Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Someone just posted this in the map thread

note the clear superiority of The Empire, specifically Bohemia, and the part where nobody gives a poo poo about England.

Edit: You might even call it..."the heart of Europe" :v:

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Aug 6, 2016

# ? Aug 6, 2016 19:17

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# ? May 10, 2024 20:12

Agean90: Jun 28, 2008

Tias posted:

If you were born on a reservation, how are you not a Lakota?

And yes, I guess I came off a bit hot before, sorry about that. I don't reckon myself any kind of medicine man or even very knowledgable about that sort of spirituality, though I do go to yearly retreats where I learn from an ordained medicine man who was taught by the Lakota. He has gotten a lot of flak for taking a month off teaching Danish people, but last we heard was that they blessed the endeavour, because they had themselves seen the reason of teaching people who respect the ways.

At any rate, I don't think being a neo-pagan makes me better at history, because, let's face it, we're reconstructing some very old beliefs with a bare minimum of sources.

My experience in reservations is from Washington, so it might differ from how the Lakota do things, but tribes often have hire people from outside for specialized tasks (fisheries management for example) and can set them up in a place to live if there in a really remote area

# ? Aug 6, 2016 19:25

Pellisworth: Jun 20, 2005

Tias posted:

If you were born on a reservation, how are you not a Lakota?

And yes, I guess I came off a bit hot before, sorry about that. I don't reckon myself any kind of medicine man or even very knowledgable about that sort of spirituality, though I do go to yearly retreats where I learn from an ordained medicine man who was taught by the Lakota. He has gotten a lot of flak for taking a month off teaching Danish people, but last we heard was that they blessed the endeavour, because they had themselves seen the reason of teaching people who respect the ways.

At any rate, I don't think being a neo-pagan makes me better at history, because, let's face it, we're reconstructing some very old beliefs with a bare minimum of sources.

Because I'm white and not a tribal member, I think the requirement was 25% Native American ancestry to enroll. The population on the reservation is about 10% non-tribal members (white), mostly ranching families like mine. There's a lot of intermarriage starting with my parent's generation (grandparents' generation not so much, I dunno if that's because of anti-miscegenation laws or simple racism), maybe half of my cousins in the area are mixed-race and tribal members.

Land ownership on the reservation is complicated, I actually just learned about this talking with my dad when I was home this summer. The reservation is a patchwork of land owned directly by the tribe, land leased for private use, Tribal Enterprise land owned by the tribe but held in trust by a private party, and privately deeded land (not owned by the tribe). We hold the deed to our family ranch, so it's not owned by the tribe despite being on the reservation. Things like policing and the justice system get really weird on reservations because tribal sovereignty is complex.

What happened historically is that the Lakota were settled on reservations, and many Lakota families were given allotments of land. They didn't really have a concept of land ownership, and they weren't farmers or ranchers, so many of those allotments were then sold to white settlers. I've seen the physical deed once a long time ago, if memory serves our land was originally allotted to a man named Blue Nose, sold to some white guy, then us and our family has been ranching it for four generations now.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has historically been pretty evil and taken every opportunity to gently caress over reservations and native peoples. I read in Albert White Hat's memoir that there used to be more Lakota families ranching, but during WW2 (and maybe Vietnam too?) the BIA invoked some law that allowed them to seize land that was unoccupied for 60 days or something. They took a bunch of land from Lakota who left to fight in the war and sold or leased it. I'll have to dig that book out and find more details.

Edit: there's also a ton of tribally owned land that is off the reservation, too. Check out this map:

there are four counties in the south that are spotted with tribal land. The entirety of those counties used to be part of the reservation but lol gently caress you natives.

You might not be surprised to learn that the reservations are among the very poorest counties and communities in the US. Unemployment around 85% (no, not a typo).

Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Aug 6, 2016

# ? Aug 6, 2016 19:39

Crazycryodude: Aug 15, 2015; Lets get our X tons of Duranium back!

....Is that still a valid thing to jingoistically blow out of proportion?

Koramei posted:

Is this true? I guess it probably depends a lot on what model of drone it is, but I've heard numerous times that drones are loud as all gently caress (there are plenty of videos out there too), to the point that their noise combined with them loitering in the air for hours, days on end is leading to some serious emotional trauma in affected groups in e.g. the West Bank and western Pakistan.

When they're low, sure, they're noisy as all hell. Up high, though, you don't even know it's there until a Hellfire comes out of nowhere. The Predator's operational ceiling is at least 25,000 feet, and I can't imagine that you'd be able to hear it when it's above even a few thousand. Now, I'm not familiar with the specifics of drone usage and tactics, maybe they're only really useful (due to camera resolution, targeting precision, whatever) when they're flying low enough to hear but I'd assume that height doesn't play too much of a role in their operations - we've had the optics technology since around the 80's iirc to build spy satellites that have a resolution fine enough to distinguish individual footprints from orbit, I think a drone that can still be precise at a decent altitude is completely possible.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 19:39

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

HEY GAL posted:

Someone just posted this in the map thread

note the clear superiority of The Empire, specifically Bohemia, and the part where nobody gives a poo poo about England.

Edit: You might even call it..."the heart of Europe"

I like how the known world ends at Moscow, and then it's just ocean.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 20:01

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Ensign Expendable posted:

I like how the known world ends at Moscow, and then it's just ocean.

Incorrect--then it's Asia. This map expresses a symbolic truth, but everyone knows what the world looks like physically:

# ? Aug 6, 2016 20:04

PittTheElder: Feb 13, 2012; Yes, it's like a lava lamp.

Grand Fromage posted:

Christ you guys post a lot.

Post-Marian Roman soldiers are believed to have carried 75-100 pounds or so of equipment, which is in the ballpark of a modern soldier. A typical load from say around 100 AD would be:

Weapons: dagger, sword, at least two javelins.
Armor: Torso armor, typically lorica hamata which was a ring mail adopted from the Gauls or lorica segmentata, which is the lobstery looking thing you picture for a legionary. It is disputed how much both were used. Lorica segmentata was much better--lighter and stronger, but was probably more expensive since it stops being used once the empire no longer has the kind of military mass production resources it had during the classical height. Shield and helmet were the other standard armor pieces. Some soldiers would also have arm and leg armor but this was never standard.
Clothes: Tunic, belts, cloak, boots, underwear. In colder climates socks and pants were used.
Other stuff: A pack, waterskin, mess tin, cooking pot, field rations, shovel, an unknown number of wooden stakes for use in constructing the marching camp, and a wooden pole for carrying poo poo. One can expect soldiers would have some changes of clothes and personal items like games or writing tablets. Good bet everybody had dice.

Keep in mind a good portion of the weight is the body armor, which if you've ever worn, is not that bad at all as far as carrying goes. The weight is well distributed and it doesn't impede your movement much/at all unlike what you've learned from D&D. I suspect soldiers forgot they were even wearing the stuff a lot of the time, if the weather wasn't turning it into an oven. I would guess the shield is the most annoying thing to carry (a scutum is really big and heavy) and so they probably had some rig to carry it on their backs while marching.

Do we know much about the logistic support effort that would accompany a unit in the field? Is it supposed to be integral to each legion?

I'm thinking that there must have been a large transport group pulling along replacement javelins, extra equipment, heavy artillery, maybe food and trade goods, etc.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 20:42

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

Pellisworth posted:

Because I'm white and not a tribal member, I think the requirement was 25% Native American ancestry to enroll. The population on the reservation is about 10% non-tribal members (white), mostly ranching families like mine. There's a lot of intermarriage starting with my parent's generation (grandparents' generation not so much, I dunno if that's because of anti-miscegenation laws or simple racism), maybe half of my cousins in the area are mixed-race and tribal members.

Land ownership on the reservation is complicated, I actually just learned about this talking with my dad when I was home this summer. The reservation is a patchwork of land owned directly by the tribe, land leased for private use, Tribal Enterprise land owned by the tribe but held in trust by a private party, and privately deeded land (not owned by the tribe). We hold the deed to our family ranch, so it's not owned by the tribe despite being on the reservation. Things like policing and the justice system get really weird on reservations because tribal sovereignty is complex.

What happened historically is that the Lakota were settled on reservations, and many Lakota families were given allotments of land. They didn't really have a concept of land ownership, and they weren't farmers or ranchers, so many of those allotments were then sold to white settlers. I've seen the physical deed once a long time ago, if memory serves our land was originally allotted to a man named Blue Nose, sold to some white guy, then us and our family has been ranching it for four generations now.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs has historically been pretty evil and taken every opportunity to gently caress over reservations and native peoples. I read in Albert White Hat's memoir that there used to be more Lakota families ranching, but during WW2 (and maybe Vietnam too?) the BIA invoked some law that allowed them to seize land that was unoccupied for 60 days or something. They took a bunch of land from Lakota who left to fight in the war and sold or leased it. I'll have to dig that book out and find more details.

Edit: there's also a ton of tribally owned land that is off the reservation, too. Check out this map:

there are four counties in the south that are spotted with tribal land. The entirety of those counties used to be part of the reservation but lol gently caress you natives.

You might not be surprised to learn that the reservations are among the very poorest counties and communities in the US. Unemployment around 85% (no, not a typo).

Interesting stuff, thank you so much!

And no, my grand-teachers reservation in Boulder, CO is completely hosed. Since he's the medicine man, he's expected to help people in need, so everyone borrows gas money and a couch to crash on from him. Also, everyone smokes dope, and the teen suicide rate was staggering. They can't even agree on one healing ceremony, so instead of holding rites together, they have 4 or 5 different ones

# ? Aug 6, 2016 21:09

Shark Sandwich: Sep 6, 2010; by R. Guyovich

Shark Sandwich fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Sep 7, 2016

# ? Aug 6, 2016 21:17

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

Grand Fromage posted:

I ask in a non dickish way, who is Dan Howard? I've not encountered an argument for hamata as a superior armor before and would like to read it.

He's an armour scholar who wrote this article: http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html
He lays out his argument of the advantages of hamata vs. segmentata there.

I don't always agree with him, but at the very least his arguments as far as cost & ease of manufacture jibe with my own experience working iron.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 21:18

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

HEY GAL posted:

Someone just posted this in the map thread

note the clear superiority of The Empire, specifically Bohemia, and the part where nobody gives a poo poo about England.

Edit: You might even call it..."the heart of Europe"

Prussia is the rear end-end of Europe, map checks out

# ? Aug 6, 2016 21:45

Pellisworth: Jun 20, 2005

Tias posted:

Interesting stuff, thank you so much!

And no, my grand-teachers reservation in Boulder, CO is completely hosed. Since he's the medicine man, he's expected to help people in need, so everyone borrows gas money and a couch to crash on from him. Also, everyone smokes dope, and the teen suicide rate was staggering. They can't even agree on one healing ceremony, so instead of holding rites together, they have 4 or 5 different ones

Hmm I'm pretty sure there aren't any reservations near Boulder? The Sioux reservations are all in the Dakotas and Minnesota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation has a good map, Colorado has a few in the extreme SW corner of the state.

Native Americans were generally given the shittiest land available, so the local economy is really weak and there are no jobs to be had. If you stay on the reservation, you can receive (lovely) government housing, healthcare, and commodity food. It's hard to leave because the education system is bad and ill-prepares students for college, plus you're leaving behind your culture and people. So the choice for most Lakota is to stay on the rez and live in miserable conditions or leave everything behind and try to get an education or job in the outside world. For those few that do make it, it's hard to go back to the reservation even if they wanted to give back to their community, because there are no jobs there for them.

That's related to what I was saying about authentic Native American medicine men and teachers, by definition their passion is to serve and teach in their own communities and they're going to be poor. I had an ex in Los Angeles telling me about this awesome spiritual teacher who does crystal healing and also is teaching totally authentic classes on Native American religion. Yeah, no, legit dudes are not hawking crystals and juice cleanses in loving Hollywood.

Alcoholism and more recently meth usage is an epidemic, domestic abuse is really bad in part because of the tribal justice system. If the offender is a tribal member, the tribe has jurisdiction but the court system is so underfunded and backed up most crimes get ignored unless they're especially bad. If the offender is non-tribal, the tribe cannot prosecute them. Hypothetically, if I beat my tribal-member wife, the tribal police and courts can't do poo poo about it because they do not have jurisdiction over me, a non-member. Instead, the case has to be handled by a federal prosecutor so good loving luck getting the attention of a federal attorney for your domestic abuse case.

Edit: one weird trick to get away with most anything short of murder!

Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 22:05 on Aug 6, 2016

# ? Aug 6, 2016 21:49

Rodrigo Diaz: Apr 16, 2007; Knights who are at the wars eat their bread in sorrow;
their ease is weariness and sweat;
they have one good day after many bad

HEY GAL posted:

Someone just posted this in the map thread

note the clear superiority of The Empire, specifically Bohemia, and the part where nobody gives a poo poo about England.

Edit: You might even call it..."the heart of Europe"

Bohemia is really more in a stomach or small intestine position. Bohemia, the land of puke.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 22:05

Rad Gravity: Mar 14, 2012

HEY GAL posted:

Incorrect--then it's Asia. This map expresses a symbolic truth, but everyone knows what the world looks like physically:

This is hardly military history (and I don't suppose there's a historical cartography thread), but were these things hand-colored? Googling that map yields a bunch of differently colorized versions, and all looking much more vivid and pretty than the rather faded one I've got framed in my room :v:

(which I assume to be some sort of reproduction rather than an actual antique map, though I wouldn't know how to tell). I just have no idea how they would have gone about even printing such a detailed thing back in the 1600s.

# ? Aug 6, 2016 22:07

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Okay, I did not know at all about the huge amount of Chinese labour that helped the Entente during the 1st World War....

# ? Aug 7, 2016 00:13

Koramei: Nov 11, 2011; I have three regrets
The first is to be born in Joseon.

The Chinese sure did; from a brief glance it didn't look like they touched on this in the article, but the German possessions in China going to the Japanese rather than back to them in the peace of Versailles has been a driving force in Chinese history and anti-western sentiment for the past century, way more important than any of the European ramifications of Chinese labor. Look up the May 4th protests if you're interested.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 00:25

Grand Fromage: Jan 30, 2006; L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?

PittTheElder posted:

Do we know much about the logistic support effort that would accompany a unit in the field? Is it supposed to be integral to each legion?

I'm thinking that there must have been a large transport group pulling along replacement javelins, extra equipment, heavy artillery, maybe food and trade goods, etc.

The exact method of logistics is very speculative, what we know for sure is whatever the Romans did they were really good at it. I think the general consensus is the legion would have a large supply unit with them. Legions on the march would have wagons following along loaded with all those replacement things you're mentioning, and among the camp followers would be people with useful skills. The majority of equipment was made in mass production factories but you'd want smiths and whatnot with the army. Within the empire they maintained farms and supply dumps at forts and there were wagon groups to send supplies between them, we have evidence of that from Vindolanda tablets.

Rodrigo Diaz posted:

He's an armour scholar who wrote this article: http://myarmoury.com/feature_mail.html
He lays out his argument of the advantages of hamata vs. segmentata there.

I don't always agree with him, but at the very least his arguments as far as cost & ease of manufacture jibe with my own experience working iron.

Cool, I'll read this later. It is a mystery why they stopped manufacturing segmentata, if the Romans decided hamata was the better armor that would be a reasonable explanation.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 04:16

Grand Prize Winner: Feb 19, 2007

I Heard Somewhere* that mail, although more labor-intensive than segmentata or similar armor composed of large pieces of steel, is actually less skill-intensive. So if you have a large enough labor pool it might be easier to produce mail. Also was squamata also a thing in the later Empire?

*possibly from a homeless man on the bus

# ? Aug 7, 2016 05:22

mlmp08: Jul 11, 2004; Prepare for my priapic projectile's exalted penetration; Nap Ghost

Crazycryodude posted:

When they're low, sure, they're noisy as all hell. Up high, though, you don't even know it's there until a Hellfire comes out of nowhere. The Predator's operational ceiling is at least 25,000 feet, and I can't imagine that you'd be able to hear it when it's above even a few thousand. Now, I'm not familiar with the specifics of drone usage and tactics, maybe they're only really useful (due to camera resolution, targeting precision, whatever) when they're flying low enough to hear but I'd assume that height doesn't play too much of a role in their operations - we've had the optics technology since around the 80's iirc to build spy satellites that have a resolution fine enough to distinguish individual footprints from orbit, I think a drone that can still be precise at a decent altitude is completely possible.

There are plenty of noisy drones. The shadow sounds like a drat lawn mower even when it's high enough that you probably can't see it. It's not armed, but the folks on the ground who just got bombed after the shadow spotted them might not know that.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 10:50

Pump it up! Do it!: Oct 3, 2012

Does anyone know any good concise book on the English civil war that goes into what caused it as well?

# ? Aug 7, 2016 10:55

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Guys I don't know if you noticed this but July 1916 was a loving terrible month for a shitload of people

100 Years Ago

31 July: And glory be, it's over now. The end comes with some navel-gazing from Generals Joffre and Haig; then a bollocking from Haig to Rawlinson; Max Plowman marches round and round the Bull Ring at Etaples several hundred times; Lt-Col Neil Tennant has arrived at Basra and does some well-meaning moaning about how terrible the logistics still are; E.S. Thompson continues his string of bad life decisions by trying to burn his tent down with himself inside; his mates have cut the Central Railway at Dodoma; and then the month ends on the most appropriate send-off I can think of, a three-exploding-horse salute.

1 August: What do you mean, there's another month? We just got done with the last one! Winston Churchill puts the case against the Somme; General von Knobelsdorf launches a surprise attack against Fort Souville; things are beginning to clank and crunch into action on the Salonika front; Lt-Col Fraser-Tytler wades through yesterday's gore and departs from the story for a while for a well-deserved rest; E.S. Thompson reads the newspapers; German fighter ace Oswald Boelcke is on a grand tour of Germany's allies to keep him from getting shot down over Verdun; Henri Desagneaux celebrates the war's anniversary with his favourite rats; and Maximilian Mugge still has a fly in his fatigue cap about folk songs.

2 August: General Haig puts the case for the Somme, which seems so much more reasonable when horses aren't in fact exploding in front of one's eyes; the Battle of Bitlis is already not going well for the Ottomans; Emilio Lussu takes a cavalry staff officer to loophole 14, with predictable consequences; Evelyn Southwell is still very depressed; E.S. Thompson gets some actual orders; and Maximilian Mugge has shockingly discovered that he doesn't much care for the Army, or for being Private Mugge.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 13:07

my dad: Oct 17, 2012; this shall be humorous

I'm starting to suspect that Loophole 14 is actually the result of the pointlessness and stupidity of the Italian Front crystallizing into a rock with a hole in it. Jesus Christ. :stare:

# ? Aug 7, 2016 13:39

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

So uh, I found Battlefield Recovery on Netflix.

Is it me or are these dudes a wee bit over enthusiastic about this? Might be hamming it up for the telly but I've never seen somebody be so cheerful about the concept of stumbing across unexploded ordinance or Nazi bones. Then again, I shouldn't judge I get all tingly when I see muskets IRL.

EDIT: BLACK DIGGERS!

SeanBeansShako fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Aug 7, 2016

# ? Aug 7, 2016 14:12

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

my dad posted:

I'm starting to suspect that Loophole 14 is actually the result of the pointlessness and stupidity of the Italian Front crystallizing into a rock with a hole in it. Jesus Christ.

the western front is pointless and stupid. the italian front is mean

# ? Aug 7, 2016 15:47

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Do they basically have a guy with a sniper rifle sitting watching spots like that all day, in case someone's head appears?

# ? Aug 7, 2016 15:51

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Fangz posted:

Do they basically have a guy with a sniper rifle sitting watching spots like that all day, in case someone's head appears?

if you were a dude from laibach with a sick rear end rifle, would you lose money betting that italian officers are not suicidally insane

is laibach still part of the Empire in 1916? idk

# ? Aug 7, 2016 16:03

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

Fangz posted:

Do they basically have a guy with a sniper rifle sitting watching spots like that all day, in case someone's head appears?

You can probably fix the rifle in place, so all you need to do is walk up and pull the trigger.

Edit: For two more years, yes :shobon:

# ? Aug 7, 2016 16:04

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

feedmegin posted:

Edit: For two more years, yes

considering the kinds of things i read, there's certain places in the world where i have a detailed map...with totally the wrong place names in it. i know laibach, eger, budweis, etc

# ? Aug 7, 2016 16:09

xthetenth: Dec 30, 2012; Mario wasn't sure if this Jeb guy was a good influence on Yoshi.

feedmegin posted:

You can probably fix the rifle in place, so all you need to do is walk up and pull the trigger.

Edit: For two more years, yes

Windage, but yes.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 16:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

a setup like that, but with a hook gun because you can't get great distance out of a black powder gun without a big bore too, is probably what killed that one king of sweden, not a jacket button fired by one of his own men

sorry!

# ? Aug 7, 2016 16:13

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Fangz posted:

Do they basically have a guy with a sniper rifle sitting watching spots like that all day, in case someone's head appears?

Short answer: yes, everywhere on every front where there's trench warfare, every so often there's a ping as some idiot gets up on the fire-step to let a working party come through the narrow trench, forgets to duck down, and catches the wrong bloke's eye at 500 yards. That particular loophole is such an obvious target, high on the highest hill, that it almost certainly has one or more sniper posts that were put there to cover it and with standing orders that your first priority is to immediately shoot any fucker who opens it, and given the accuracy it's probable that the main post covering it has a fixed rifle.

Longer answer: where there's trench warfare, there's snipers. In a WWI context I often prefer to call them "marksmen", because the word "sniper" has modern images of a specially-trained dude in a giant ghillie suit, with his own precision-engineered sniper rifle and a gigantic scope that you could use to take a pot at someone on the International Space Station if you felt like it. WWI snipers are generally just regular guys with the standard service rifle (which was generally good out to at least 2,000 yards but used at a quarter the distance or less, even by snipers) who've passed some proficiency tests. They don't need to wear a bush because they live in a trench, and they've probably had sniping posts built for them; a good officer will do what he can to ensure that the spotters have a good-quality telescope or pair of binoculars.

Ex-blog-correspondent Bernard Adams was, among other things, in charge of his battalion's snipers, and he wrote a lot about the job that never made it into the blog for reasons of space.

quote:

I was up on No. 1 post, with a sniper who was new to the work. It was still freezing, but the snow-clouds had cleared right away, and the wind had dropped. There was a tingle in the air; everything was as still as death; the sun was shining from a very blue sky, and throwing longer and longer shadows in the snow as the afternoon wore on. It was a valuable afternoon, the enemy's [barbed] wire showing up very clearly against the white ground, and I was showing the new sniper how to search the trench systematically from left to right, noting the exact position of anything that looked like a loophole, or steel-plate, and especially the thickness of the wire, what kind, whether it was gray and new, or rusty-red and old; whether there were any gaps in it, and where. All these things a sniper should note every morning when he comes on to his post. Gaps are important as patrols must come out through gaps, and the Lewis gunners should know these, and be ready to fire at them if a patrol is heard thereabouts in No Man's Land. Similarly, old gaps closed up must be reported.
...
"I can see something over on the left, sir. It is a man 's head, sir! Look!"
I looked. Yes.
"No," I almost shouted. "It's a dummy head. Just have a look. And don't whatever you do, fire." Sure enough, a cardboard head appeared over the front parapet opposite, with a grey cap on. Slowly it disappeared. Without the telescope it would have been next to impossible to see it was not a man. Again it appeared, then slowly sank out of view. It was well away on the left. For this post was well-sited, having an oblique field of vision, as all good sniping-posts should. That is to say, they should be sited like this:

The ideal is to have all your posts in the support line, and not in the front line, and at about three hundred yards from the enemy front line. Of course, if the ground slopes away behind you, you cannot get positions in the supports unless there are buildings to make posts in. By getting an oblique view, you gain two advantages:

(a) If A gets a shot at C, C's friends look out for "that damned sniper opposite," and look in the direction of B, who is carefully concealed from direct view.
(b) A's loophole is invisible from direct observation by D, as it is pointing slantwise at C.

[Adams also helpfully includes a cross-section of a typical sniper's post:]

So, that dummy head was being waved near where someone was shot and killed in the German trench; they're trying to draw more fire from snipers who will then reveal their position to other observers. Both sides are constantly playing cat and mouse with the enemy's sniping posts (or their machine-gun posts, or their trench mortar emplacements, or their artillery's observation posts) and trying to camouflage their own posts as well as possible. If you find one, that could well be a valid reason to call in a few rounds from the seven-mile snipers further back. And then the enemy retaliates, and for a few minutes all the infantry sentries swear under their breath and wonder which bloody idiot started all this nonsense over nothing of importance...

(Or, alternatively, you're French and you're in a quiet sector where everyone's far too sensible for any of this nonsense. In which case, you know exactly where the enemy's sniper post is, because you know that good old Corporal Schmidt always hangs out a tablecloth over the top of it when he's got some newspapers to swap.)

# ? Aug 7, 2016 17:53

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I like the description of the artillery section as "seven mile snipers"

# ? Aug 7, 2016 18:00

Xerxes17: Feb 17, 2011

I recall reading in Anthony Beevor's Berlin that the Navodchiks (artillery spotters) consider themselves to be snipers but with much bigger guns.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 18:17

Slim Jim Pickens: Jan 16, 2012

Trin Tragula posted:

2 August: General Haig puts the case for the Somme, which seems so much more reasonable when horses aren't in fact exploding in front of one's eyes; the Battle of Bitlis is already not going well for the Ottomans; Emilio Lussu takes a cavalry staff officer to loophole 14, with predictable consequences; Evelyn Southwell is still very depressed; E.S. Thompson gets some actual orders; and Maximilian Mugge has shockingly discovered that he doesn't much care for the Army, or for being Private Mugge.

Lussu's experience sounds... unique, like he's already writing from the post-war perspective.

# ? Aug 7, 2016 19:17

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

Xerxes17 posted:

I recall reading in Anthony Beevor's Berlin that the Navodchiks (artillery spotters) consider themselves to be snipers but with much bigger guns.

Sounds accurate.

Trin Tragula posted:

Short answer: yes, everywhere on every front where there's trench warfare, every so often there's a ping as some idiot gets up on the fire-step to let a working party come through the narrow trench, forgets to duck down, and catches the wrong bloke's eye at 500 yards. That particular loophole is such an obvious target, high on the highest hill, that it almost certainly has one or more sniper posts that were put there to cover it and with standing orders that your first priority is to immediately shoot any fucker who opens it, and given the accuracy it's probable that the main post covering it has a fixed rifle.

Longer answer:

This is super interesting, but I keep reading thing below the sniper's elbows in the diagram as "Bear".

# ? Aug 7, 2016 19:30

Jobbo_Fett: Mar 7, 2014; Slava Ukrayini; Clapping Larry

spectralent posted:

This is super interesting, but I keep reading thing below the sniper's elbows in the diagram as "Bear".

Corporal Teddy is a vital part of the squad!

# ? Aug 7, 2016 19:38

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

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Pellisworth posted:

Hmm I'm pretty sure there aren't any reservations near Boulder? The Sioux reservations are all in the Dakotas and Minnesota. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_reservation has a good map, Colorado has a few in the extreme SW corner of the state.

Native Americans were generally given the shittiest land available, so the local economy is really weak and there are no jobs to be had. If you stay on the reservation, you can receive (lovely) government housing, healthcare, and commodity food. It's hard to leave because the education system is bad and ill-prepares students for college, plus you're leaving behind your culture and people. So the choice for most Lakota is to stay on the rez and live in miserable conditions or leave everything behind and try to get an education or job in the outside world. For those few that do make it, it's hard to go back to the reservation even if they wanted to give back to their community, because there are no jobs there for them.

That's related to what I was saying about authentic Native American medicine men and teachers, by definition their passion is to serve and teach in their own communities and they're going to be poor. I had an ex in Los Angeles telling me about this awesome spiritual teacher who does crystal healing and also is teaching totally authentic classes on Native American religion. Yeah, no, legit dudes are not hawking crystals and juice cleanses in loving Hollywood.

Alcoholism and more recently meth usage is an epidemic, domestic abuse is really bad in part because of the tribal justice system. If the offender is a tribal member, the tribe has jurisdiction but the court system is so underfunded and backed up most crimes get ignored unless they're especially bad. If the offender is non-tribal, the tribe cannot prosecute them. Hypothetically, if I beat my tribal-member wife, the tribal police and courts can't do poo poo about it because they do not have jurisdiction over me, a non-member. Instead, the case has to be handled by a federal prosecutor so good loving luck getting the attention of a federal attorney for your domestic abuse case.

Edit: one weird trick to get away with most anything short of murder!

I'm not entirely sure where he lives, I think he was ordained in Pine Ridge, though I'm not sure.

This guy is definitely authentic( going into a sweat without a proper medicine man is asking the spirits to gently caress with you, IMO), though he has a rough time of it. He comes here to Denmark to teach in order to get some cash for the folks back home, who don't really appreciate him going, and they're all unemployed and on dope

And yeah, I know about the legal loophope, it's pretty terrible. What are the odds these things will ever change?

HEY GAL posted:

if you were a dude from laibach with a sick rear end rifle, would you lose money betting that italian officers are not suicidally insane

is laibach still part of the Empire in 1916? idk

Now I'm imagining those crunk slovenian art industrial musicians shooting italians. Eh, still good!

# ? Aug 7, 2016 19:47

Ensign Expendable: Nov 11, 2008; Lager beer is proof that god loves us; Pillbug

Xerxes17 posted:

I recall reading in Anthony Beevor's Berlin that the Navodchiks (artillery spotters) consider themselves to be snipers but with much bigger guns.

Navodchik means gunner (literally "aimer"). Artillery observers are called korrektirovsсhik ("corrector").

# ? Aug 7, 2016 20:16

Xerxes17: Feb 17, 2011

Ensign Expendable posted:

Navodchik means gunner (literally "aimer"). Artillery observers are called korrektirovsсhik ("corrector").

Red Orchestra has lied to me :negative:

# ? Aug 7, 2016 20:18

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# ? May 10, 2024 20:12

Pellisworth: Jun 20, 2005

Tias posted:

This guy is definitely authentic( going into a sweat without a proper medicine man is asking the spirits to gently caress with you, IMO), though he has a rough time of it. He comes here to Denmark to teach in order to get some cash for the folks back home, who don't really appreciate him going, and they're all unemployed and on dope

And yeah, I know about the legal loophope, it's pretty terrible. What are the odds these things will ever change?

Also, why the gently caress would you attend a sweat lodge ceremony if you didn't care about the associated ritual and beliefs? It's not like passing an arms-length pipe around smoking sage with a bunch of old Native American dudes while your body temperature is so hot as to risk heart attack and stroke is a fun thing in isolation.

Regarding the legal nightmare that is the collision of the American justice system and tribal sovereignty, it's getting better. My mom works in criminal justice and law enforcement on the reservation, tribal/state/federal governments are all very aware of the problem and have been devoting more resources toward federal prosecutors working on such cases. That's still not addressing the root problem of the current tribal sovereignty system being fundamentally hosed, though.

Pellisworth fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Aug 8, 2016

# ? Aug 8, 2016 01:26

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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