelve whole gulden, down the drain
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Dec 9, 2014 08:34
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HEY GAL posted:It amuses me that the French are so goddamn French. A dude said "incroyable" about me at a reenactment once. Well, not "at." In the same city, at the same time. Some of us were wandering around Prague, drunk off our asses, in our outfits, and we ran into some French people. The French are so French because they're unhappy that Anglophones have ruled the world for 200 straight years, so France has become less Americanized than many European cultures. My ancestors were dérangées because they wouldn't swear loyalty to King George, and here I am writing in English like a chump. Don Gato posted:I just assume that all Europeans are functioning alcoholics unless proven otherwise. A lot of European countries (but notably not Eastern Europe) have much less alcoholism and binge drinking than the United States, possibly because parents can actually teach children about alcohol. Chamale fucked around with this message at 08:47 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 08:45
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Don Gato posted:I just assume that all Europeans are functioning alcoholics unless proven otherwise. I had a Russian Spanish teacher (never quite figured that one out) who would go on about how in America people got drunk and then drove and killed people and back in his hometown they got drunk and passed out in the gutter and it was much safer for everyone.
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Dec 9, 2014 09:13
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Any recommendations for a general overview book on the naval war in the Pacific Theater in WW2?
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Dec 9, 2014 11:00
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Cythereal posted:Any recommendations for a general overview book on the naval war in the Pacific Theater in WW2? I have the audiobook of this. I don't know how it measures up with its historiography but I feel like I understand things better after finishing it. http://www.amazon.com/Pacific-Crucible-War-Sea-1941-1942/dp/0393343413 e: meant to say - it actually only covers the period between pearl and midway so it may not be the whole overview you're looking for
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Dec 9, 2014 11:48
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Gibfender posted:I have the audiobook of this. I don't know how it measures up with its historiography but I feel like I understand things better after finishing it. Eh, not looking for anything in particular within that admittedly broad topic. Doing some Christmas shopping, and I have a nephew who's interested in the naval theater of the Pacific in WW2. Don't think he currently owns any books on the subject and was looking for a good book on it, preferably a general overview.
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Dec 9, 2014 11:55
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HEY GAL posted:It amuses me that the French are so goddamn French. A dude said "incroyable" about me at a reenactment once. Well, not "at." Wait a minute, after everything you've posted in this thread, and this somehow isn't a re-enactment? Riiiight.
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Dec 9, 2014 12:16
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GhostofJohnMuir posted:Haha, the Italians still get a ration of alcohol included in their daily rations. Holy poo poo. It seems pretty common in the south of Italy where I live (Naples and area). When you buy a 'package' dinner or lunch (don't know the Italian name for it) they give you preset plates and usually an apertif before with a digestif after. I've had the free post-dinner booze in relaxed pizza joints, too. Even if you don't automatically get it for free you can bet they stock several brands in the back of the menu. The other part of this, though, is I've never seen an Italian obviously drunk in public. People in Naples will also do the German thing and have a glass or two of wine or beer with lunch. I tried that once at work in America (we had a bar inside where I worked) and got a stern talking too. /Non mil-history rant done.
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Dec 9, 2014 12:42
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Reading this article made me so loving mad. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2014/dec/09/-sp-myth-of-the-good-war
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Dec 9, 2014 12:48
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so I know this is lame as hell but has there been any discussion of the accuracy of the movie Fury in this thread anywhere? Specifically the scene early on where Brad Pitt forces that other guy to execute the prisoner, while like 50 other guys stand around and encourage him. The German prisoner was wearing a US army jacket, and I know spies were executed, but there's no way it would have gone down like that, right? Like so casually / blatantly with so many people standing around?
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Dec 9, 2014 14:25
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I'm currently reading through a book about the USS Intrepid, and one of the stories that came out of it was that of Alonzo Swann. He was an African-American sailor in a time where most of them were just stewards in the not-yet-desegregated US Navy. He and 20 other African-Americans were instead assigned to man an anti-aircraft gun tub on the carrier. On Oct 29, 1944, the Intrepid was conducting flight ops, launching strikes against land targets in the Northern Philippines, when it detected an incoming Zero fighter. It was Swann's crew of Gun Tub 10 that shot down the Zero as it tried to make a kamikaze attack. Their AA fire sheared off a wing and caused the Zero's bomb to drop wide and miss. While the Zero lost enough of its control to not hit the crowded flight deck, it did still unfortunately careen into the ship and hit Gun Tub 10 itself. Nine of Gun Tub 10's crewmen were killed and Swann was seriously hurt, but he survived his injuries, stayed on the ship and went back to service. For their efforts in saving the ship, Swann was awarded the Navy Cross. It's here that the story takes a turn, as the Navy Cross was later withdrawn without explanation and downgraded to a Bronze Star. After the war, Swann pursued the Navy Cross that was taken away from him, and after a 49-year legal battle that culminated in a Federal court decision, the Navy finally gave awarded him the Navy Cross again on Nov 3, 1993, right on the deck of the same USS Intrepid, since converted into a museum ship.
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Dec 9, 2014 14:39
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Trin Tragula posted:Wait a minute, after everything you've posted in this thread, and this somehow isn't a re-enactment? Riiiight. We also went up to the castle and I got to see the old hackbut emplacements in the outer walls. They were still blackened! But it's not like we were armed or anything, except for our small weapons. I think I only had a belt knife on, onto which I had tied the little scrap of colored cloth designating my regiment. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 14:40
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fuf posted:so I know this is lame as hell but has there been any discussion of the accuracy of the movie Fury in this thread anywhere? Yes, lots. Basically going into Fury and expecting a historically realistic movie is like going into a Star Trek movie expecting a NASA documentary.
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Dec 9, 2014 14:51
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Roughly what page?  I can't work out how to search within a thread
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Dec 9, 2014 14:55
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Ensign Expendable posted:Yes, lots. Basically going into Fury and expecting a historically realistic movie is like going into a Star Trek movie expecting a NASA documentary. On the other hand, I think it's a fantastic character study of what happens to people at war. Things which would get you shot: being caught with looted stuff, having bruise marks from a sniper scope around your eye, an SS uniform. But either you'd be shot out of hand when you put your hands up or it would happen while you were being marched back from the front to the prisoner cage and were behind the nearest hill/wood. Much more realistic scene: The one where Brad Pitt singles out the guy who's been hanging people and has him shot out of hand in the town.
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Dec 9, 2014 15:05
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A lot of prisoners got shot for a lot of reasons in a lot of different ways, so it's not entirely implausible. Usually it would be like "hey take this guy back to HQ/the laager/whatever" and then after they got a little way away the guy would try to escape and you unfortunately HAD to shoot him. The Poles (2nd Armored), unsurprisingly, were supposedly very in to shooting German POWs.
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Dec 9, 2014 15:15
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Fangz posted:Reading this article made me so loving mad. I like how he makes the reasonable point that Britain didn't enter the war to save the Jews (and therefore wasn't noble) and then immediately careens around to say that Britain could have just decided not to enter the war at all and would have borne no moral responsibility in the holocaust whatsoever. And the last three paragraphs or so which must have been written by a different person altogether because he seriously goes "oh and by the way WWI wasn't easy on the upper class either! Officers died and stuff!"
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Dec 9, 2014 15:17
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There's the scene in Band of Brothers where that one guy guns down the whole group of captured Wehrmacht because his brother was KIA and he (naturally) blames the Germans as a whole. War is hell and you cannot refine it. What is shown on screen is probably a sugary dilution of what actually happens, and reality is probably closer to those YouTube videos out of the Mideast.
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Dec 9, 2014 15:41
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It was specifically the fact that there were so many other people standing around witnessing the whole thing that I thought seemed implausible.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:07
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Cythereal posted:Any recommendations for a general overview book on the naval war in the Pacific Theater in WW2? The best books on the subject I know of aren't general overviews unfortunately. The closest I can think of is Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, who spent most of the war in a destroyer and somehow survived. It's a very readable autobiography. There's also Shattered Sword, which is a big ol book about Midway and is both readable and excellent if overview of the entire theatre comes second to just being a good interesting book. I've heard good things about Paul Dull's Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy as well, but I haven't read it. It should have good coverage. Finally there's Kaigun and Sunburst. Kaigun is a history of the Imperial Japanese Navy from its start to the middle of the war. It's the best book for understanding the IJN at the start of the war, and then it covers about half the war to see how the Japanese planning stood up. Sunburst is that for Japanese Naval aviation.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:16
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xthetenth posted:The best books on the subject I know of aren't general overviews unfortunately. The closest I can think of is Japanese Destroyer Captain by Tameichi Hara, who spent most of the war in a destroyer and somehow survived. It's a very readable autobiography. Anything to recommend for the Solomon Islands Campaign?
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Dec 9, 2014 16:29
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Fray posted:Anything to recommend for the Solomon Islands Campaign? Neptune's Inferno only gets to Guadalcanal/Operation Watchtower and doesn't cover Operation Cartwheel, but is otherwise excellent.
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Dec 9, 2014 16:33
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Fangz posted:Reading this article made me so loving mad. Yeah, going anywhere near British newspapers brings up the same rage in anyone else. Also, half that article really is terrible and feels like some dude was pushed out his chair and replaced by somebody smugger.
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Dec 9, 2014 17:04
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FAUXTON posted:There's the scene in Band of Brothers where that one guy guns down the whole group of captured Wehrmacht because his brother was KIA and he (naturally) blames the Germans as a whole. You're confusing two scenes. 1) where Wild Bill Guarnere starts an ambush without permission on a german column because his brother was killed at Monte Cassino. 2) where it's suggested Capt. Speirs executed a bunch of german POWs in a field on d-day.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:16
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MA-Horus posted:You're confusing two scenes. That guy was loving awesome. Met him several times, had him sign the holster for the artillery Luger my grandfather brought back from the war, and I just randomly met a couple of people at a local bar who were friends with him. They asked for my address and just mailed me the memorial card from his funeral. Bill was right out of central casting; thick South Philly accent, women were still 'broads,' Germans were still 'krauts.' When I took the holster out for him he threw his hands in the air and said "Holy Jesus, don't shoot!" And then for decades he told neighbors that he lost his leg in a boating accident, because you just didn't talk about the poo poo you went through over there.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:21
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Phanatic posted:That guy was loving awesome. Met him several times, had him sign the holster for the artillery Luger my grandfather brought back from the war, and I just randomly met a couple of people at a local bar who were friends with him. They asked for my address and just mailed me the memorial card from his funeral. Bill was right out of central casting; thick South Philly accent, women were still 'broads,' Germans were still 'krauts.' When I took the holster out for him he threw his hands in the air and said "Holy Jesus, don't shoot!" It's you. You win the thread.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:23
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Fray posted:Anything to recommend for the Solomon Islands Campaign? I recommend The Campaign For Guadalcanal by Jack Coggins. Very readable and it has a picture or map on every page, which sounds cheesy but is actually super helpful, especially the maps, for understanding what's going on and who and what the combatants are.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:30
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My friend Kyle's the one with the good Guarnere stories. Kyle's a photographer and did a book a few years ago called War Paint, about vets and their tattoos, and he got to know Bill and his son pretty well. Bill's story was:quote:I got this [paratrooper] tattoo after D-Day. Me and Johnny Martin got a pass for London. When you go on a pass overseas in England you hitchhike. All the trucks are going your way, they take you, then you get off and another truck picks you up. We wound up at an Air Force base, a U.S. Air Force base. We got something to eat and a couple of pilots come over to us and started talking to us and they said "You want to come to Scotland?" "You gotta be kidding!" they were fighter pilots, they had these jets, so Johnny got in one and I got in the other one. It took about twelve minutes, we got to Edinburgh Scottland. That's when we got the tattoos. Drunk as a skunk. If I was sober I never would have gotten it, but I was drunk. We had a good time up there. Edinburgh, 1944. Right after D-Day. Drunk. I would never get tattoos sober.
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Dec 9, 2014 18:32
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Jets deployed by the USAF in Europe in 1944, fast enough to go London -> Edinburgh in 12 minutes. Sounds like a war story alright.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:21
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ArchangeI posted:Jets deployed by the USAF in Europe in 1944, fast enough to go London -> Edinburgh in 12 minutes. Sounds like a war story alright. Well he admits he was drunk as a skunk, so details might be a little off and this happened in Edinburgh, Texas.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:26
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ArchangeI posted:Jets deployed by the USAF in Europe in 1944, fast enough to go London -> Edinburgh in 12 minutes. Sounds like a war story alright. Apparently 2-seaters, as well.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:34
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Well, to be fair, how many people actually understand 'jet' is meant for the type of airplane engine, rather than just a general word for airplane? Especially from an older person born before they were a thing with limited education.
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Dec 9, 2014 19:50
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The important thing is that the story is awesome.
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Dec 9, 2014 20:08
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Eh, it's certainly exaggerated but it doesn't have to be bullshit. 1) The Gloster Meteor was engaged in serious testing by 1940 and was a combat aircraft by Jan 1944. It was a British aircraft but the US was given a few. Between ongoing development, inter-service cross-training, etc it's not inconceivable that a few might have been operating or at least at a US air force base. Maybe the pilots were Brits. gently caress, maybe they were Canadians and he just assumed they were USAF. Probably nothing involving the P-80 program as those weren't nearly as far along by early '44. As was said above, we needn't even assume it was a jet. Might have just been a loving Mustang for all we know. 2) top speed of the Meteor was ~600 mph, and it's ~400 miles from London to Edinburgh. That yields a flight time of less than an hour, maybe as little as 40 minutes if the pilots just hauled rear end. The raw novelty of the experience would have likely made it seem much shorter, especially in an age where that kind of trip was an all day ordeal at best via train or truck. Couple that with a half-century of retelling the same base story and 12 minutes expanding out to 45 or even 60 isn't that shocking at all. Again, this is assuming the "jet" part is true. Could have just been a joyride in a P51 and still gotten there in less than an hour. More like 60 minutes than 40, but still really goddamned fast for a working class guy in the infantry. 3) lots and lots of single seat aircraft could accommodate two people, either via jump seats or by the simple expedient of sitting in someone's lap. There are boatloads of wartime stories of people doing this in emergency situations and almost as many that involve just loving around and taking a buddy/girlfriend/whatever for a spin because airplanes and flight were still novel and cool to your average person back then. I don't doubt that this isn't a total 100% accurate portrayal of exactly what happened, but if we scrape out the details and narrow it down to a basic narrative of "He got on a jet and flew to Scotland at a speed that loving shocked him where he got a tattoo while hammered" it all of a sudden becomes a lot more plausible. Cyrano4747 fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 20:17
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I'd also add that in addition to the stories we all know of every tank in Normandy being a 'tiger', there are numerous tales of tankers taking a wrong turn and driving through an enemy occupied town or village and having none of the infantry around them notice they were enemy because nobody was shooting and a tank is a tank. What I'm getting at is that just because these people were in a war doesn't mean they had a grognardy fascination with weapon models and equipment.
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Dec 9, 2014 20:24
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Alchenar posted:I'd also add that in addition to the stories we all know of every tank in Normandy being a 'tiger', there are numerous tales of tankers taking a wrong turn and driving through an enemy occupied town or village and having none of the infantry around them notice they were enemy because nobody was shooting and a tank is a tank. I think it's also worth noting that this whole vignette is a really great showpiece for all of the problems with oral history and why you can't take survivor testimony and accounts as 100% statements of fact, but it equally demonstrates how with a bit of a deft touch you can still make some really interesting inferences from it and use it to good effect. You can't take it completely at face value, but you also can't completely dismiss it even if there are aspects that you know are probably mistaken or embellished, whether on purpose or because of the way memory and storytelling works after 50+ years.
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Dec 9, 2014 20:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:I think it's also worth noting that this whole vignette is a really great showpiece for all of the problems with oral history and why you can't take survivor testimony and accounts as 100% statements of fact, but it equally demonstrates how with a bit of a deft touch you can still make some really interesting inferences from it and use it to good effect. You can't take it completely at face value, but you also can't completely dismiss it even if there are aspects that you know are probably mistaken or embellished, whether on purpose or because of the way memory and storytelling works after 50+ years. Which is also solid gold, just not for the reasons he intended. HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Dec 9, 2014 |
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Dec 9, 2014 20:39
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100 Years Ago The Daily Telegraph's archivist suggests that there's a caption competition to be had over the right-hand image (I think both are equally ripe). Any takers?  Today we're taking a detailed look at Hill 60 for the first time. It won't be the last. It's a good example of the kind of attacks the Germans will be going in for on the Western Front; lots of force, limited objectives, against positions of considerable tactical importance. Qurna officially surrenders, the Russians retreat from Krakow, and in Serbia the Austrians continue running like gently caress for the Bosnian border. In the Telegraph, the official communique describes the combat for Vermelles in terms slightly at variance with Louis Barthas's telling of the story.
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Dec 9, 2014 21:09
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Phanatic posted:That guy was loving awesome. Met him several times, had him sign the holster for the artillery Luger my grandfather brought back from the war, and I just randomly met a couple of people at a local bar who were friends with him. They asked for my address and just mailed me the memorial card from his funeral. Bill was right out of central casting; thick South Philly accent, women were still 'broads,' Germans were still 'krauts.' When I took the holster out for him he threw his hands in the air and said "Holy Jesus, don't shoot!" Oh awesome, just going from the character in the miniseries he seemed like a goddamn riot. Good to know it was a faithful representation  .
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Dec 9, 2014 21:13
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