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Trin Tragula posted:
   Look at the pathos of this sad thing:   Also, just in case anyone around here knows: Nebakenezzer posted:Cold War question: did the Soviets ever deploy tow-able submarine barges to launch missiles? In the west it was given the code-name 'Golem' but I can't suss if it was ever actually a thing, and if so, if it was deployed or not.
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May 15, 2018 03:19
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Ironically, soldiers were far more likely to be killed by artillery shells than by bullets.
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May 15, 2018 03:22
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Platystemon posted:Ironically, soldiers were far more likely to be killed by artillery shells than by bullets. An artillery shell is just a big bullet, as opposed to a bomb which is just dishonorable
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May 15, 2018 03:25
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Nebakenezzer posted:
That's a fascinating idea but I've got no idea how effective it would be or if it was implemented.
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May 15, 2018 03:43
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It's that time of year again!quote:Over his life, Napoleon was heavily entangled with French politics.
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May 15, 2018 03:50
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JcDent posted:Odd, I hadn't pegged 14th century as pike country. Pikes never went away, though until the late 15th c. the Swiss mostly preferred halberds.
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May 15, 2018 04:02
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it's more bathos than pathos, but here's an Austrian WWI postcard about an wounded cavalry soldier and his horse. If you want more pathos through horses, here's Nikolai Prisekin's "Hard Times"  And not horse related, but here's Vladmir Igochev's "Still Waiting for Her Son" 
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May 15, 2018 04:20
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HEY GUNS posted:It's that time of year again! Is that from an essay?
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May 15, 2018 07:56
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Mr Enderby posted:Is that from an essay? test, yeah other things i learned from this exam: the French Third Estate was a priest named the Abbe Sieyes and every time the king needed to find out what was going on in France he would summon him
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May 15, 2018 07:58
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How did ww2 radar work? I mean display wise? The only impression I get of radar display is movies and lol if you think I'd trust that. I mean they had it on all kinds of poo poo including fighters and airships by wars end but I have no clue what it actually would look like. Especially ships though; ie destroyers as radar pickets especially.
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May 15, 2018 08:45
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Milo and POTUS posted:How did ww2 radar work? I mean display wise? The only impression I get of radar display is movies and lol if you think I'd trust that. I mean they had it on all kinds of poo poo including fighters and airships by wars end but I have no clue what it actually would look like. Especially ships though; ie destroyers as radar pickets especially. Just a sin wave graph thingy (edit- oscilloscope), so you could gauge the return signal strength and if the frequency changed. From that, you could gauge rough distance, heading and speed. Search radars would tie it to a circular compass display so as it spun, you could pick out the direction of possible contacts, though they needed a separate tracking suite to give more intel than 'a thing that way about at this distance' And while digging for a picture, I found a guy building a fully operational Woden/Wurzburg radar unit, the kind the Brits stole in Operation Biting http://www.cdvandt.org/wurzburg_rep.htm for way too complicated technical stuff from one of the early war radars
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May 15, 2018 09:42
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I love how they don't actually claim Lloyd George smokes their tobacco, just 'it's easy to imagine him smoking, maybe even smoking our stuff!'
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May 15, 2018 09:47
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HEY GUNS posted:other things i learned from this exam: the French Third Estate was a priest named the Abbe Sieyes and every time the king needed to find out what was going on in France he would summon him Really reminding by of 1066 and all that.
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May 15, 2018 09:58
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Trin Tragula posted:On the grand scale, individual battalions could expect to be moved from one part of the front to another every 3-6 months. On the micro scale, wherever they happen to be at the moment, they're constantly in motion, heading up the line for a few days and then back to rest, and then up the line again. Ideally you do this sort of thing to a timetable with a little rhythm to it, but the Spring Offensive is still buggering all that up. Our battalion may not have seen any action themselves, but they've been doing rather more moving around than usual, and that's what happens when someone organises a Big Push; it sucks in a lot of manpower and then a lot of others have to move around to cover for them. So I'm guessing they they had to stay in the trenches for longer times when some attack or something was on the way? The way these guys move around, you'd think they don't get the time to get uncomfortable for the poems and drawings about life in the trenches. Those patrols and work parties also seem to be good at keeping them busy. All in all, trench warfare seems darn active.
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May 15, 2018 11:15
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HEY GUNS posted:test, yeah That was why his famous pamphlet just said "l'état, c'est moi."
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May 15, 2018 11:17
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Epicurius posted:That was why his famous pamphlet just said "l'état, c'est moi." This put him into conflict with the Noblesse de robe, or Rober Barons. The noblesse d'épée, meanwhile, were the military aristocracy. They served in the army and their chief officer was called the Estates General. Mr Enderby fucked around with this message at 11:34 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 11:31
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HEY GUNS posted:It's that time of year again! I don't care. That was a great sentence. You are just mad they did not build their whole essay around that. I also hear Marie Antoinette really liked clothes.
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May 15, 2018 13:36
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aphid_licker posted:http://blog.nationalmuseum.ch/2017/09/sempach-wienzuerich-so-geht-geschichte-ein-lehrstueck/ It's fascinating that the painting "Dawn at the Alamo," which hangs in the Texas Senate House, cribs pretty hard from this. https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Henry-Arthur-Mcardle/Dawn-At-The-Alamo.html 
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May 15, 2018 13:41
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Rocko Bonaparte posted:I don't care. That was a great sentence. You are just mad they did not build their whole essay around that. Yeah it's a good and very true. I mean his Corsican adventures and attempts to become the big boss of Corsica are interesting enough to found a movie or part of a origin mini series.
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May 15, 2018 13:55
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SeanBeansShako posted:Yeah it's a good and very true. I mean his Corsican adventures and attempts to become the big boss of Corsica are interesting enough to found a movie or part of a origin mini series. 
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May 15, 2018 14:24
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JcDent posted:So I'm guessing they they had to stay in the trenches for longer times when some attack or something was on the way? Relief for a unit which actually had had to fight, whether attacking or defending, took the highest priority when it was possible to do so, and if there was any chance of swapping them at night with fresh men, it would be done. (IIRC we've seen our pet battalion put into the line in this role a few times, but never seen it the other way, with them being the ones who needed relief.) If you're having to fight for more than 24 hours continuously, then either you're a defender who's right in the way of something major, or you've been part of an attack that's gone so well that you've now advanced a long way forward and are somewhat out on a limb; either way your usual logistical arrangements have been completely dislocated and will inevitably take time to catch up. A relatively common story for people who went over the top (itself a relatively uncommon experience) on all sides of the Western Front is being in the front of an attack and finding it surprisingly easy going for the first 12 hours on Day 1, and then it all goes to shite once the defenders start to respond properly and they can't be withdrawn like they were expecting/hoping/praying to be. But being in actual combat was still a very rare experience, and situations like that of Louis Barthas, who never had to fire his rifle in anger (although admittedly he was trying harder than most to avoid doing it) and never had to participate in an attack (the closest he got was watching a neighbouring regiment attack) are far from unusual. The old saying about war being 99% killing time and 1% the killing time is just as valid here. quote:The way these guys move around, you'd think they don't get the time to get uncomfortable for the poems and drawings about life in the trenches. They may not be Blackadder, but you're still spending 50% of your life living in a succession of wet, muddy, vermin-infested holes in the ground, and 50% living in a pigsty (which, if you're lucky, doesn't still have the pig in it). The realities don't change much just because you live in a lot of different wet, muddy, vermin-infested holes instead of just one or two. quote:All in all, trench warfare seems darn active. For a given definition of "active", but when you're obviously marking time, and only ever moving sideways and backwards for months on end, while the enemy's constantly sending shells and mortar bombs and sniper bullets over and you can't shoot back at them, and the most exciting thing that happens to you is being detailed to dig a hole or unroll a spool of barbed wire or chop some wood, that's where cafard begins to set in. Don't confuse "moving around a lot" for "doing something useful"; it makes me think of nothing so much as the introduction of Flashman from Tom Brown's Schooldays, during a game of Rugby football: quote:Here comes Speedicut, and Flashman the School-house bully, with shouts and great action. Won't you two come up to young Brooke, after locking-up, by the School-house fire, with "Old fellow, wasn't that just a splendid scrummage by the three trees?" But he knows you, and so do we. You don't really want to drive that ball through that scrummage, chancing all hurt for the glory of the School-house, but to make us think that's what you want--a vastly different thing; and fellows of your kidney will never go through more than the skirts of a scrummage, where it's all push and no kicking. We respect boys who keep out of it, and don't sham going in; but you--we had rather not say what we think of you. This is all shouts and great action.
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May 15, 2018 14:57
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Trin Tragula posted:But being in actual combat was still a very rare experience Are you excluding things like artillery bombardment from this?
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May 15, 2018 15:05
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Well, how close does a shell have to land to Pte 48368 Atkins T, before it's close enough to Tommy to consider that he's been "in combat"? In the normal run of things, even having to suddenly dive for cover didn't happen nearly as often as you might think. The front is very big and shells are very small, notwithstanding that it's hard to appreciate this when a dud comes through the roof of your dugout.
Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 15:40 on May 15, 2018 |
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May 15, 2018 15:30
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Trin Tragula posted:They may not be Blackadder, but you're still spending 50% of your life living in a succession of wet, muddy, vermin-infested holes in the ground, and 50% living in a pigsty (which, if you're lucky, doesn't still have the pig in it). The realities don't change much just because you live in a lot of different wet, muddy, vermin-infested holes instead of just one or two. This reminds me of an anecdote that I'm sure you want to hear. A group of Finnish soldiers took shelter for night from a farm building that hadn't been evacuated, and they shared the floor with a sow. Not having had any contact with females for a long time, the sight of the pig's plum posterior captured everyone's imagination as they lied down. A lieutenant sighed: "Oh, I wish that sow was Marlene Dietrich!" A sergeant replied: "I wish that sow was Ansa Ikonen (a Finnish actress)..." Then an old grunt took a long look at the pig's rear end, closed his eyes and muttered: "I wish it was dark..."
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May 15, 2018 15:42
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Trin Tragula posted:Relief for a unit which actually had had to fight, whether attacking or defending, took the highest priority when it was possible to do so, and if there was any chance of swapping them at night with fresh men, it would be done. (IIRC we've seen our pet battalion put into the line in this role a few times, but never seen it the other way, with them being the ones who needed relief.) If you're having to fight for more than 24 hours continuously, then either you're a defender who's right in the way of something major, or you've been part of an attack that's gone so well that you've now advanced a long way forward and are somewhat out on a limb; either way your usual logistical arrangements have been completely dislocated and will inevitably take time to catch up. A relatively common story for people who went over the top (itself a relatively uncommon experience) on all sides of the Western Front is being in the front of an attack and finding it surprisingly easy going for the first 12 hours on Day 1, and then it all goes to shite once the defenders start to respond properly and they can't be withdrawn like they were expecting/hoping/praying to be. First time posting here, long-time lurker. This just reminded me of the battalion journals I've read from my great-grandfather's unit during WW1. He was a private in the Canadian Corps during 1918, and I found it quite unbelievable how often the journals would describe his battalion going over the top, especially from August 1918 on. Seemed like they were in almost continuous combat. I really should dig up those battalion journals and post some excerpts here when I get the time.
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May 15, 2018 15:51
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Cessna posted:
 SimonCat posted:It's fascinating that the painting "Dawn at the Alamo," which hangs in the Texas Senate House, cribs pretty hard from this. Painted by an irish Texaboo he also painted the Battle of San Jacinto, which hangs in the Senate Chamber as well. They are absolutely massive and worth taking a look if you ever are in Austin. They're a lot of fun, they remind me of Where's Waldo because they are full of famous (well Texas-history-famous) figures from both battles and it's kind of a game to find them and figure out what they were doing. We take a state history class in 7th grade, do other states require a state-history course or is it just our insane ego
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May 15, 2018 15:59
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zoux posted:We take a state history class in 7th grade, do other states require a state-history course or is it just our insane ego
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May 15, 2018 16:05
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zoux posted:We take a state history class in 7th grade, do other states require a state-history course or is it just our insane ego I learned about the history of New Jersey, but that was in like third or fourth grade I think?
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May 15, 2018 16:06
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HEY GUNS posted:NM does history of the spanish empire for multiple years, then after 1848 it's nothing nothing nothing until the Manhattan Project Maybe you should've started a war with Mexico over them outlawing Incidentally we do not learn that the Texicans rebelled against Mexico because they were going to outlaw slavery, nor that we are the only state to secede from two different countries because slaves.
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May 15, 2018 16:09
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I love the native guy just sitting there acting like "Oh, how silly!"
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May 15, 2018 16:57
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Guy on the left of the Grenadier clearly had money riding on Wolfe dying on campaign and is just wanting him to kick the bucket faster.
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May 15, 2018 17:47
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Mr Enderby posted:Really reminding by of 1066 and all that.
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May 15, 2018 18:20
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Trin Tragula posted:(IIRC we've seen our pet battalion put into the line in this role a few times, but never seen it the other way, with them being the ones who needed relief.) If you're having to fight for more than 24 hours continuously, then either you're a defender who's right in the way of something major, or you've been part of an attack that's gone so well that you've now advanced a long way forward and are somewhat out on a limb; either way your usual logistical arrangements have been completely dislocated and will inevitably take time to catch up. A relatively common story for people who went over the top (itself a relatively uncommon experience) on all sides of the Western Front is being in the front of an attack and finding it surprisingly easy going for the first 12 hours on Day 1, and then it all goes to shite once the defenders start to respond properly and they can't be withdrawn like they were expecting/hoping/praying to be. In the Polderhoek action earlier in the year they were the ones who needed supporting (and one of the supporting battalion won the VC in it). Apart from that one action there has still been a steady stream of casualties. I'll try to add up some numbers later when I do today's entry. In a big offensive the defending unit in the front line was commonly close to being wiped totally out. For those on the offensive it wasn't unusual for the second wave to take much greater casualties than those in the first - they'd be trying to get across no man's land as the defensive SOS barrage was in full swing. The first wave would suffer later when counter-attacked and running out of bombs and ammunition. Spoiler alert - in a couple of month's time things are going to change as the war goes mobile again... At the end of the war we're going to find out how many of the original 1000-ish member's of the battalion are still with it since landing in France in 1915, I'll try to remember to give a warning a few days before and we can have some guesses as to what the number will be.
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May 15, 2018 18:59
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zoux posted:
I've managed to always move to a new school right before a unit on State history begins, so I've had Hawaiian history, California history, Texas history and Vermont history classes. My Vermont history class was taught by a no-poo poo Vermont nationalist which was a viewpoint I haven't seen before or since.
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May 15, 2018 19:28
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zoux posted:We take a state history class in 7th grade, do other states require a state-history course or is it just our insane ego We had state history as a focus too (don't remember if it was an entire class), but I grew up in Virginia so that doesn't seem unreasonable to me considering it's importance from colonial times through the Civil War.
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May 15, 2018 19:36
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Don Gato posted:I've managed to always move to a new school right before a unit on State history begins, so I've had Hawaiian history, California history, Texas history and Vermont history classes. I didn't know that there were Vermont nationalists but I'm not surprised in the least. Hawaii, California, Virginia all make sense, but can you imagine like a North Dakota or Wyoming history class. First, there were Indians. Then Republicans.
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May 15, 2018 19:42
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Huh. It's been ages, but don't recall having a specific state history class. Probably just because it's already just the early history of the US  You know, Real America, not just some newbs 
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May 15, 2018 20:00
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Washington here, we had a state history class my freshman year of Highschool. It covered a bit about the native tribes, through the explorers to settlement. I don't think we got past the early 1900's.
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May 15, 2018 20:07
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Clarence posted:At the end of the war we're going to find out how many of the original 1000-ish member's of the battalion are still with it since landing in France in 1915, I'll try to remember to give a warning a few days before and we can have some guesses as to what the number will be. Which month? Big difference between landing Feb 1915 and landing Dec 1915.
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May 15, 2018 20:23
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 The cover of one edition of Kumpujen Yöstä, a wide if later discredited trilogy about the various wars that had afflicted Finland, from the Viking times to the Finnish Civil War. The picture in the cover portrays the battle of Napue, in the Great Northern War, where the last Swedish field army in Finland was annihilated. The aftermath was a seven year occupation by Russia, called the Great Wrath (Iso Viha).
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May 15, 2018 20:26
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