Ensign Expendable posted:Infantry called tankers "double salary, triple death", so at least the general opinion wasn't so. there were probably still guys who baked bread in tank units
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Feb 5, 2016 23:48
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Randomcheese3 posted:No, it's a reference to HMS Coventry, which was sunk by Skyhawks on the 25th May. I can't think of any other destroyers lost by the RN in the Falklands War. Oh cool, I stand corrected. That is a pretty jarring loss!
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Feb 6, 2016 00:40
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MassivelyBuckNegro posted:there were probably still guys who baked bread in tank units Yeah, but if anything they'd be motorized infantry, much better and cooler than regular old infantry. Also paid more.
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Feb 6, 2016 00:44
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MikeCrotch posted:I love the bit in The Dead Hand where Thatcher finds out that Reagan actually wants to eliminate all nuclear weapons, and her reaction is just I just finished this book yesterday. The description of the Soviet bio-weapons program set my skin a-crawling multiple times, though I did gain a better appreciation for the Soviet leaders during the Cold War, which I'd never be able to tell apart otherwise.
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Feb 6, 2016 01:19
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I found a post-war Soviet evaluation of their weapons. Naturally the Mosin's begins with something to the tune of "it's perfect, no changes needed, but make sure that you can't take off the bayonet so the soldiers stop losing it".
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Feb 6, 2016 02:46
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gradenko_2000 posted:I just finished this book yesterday. The description of the Soviet bio-weapons program set my skin a-crawling multiple times, though I did gain a better appreciation for the Soviet leaders during the Cold War, which I'd never be able to tell apart otherwise. I read that book too - my favorite bit* was when the Soviet Union nearly deployed weaponized smallpox on itself *most horrifying Nebakenezzer posted:Speaking of grim things, on WIkipedia they have a few write-ups on accidents in the Soviet Biowarfare program.
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Feb 6, 2016 05:12
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Ensign Expendable posted:I found a post-war Soviet evaluation of their weapons. Naturally the Mosin's begins with something to the tune of "it's perfect, no changes needed, but make sure that you can't take off the bayonet so the soldiers stop losing it". I've mentioned this a bunch of times, but in post-ww2 tallies, the two pieces of kit Finnish soldiers most often lost were their gas masks and their bayonets. Most people saw both pieces of kit as entirely useless. It of course helps that the gas mask bag was handy for carrying other stuff.
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Feb 6, 2016 06:37
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Kemper Boyd posted:I've mentioned this a bunch of times, but in post-ww2 tallies, the two pieces of kit Finnish soldiers most often lost were their gas masks and their bayonets. Most people saw both pieces of kit as entirely useless. It of course helps that the gas mask bag was handy for carrying other stuff. Yeah, I read an interrogation of a German infantryman recently, and he said that his buddies carried their gas masks for about two weeks into the war, then left them in the trucks.
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Feb 6, 2016 06:54
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Trin Tragula posted:
I have literally no idea what the gently caress I was on about with that. Not going to defend it in the slightest. I'd blame sleepiness or the pernicious influence of work, but tbh I think I was just reflexively recoiling at the idea of Thatcher fighting Britain's only war that didn't involve a serious breach of the Geneva Conventions.
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Feb 6, 2016 09:12
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Nebakenezzer posted:I read that book too - my favorite bit* was when the Soviet Union nearly deployed weaponized smallpox on itself A few months ago, the NYT reported about mysterious deaths of large parts of the Saiga population somewhere there. Well, well.
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Feb 6, 2016 10:56
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Panzeh posted:Its kinda funny cause if you want to poo poo on the royal navy see how one of their destroyers got wrecked by a skyhawk with unguided bombs. What was it supposed to do, dodge? Thats good flying by the pilot, not much the captain could do different.
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Feb 6, 2016 11:43
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feedmegin posted:What was it supposed to do, dodge? Well, if World of Warships taught me anything, yes?  Alongside the lesson that carriers without aircraft can serve as decent kinetic kill vehicles... Hm... Maybe not the best place to learn about naval warfare...
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Feb 6, 2016 11:53
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100 Years Ago When there's a big stench from dead men in the trench: that's Cadorna! Yes, time to revisit the most offensive man in the war, who is currently conducting only a charm offensive in the Italian press as he attempts to nobble his own minister of war. Meanwhile, in a rather less public context, he's bitching at the Prime Minister to allow him to use decimation against anyone who shows the slightest sign of thinking about refusing his neatly-handwritten invitations to get their brains blown out for Trieste. What a nice man. No wonder D'Annunzio is calling him "il Duce". Elsewhere: The Belgians have nearly finished handily transforming Congo's Force Publique into an army of invasion; Clifford Wells enjoys wearing his shiny new officer's uniform; and I've finally managed to find a personal account from someone who was at the siege of Kut and who can tell me the dates when things actually happened. He's struggling mightily against regular river floods, and although he's on half rations, he is getting a gourmand's opportunity to compare many different kinds of meat as they begin slaughtering the town's animals.
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Feb 6, 2016 14:05
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lenoon posted:I have literally no idea what the gently caress I was on about with that. Not going to defend it in the slightest. I'd blame sleepiness or the pernicious influence of work, but tbh I think I was just reflexively recoiling at the idea of Thatcher fighting Britain's only war that didn't involve a serious breach of the Geneva Conventions. An understandable reaction. I mean let's be serious here, if given half a chance Thatcher would have totally ordered the RN to sink a hospital ship or five to show the Argentinians that they were serious.
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Feb 6, 2016 15:17
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ArchangeI posted:An understandable reaction. Now, now, they were Argentinians, not Yorkshire coal miners
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Feb 6, 2016 17:37
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feedmegin posted:What was it supposed to do, dodge? Thats good flying by the pilot, not much the captain could do different. Several other key RN ships got hit by bombs that failed to explode, apparently due to the way they were used/fuses- had they exploded the falklands war would have been lost for the UK, or at least a hell of a lot bloodier.
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Feb 6, 2016 21:02
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DesperateDan posted:Several other key RN ships got hit by bombs that failed to explode, apparently due to the way they were used/fuses- had they exploded the falklands war would have been lost for the UK, or at least a hell of a lot bloodier. The bombs had safeties to not arm until they fell a certain height, and the Argentinians were bombing beneath that height. Had they disarmed the safeties, you are correct, the Falklands would have been lost/a bloodbath for the British. God knows what that would have done to British history, as the victory of the Falklands cemented Thactcher's hold on power.
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Feb 6, 2016 21:31
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I just now noticed James McPherson published a new book last year, has anyone read it? It sounds like maybe it is something of a redux but I might still get it because Also, for you highly dedicated Lost Causer reactionaries.... (I'll probably get that one too)
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Feb 6, 2016 21:58
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So, some of the letters the Count of Mansfeld sends out are to the "Count of Ossona." I looked him up, and... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Moncada,_3rd_Marquis_of_Aitona  *harrumph* edit: I am pretty sure that the thing around his neck that he's holding onto is a watch. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_watches HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Feb 6, 2016 |
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Feb 6, 2016 22:28
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"I didn't get a harrumph outta that guy!" "Give the Marquis a harrumph!"
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Feb 6, 2016 22:45
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All of these people look like they're having heartburn trouble in their portraits.
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Feb 6, 2016 22:45
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in my opinion, it's difficult to look bad in these outfits--skinny people look graceful and dashing, while big fat dudes look august and big fat women look voluptuous. mens' haircuts suck, but it was a good fashion era
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Feb 6, 2016 22:48
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We should go back to togas. Pants are for barbarians.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:01
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The Belgian posted:We should go back to togas. Pants are for barbarians. But how will I show off the angles and size of my junk? huh? HUH?!
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Feb 6, 2016 23:16
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HEY GAL posted:in my opinion, it's difficult to look bad in these outfits--skinny people look graceful and dashing, while big fat dudes look august and big fat women look voluptuous. The clothes look good, the faces look like it's Alka-Seltzer time.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:18
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:The clothes look good, the faces look like it's Alka-Seltzer time.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:19
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Huh, 17th century Flavor Flav.
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Feb 7, 2016 00:32
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Ghetto Prince posted:Huh, 17th century Flavor Flav. Flavorus Flavius
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Feb 7, 2016 00:38
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FAUXTON posted:Flavorus Flavius Marries Bridgette of Nielson
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Feb 7, 2016 01:03
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Seems Dutch to me - Smaak de Smaa?
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Feb 7, 2016 01:57
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Some interesting stuff I happened to run into: Remember when I mentioned Milunka Savić, one of the women in the Serbian army who earned a shitton of medals?  I found a picture of the post-war request she wrote to the director of the National Mortgage Bank, in which she worked as a cleaner for years as a day laborer. She's basically begging him to register her as a full time employee (and she mentions already trying and failing several times to change her status). She says that years are going by, but she's not getting any closer to retirement since being a day-laborer doesn't count towards work-time requirements for it. She reminds him that she's a veteran of the war, and signs the request in a peculiar way: Milunka Savić, day laborer of the National Mortgage Bank, knight of the Star of Karađorđe and the Legion of Honor Yugoslavia was kinda lovely towards veterans of the war (and extremely lovely towards most people who ended it with lasting injuries, many of them being provided with barely enough to avoid starvation), but this is just so... petty.  I know she was raising her own daughter and several orphans she adopted because there was literally nobody else who would take care of them, and it's not too hard to read the panic between the lines of what will happen to them if she ever gets too sick to work and losing all income.Speaking of veterans with lasting injuries, remember when I said how that sworn virgin thing is bullshit with regards to women fighting in the Serbian army in WW1, and that women fighting in the army were just that - women soldiers? While I still hold this to be true, I did find out about a trans-man who fought for Serbia in WW1! And with a rather bizzarre life story.  He was born as Rizna Radović in 1901. At the age of 8, she killed an Albanian man who attacked her and her brother while they were guarding sheep, and the family had to flee Kosovo to avoid the inevitable blood feud. Sometime after the fall of Serbia, her parents and brother were taken away (and executed? I can't find anywhere if it's supposed to mean imprisoned or if it's supposed be a "and were never seen again" kind of thing, but since he's mentioned as having no living relatives at some point after the war, I'm going to assume the latter) by Bulgarian forces, and she joined the resistance movement (which would eventually grow large enough to initiate the Toplica Uprising) at the age of 16, taking the name Stojan Komita (Komita can more-less be loosely translated as "guerrilla") and frequently participating in combat. Stojan lost his leg in the war, and he was covered in scars and his arm was mangled beyond use after he was bayonetted ~15 times by Bulgarian forces, but he somehow managed to survive. He was interviewed after the war by Stanislav Krakov (the dude who wrote the "magazine" I posted earlier in the thread), and apparently, kept the name Stojan, wore male clothing, had a short masculine haircut, and also used male pronouns when talking about himself (the article still keeps referring to him as "the heroic girl", tho). He received the Croix de Guerre, apparently awarded by d'Espèrey himself, though I couldn't find anything that confirms this. He was considered for, but was denied the Star of Karađorđe, though at the very least, he was granted some land by the king and was able to sustain himself after the war unlike the vast majority of the disabled. He died in 1939, and was burried with full military honors in Subotica. (For those of you who look up the writer Stanislav Krakov, yeah, that dude is an example of a man driven by good intentions and genuine grievances slowly walking down the proverbial road to hell and eventually throwing in his lot with some rather nasty people.)
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Feb 7, 2016 03:27
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my dad posted:Stojan lost his leg in the war How do you lose a leg - presumably to surgical amputation - without your gender being found out? Or did they just not care?
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Feb 7, 2016 03:35
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hogmartin posted:How do you lose a leg - presumably to surgical amputation - without your gender being found out? Or did they just not care? it could depend on how far up they cut
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Feb 7, 2016 03:39
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HEY GAL posted:it could depend on how far up they cut Yeah, I'm just thinking that during recuperation there are sanitary requirements that could make it obvious too.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:40
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i guess the question is what sort of a world war 1 hellhole he recovered in
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Feb 7, 2016 03:42
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point taken.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:44
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hogmartin posted:How do you lose a leg - presumably to surgical amputation - without your gender being found out? Or did they just not care? Everyone knew. I mean, women in the army and the resistance weren't anything particularly out of the ordinary at that point. This is Jelena Šaulić Bojović, a schoolteacher who joined the resistance during WW1 after her mother was murdered. She didn't hide her sex:  This is Antonija Javornik, a Slovenian/Serbian woman (and daughter of a renegade AH officer [I think? I recall it was a close relative, but I'm not 100% sure if it was her fahter]) who fought in the Balkan Wars and WW1 on Serbia's side:  There's a lot more of them. Naturally, post war, the country did a 180 and proceeded to completely ignore the potential for advancing gender equality. Hell, there was no universal suffrage until the communists instituted it at the end of WW2. my dad fucked around with this message at 03:54 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 03:47
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HEY GAL posted:So, some of the letters the Count of Mansfeld sends out are to the "Count of Ossona." I looked him up, and... http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...bjectid=1424998 quote:holding a letter in his right hand and clutching the ribbon of a medal with the cross of St James (the Order of Santiago) in his left; http://www.britishmuseum.org/resear...862-2-23&page=1 quote:clutching the ribbon of a medal with the cross of St James (the Order of Santiago) in his right;
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Feb 7, 2016 03:52
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Ah, I see. Thanks.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:58
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my dad posted:There's a lot more of them. Naturally, post war, the country did a 180 and proceeded to completely ignore the potential for advancing gender equality. Hell, there was no universal suffrage until the communists instituted it at the end of WW2. Why were women so involved in the fighting in that time and place? Was central Europe just running out of men, or did they have a tradition of women serving in the military/western-euro male societal roles? I've heard about sworn virgins before but really don't know that much. Also is there any chance you could translate that letter?
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