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

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

«‹›1216 »

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

Panzeh posted:

Louis and Austria were in cahoots.

Remember his wife was HRE Royalty now.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 17:01

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 23, 2024 23:55

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

The Anglo-Austrian coalition of 1700 had basically shut down Louis XIV's grand design for France to be the European superpower.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 17:23

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

Ainsley McTree posted:

Also, if anybody's interested in testing the outer limits of , while I was home for thanksgiving I found my grandpa's day-by-day war diary. He served in WWII as a plane-spotter in the pacific on an island that never saw action (or if it did, not while he was there; I can't recall the name).

I thumbed through it briefly but it was so brittle I didn't want to transport it but now I realize that phones have cameras so I can just foreverize it that way when I go back for christmas. He seemed to make daily entries for his entire period of service but from what I saw it was a lot of "we had/didn't have inspection/training today". One entry was literally "no inspection so just laid around all day." I also found a letter home written by him in which he expressed that he missed his dog, whose name was n-word. You know, it was a different era I guess

This got lost in the discussion I think.

:justpost:

# ? Nov 29, 2017 17:50

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Ainsley McTree posted:

Also, if anybody's interested in testing the outer limits of , while I was home for thanksgiving I found my grandpa's day-by-day war diary. He served in WWII as a plane-spotter in the pacific on an island that never saw action (or if it did, not while he was there; I can't recall the name).

I thumbed through it briefly but it was so brittle I didn't want to transport it but now I realize that phones have cameras so I can just foreverize it that way when I go back for christmas. He seemed to make daily entries for his entire period of service but from what I saw it was a lot of "we had/didn't have inspection/training today". One entry was literally "no inspection so just laid around all day." I also found a letter home written by him in which he expressed that he missed his dog, whose name was n-word. You know, it was a different era I guess

If you mean in the day by day like Clarence is doing with the 13th KRRC war diary, it sounds a little thin for that. But otherwise, yeah, :justpost:

# ? Nov 29, 2017 17:58

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Yeah I don�t plan to do a post every day for four years or anything

. I�ll take a closer look at it when I go home for Xmas and share anything that looks interesting.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 18:16

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

Above all, don't jeopardize the original if you can possibly avoid it.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 18:59

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

PittTheElder posted:

Above all, don't jeopardize the original if you can possibly avoid it.

Honestly I think a document like that, preserving the information is preferred to preserving the physical artifact. Obviously the best would be to do both and that should be possible, but I'd err towards the former in extremis.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 19:06

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

My plan is to gingerly take phone pictures of each page and transcribe the photos; I�m generally paranoid about all things I touch breaking in my hands (including electronics, old photographs, babies) so I will be careful!

# ? Nov 29, 2017 19:10

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Ainsley McTree posted:

Is Mike Duncan generally thread-approved? I enjoy his podcast and I bought his book but if he was horribly biased and discredited or something I'd never know unless a bunch of historians told me

He's been treated pretty positively so far.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 19:16

WoodrowSkillson: Feb 24, 2005; *Gestures at 60 years of Lions history*

GreyjoyBastard posted:

He's been treated pretty positively so far.

He stays away from grand generalizations, acknowledges alternate interpretations, and in general seems up to date on more recent scholarship in the areas he does pop history on.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 20:03

Grand Prize Winner: Feb 19, 2007

It's kinda weird how paper is so variable. My grandma still has her great-grandfather's (maybe just her grandfather's, I can't remember) discharge papers from the US civil war but my uncle's vietnam-era papers - I think they were discharge papers too but I was eight years old and am now a drunk - literally fell apart in my hands in 1995 or thereabouts.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 21:58

P-Mack: Nov 10, 2007

Grand Prize Winner posted:

It's kinda weird how paper is so variable. My grandma still has her great-grandfather's (maybe just her grandfather's, I can't remember) discharge papers from the US civil war but my uncle's vietnam-era papers - I think they were discharge papers too but I was eight years old and am now a drunk - literally fell apart in my hands in 1995 or thereabouts.

Starting in the twentieth century paper was made with more economically efficient chemical processes that unfortunately also make it more acidic and prone to degrading with age than older paper.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:07

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

P-Mack posted:

Starting in the twentieth century paper was made with more economically efficient chemical processes that unfortunately also make it more acidic and prone to degrading with age than older paper.

To expand a bit for those interested - there are specific types of acid free (and much more expensive) archival grade paper used for long term records. Not only are documents like those discharge papers likely to be printed on much cheaper grades, the kinds of printers used for those documents in the 70s could only handle certain kinds of paper that tend to age very poorly.

Comrade Gorbash fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Nov 29, 2017

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:26

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

If you�re in NYC, give Argosy Books a visit. They have books from the 17th and 18th century that you can thumb through, plus a lot of 19th and early 20th century books.

The oldest English book I found was a 1790s adaptation of Joan of Arc. I also found a very interesting 1914 Spain travel guide.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:30

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

I said the same thing when I saw the prado

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:31

Cyrano4747: Sep 25, 2006; Yes, I know I'm old, get off my fucking lawn so I can yell at these clouds.

Comrade Gorbash posted:

To expand a bit for those interested - there are specific types of acid free (and much more expensive) archival grade paper used for long term records. Not only are documents like those discharge papers likely to be printed on much cheaper grades, the kinds of printers used for those documents in the 70s could only handle certain kinds of paper that tend to age very poorly.

I worked a lot with 1940s era carbon copies in various German archives and those things will fall apart if you look at them funny. I was constantly coughing because of all the paper dust I was inhaling. My wife would joke that I had "book lung" and she wasn't that far off. I

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:34

Ainsley McTree: Feb 19, 2004

Cyrano4747 posted:

I worked a lot with 1940s era carbon copies in various German archives and those things will fall apart if you look at them funny. I was constantly coughing because of all the paper dust I was inhaling. My wife would joke that I had "book lung" and she wasn't that far off. I

Rip cyrano4747: died of book lung in the middle of a post

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:36

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

There's stuff in the Russian archives printed and handwritten on any kind of paper they happened to have, down to captured German blank forms. Naturally, some of it aged quite poorly.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:39

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Comrade Gorbash posted:

To expand a bit for those interested - there are specific types of acid free (and much more expensive) archival grade paper used for long term records. Not only are documents like those discharge papers likely to be printed on much cheaper grades, the kinds of printers used for those documents in the 70s could only handle certain kinds of paper that tend to age very poorly.

Yes, this is why if you go to the register office to sign a death certificate or something they have really fancy paper and they make you use a fountain pen.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:41

chitoryu12: Apr 24, 2014

Ainsley McTree posted:

I said the same thing when I saw the prado

That only Spanish wine is worth drinking?

Also here�s that Joan of Arc:

It�s really weird holding something from the time of the American Revolution in your hands. It�s even weirder holding a velum book from the 1650s.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:42

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

Secretly the average quality of paper has improved massively since the introduction of the desktop inkjet. Your typical lovely campus flyer is printed on paper that's orders of magnitudes better than pretty much any government record from the mid-20th century.

Records printed now still won't keep, historically speaking, but they'll last longer than those carbon copies. And while digital archiving is its own entire can of worms, its not hopeless and should allow us to retain a lot of data for a good amount of time.

But the reason the craze to digitize things is so important is that within the next century essentially the entire official documentation of the mid-20th is going to crumble into dust unless we capture it now.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:43

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

Also why parliament still writes on vellum.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:44

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Comrade Gorbash posted:

Secretly the average quality of paper has improved massively since the introduction of the desktop inkjet. Your typical lovely campus flyer is printed on paper that's orders of magnitudes better than pretty much any government record from the mid-20th century.

Records printed now still won't keep, historically speaking, but they'll last longer than those carbon copies. And while digital archiving is its own entire can of worms, its not hopeless and should allow us to retain a lot of data for a good amount of time.

But the reason the craze to digitize things is so important is that within the next century essentially the entire official documentation of the mid-20th is going to crumble into dust unless we capture it now.

A bunch of it is already gone; when my dad (the real my dad, not the poster) died, the military said they had no record of his service because the archives for that period had been destroyed in a fire. At least with digital archiving, the documents should be hopefully accessible over a timeframe of 50-100 years, which is what you'll definitely need them for.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:48

P-Mack: Nov 10, 2007

sullat posted:

A bunch of it is already gone; when my dad (the real my dad, not the poster) died, the military said they had no record of his service because the archives for that period had been destroyed in a fire. At least with digital archiving, the documents should be hopefully accessible over a timeframe of 50-100 years, which is what you'll definitely need them for.

US? Probably this fire-

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Center_fire

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:51

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

P-Mack posted:

US? Probably this fire-

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Personnel_Records_Center_fire

quote:

Some U.S. Army Reserve personnel who performed their initial active duty for training in the late 1950s but who received final discharge as late as 1964.

Yeah, that's the one.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 22:55

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Grand Prize Winner posted:

It's kinda weird how paper is so variable. My grandma still has her great-grandfather's (maybe just her grandfather's, I can't remember) discharge papers from the US civil war but my uncle's vietnam-era papers - I think they were discharge papers too but I was eight years old and am now a drunk - literally fell apart in my hands in 1995 or thereabouts.

different materials, different processing, level of exposure to light

avoid light and if you have 20th century material invest in basic (the chemical) blotter paper and folders to neutralize the acid in mid-20th century papers

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:05

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Ainsley McTree posted:

I said the same thing when I saw the prado

the prado owns

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:06

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Cyrano4747 posted:

I worked a lot with 1940s era carbon copies in various German archives and those things will fall apart if you look at them funny. I was constantly coughing because of all the paper dust I was inhaling. My wife would joke that I had "book lung" and she wasn't that far off. I

i did the same thing but that was because part of the 17th century writing process involved shaking sand onto your freshly-written page. i dug it out of my hair with my nails.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:07

Comrade Gorbash: Jul 12, 2011; My paper soldiers form a wall, five paces thick and twice as tall.

That is the other benefit of digital, that it can be decentralized. A lot of important records have been lost in various fires, and there's a lot of WW1 documentation that literally got blown up in WW2.

But even the stuff that's survived those bottlenecks are just falling apart. Hence Cyrano4747 inhaling some fat-fingered Oberleutnant's typos.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:09

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

HEY GUNS posted:

i did the same thing but that was because part of the 17th century writing process involved shaking sand onto your freshly-written page. i dug it out of my hair with my nails.

Where do they get the sand from? Locally or do they bring them with them?

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:22

OwlFancier: Aug 22, 2013

I think you can reuse the sand if I remember seeing that technique used. You pour it down the page I think and it helps take the wet off?

Might be thinking of something else though.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:25

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

OwlFancier posted:

I think you can reuse the sand if I remember seeing that technique used. You pour it down the page I think and it helps take the wet off?

Might be thinking of something else though.

you can reuse the sand, you can also use powdered shells, i dunno where you get the sand but modern dresden and koenigstein are full of the stuff, it grits in your teeth

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:29

dublish: Oct 31, 2011

chitoryu12 posted:

I also found a very interesting 1914 Spain travel guide.

I can think of only one John Hay so pretentious and well-travelled that he might have written that.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:41

Mr Enderby: Mar 28, 2015

Grand Prize Winner posted:

It's kinda weird how paper is so variable. My grandma still has her great-grandfather's (maybe just her grandfather's, I can't remember) discharge papers from the US civil war but my uncle's vietnam-era papers - I think they were discharge papers too but I was eight years old and am now a drunk - literally fell apart in my hands in 1995 or thereabouts.

The Civil war paper was probably cotton fibre. The shift to wood pulp, which happened in the mid-19th century after the invention of the sulfite process, was a disaster for preservation. I've handled a lot of 17th century printed matter, and it's all much more robust than your average 1960s paperback.

Old paper is fun because it has chain-lines, and watermarks, and is generally more information-rich than modern paper.

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:53

Plutonis: Mar 25, 2011

HEY GUNS posted:

the prado owns

# ? Nov 29, 2017 23:59

Mr Enderby: Mar 28, 2015

chitoryu12 posted:

It�s even weirder holding a velum book from the 1650s.

Wait, do you mean printed on velum? Those are super rare.

# ? Nov 30, 2017 00:01

Loezi: Dec 18, 2012; Never buy the cheap stuff

I have just found the online archive of almost all the master's thesis equivalent works of the Finnish Defense University. The cut-off seems to be 1991 and I'm sure some are missing based on secrecy stuff. This means that the works of most significant Finnish war-time military leaders are available :dance:

Here's a sample of the pre-war stuff:

The battle of Mukden. A critical overview of the plans of the Russian military leadership and the implementation thereof. 1926.
The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. A critical study of the war plans and actions of the Russian military leadership up to the start of the maneuvering. 1926.
The Serbian campaign in 1915. A critical study of a small nation's fight along the inner lines. 1927.
The battle of Isokyr� (Napue) -- a tactical study and a short overview of the military actions from fall 1713 to the battle. 1927.
The significance of Viaborg (Suomenlinna) on the defence of Finland. A historical study on the military political position of Finland on the 18th century and at the start of the 19th century. 1927.
Gallipolli. A study on the co-operation of the army and the navy. 1928.
The winter battle of Masuria and its operational background. A strategic study. 1929.
Falkhay as the leader of the German war effort. A critical study of the German operations from fall 1914 to fall 1916 from the point of view of the overall strategic situation of the Central Powers. 1930.
The battle of Warsaw in August 1920. The Polish plan and a review of its implementation. 1932.
The actions of a battalion supply officer in attack. 1932.

But to me the most interesting thing is this series of theses, written immediately after WW2:

The upcoming war. 1948.
The infantry of the future: organization, equipment, tactics and command. 1948.
The anti-tank equipment, organizations, tactics and command in the future. 1948.
The artillery of the future: organization, equipment, tactics and command. 1948.
Pioneers in the future: organization, equipment, tactics and command. 1948.
Combat Engineers in the future: organization, equipment, tactics and command. 1948.

I'm planning on reading these during my month-long Christmas holiday. I'll :justpost:

if there's anything especially interesting, in terms of either good insights or horribly wrong predictions.

Loezi fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Nov 30, 2017

# ? Nov 30, 2017 00:07

Biffmotron: Jan 12, 2007

Comrade Gorbash posted:

That is the other benefit of digital, that it can be decentralized. A lot of important records have been lost in various fires, and there's a lot of WW1 documentation that literally got blown up in WW2.

But even the stuff that's survived those bottlenecks are just falling apart. Hence Cyrano4747 inhaling some fat-fingered Oberleutnant's typos.

This is one of those things where in theory digital everything means that preservation is easier, but even in the immediate short term material is being deliberately destroyed rather than collected. According to a recent editorial in the Washington Post, a lot of Army records from 2003 to 2013 have simply been erased, with consequences from loss to historians, to loss of operational intelligence, to veterans being unable to prove that incidents where they were injured ever happened.

There's a lot that we might never be able to know. One of which is how archival "death by powerpoint" stacks up to book lung and 17th century handwriting.

quote:

In Iraq, in part because of concerns over transporting classified material, soldiers heading home were forced to turn in computer hard drives to be wiped clean and �reimaged.� My own computer held hundreds of reports written after daily patrols. I would note every soldier who went on the patrol, summarize our every action, list every person we talked to and often include photos. I recorded details and filed photos of the night in 2003 when an improvised explosive device wounded three of my soldiers so badly that they needed to be evacuated back to the United States. I documented the night in 2008 when a grenade was thrown at my soldiers, missed and killed a nearby Iraqi child.

My unit analyzed patterns in our digital data and used it to inform our operations. At the end of my rotations, I handed off files for a few specific projects to the relief units. But everything on my computer was deleted. Hand-written logs were similarly shredded and burned when we rotated out.

Army units� failure to keep field records attracted the attention of Congress after an investigation by ProPublica and the Seattle Times in late 2012. Some of the most pressing concerns were about whether veterans could receive proper care with no records of their wartime experiences. Medical records in the military are well kept and rarely lost. But if a soldier who served in Iraq or Afghanistan needs to be assessed for service-related injuries or requires therapy for combat-related stress, there are often no records of the incidents that may have caused their injuries. There are often no documents to help a soldier remember and unpack what happened.

The lack of records also has operational consequences. An abundance of invaluable knowledge, often earned at great cost, wasn�t available for new units that rotated into conflict zones on a yearly basis. Newly arrived troops typically would receive intelligence from Army organizations about the area, enemy forces and local populations, but they were for the most part deprived of firsthand accounts from the soldiers who preceeded them. So American units that were sent to Mosul in 2014 weren�t able to learn from the contextual lessons or ground tactical information collected by soldiers deployed to Mosul in 2004.

# ? Nov 30, 2017 00:30

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

Who posted the Warsaw memoir again? I've been sleeping better. I'm looking to fix that.

Actually over all, are there any actually good memoirs by Germans of the Eastern Front that aren't better described as "historical" fiction?

# ? Nov 30, 2017 00:42

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 23, 2024 23:55

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

Loezi posted:

I have just found the online archive of almost all the master's thesis equivalent works of the Finnish Defense University. The cut-off seems to be 1991 and I'm sure some are missing based on secrecy stuff. This means that the works of most significant Finnish war-time military leaders are available

Here's a sample of the pre-war stuff:
The battle of Mukden. A critical overview of the plans of the Russian military leadership and the implementation thereof. 1926.

The Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905. A critical study of the war plans and actions of the Russian military leadership up to the start of the maneuvering. 1926.

I'm very interested in hearing about these two.

# ? Nov 30, 2017 00:47

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

«‹›1216 »