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He's foolish, but it's explicable. He's trying to impress Danes but he's a Saxon and they don't trust him, so he over compensates.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:38
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bewbies posted:As an appropriate representation of Canada it is a mix of new and very, very succinct (brigade groups just have a number and nothing else, ie, "37 Brigade Group") and most profoundly British. For example in Afghanistan I worked with "Princess Louises' Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada Regiment" Some units in the Canadian Army are historically French-Canadian. Given that French Canada is still a large percentage of the total population, it'd make sense if post war more of these units were founded. Other units have long histories or traditions, British style. There are RCAF units with crests like the RCMP and Latin mottoes. JcDent posted:So out of 700,000 men in the army mentioned in the book, 70,000 became casualties. That doesn't sound too much in a World War and for a country of 11 million... So how come there was a shortage? All sorts of hosed up, in short Canada had a very high percentage of participation in the armed forces in WW2, but it was the only western nation that didn't have the draft. In the First World War, the draft caused large political tensions, mostly because the English speaking Canadian Army were a bunch of dicks to drafted French Canadians. If you consider the language and culture divide - the Canadian Army was English and protestant, the French Canadians spoke french and were Catholic - then you can see how this would be a problem, especially as only one side had all the power. So the eventual imposition of conscription was controversial and caused a riot or two in Quebec. From a political perspective, it caused the Conservatives to be shut out of French Canada for like 50 years - not small beer considering what a large minority they are. WW2 saw these issues grow again, though this time, the government and Quebec had different concerns. In Quebec, the war was almost universally opposed: fighting on Britain's side was seen as a plot to get French Canadians to fight for British Empire; there was also some anti-semitism around that made some in Quebec sympathetic to Vichy France. The PM at the time, King, was terrified - of having the Liberal party locked out of French Canadian ridings, so he created a draft in 1940 with the explicit rule that men drafted could only be used for "continental defense" - IE they couldn't be shipped overseas. This lead to the creation of 'zombie' divisions, which guarded the BC and Atlantic Canadian coasts from Axis invasion. I think these were mixed with 'national service' jobs and conscious objectors, but they were also explicitly army divisions. These divisions must have been a special sort of hell: in addition to being useless, the men overseeing them considered their real job to get as many zombies to volunteer for overseas service as possible. A zombie division was deployed once: to the Aleutian Islands, as it was technically North America. There, the zombies immediately engaged the Canadian Government, fighting a protracted battle to get themselves recognized as "serving overseas" so their wages would be exempt from tax. In 1944, the Italian Campaign and the Normandy invasions produced heavy attrition for the Canadian Army; the pressure was on to start deploying zombie divisions overseas. This produced the Conscription crisis of 1944, which the government got out out of by footdragging action, and then sending some zombie units overseas. In the Pacific, it was similar, with one of Canada's cruisers in the summer of 1945, HMS Uganda, basically going on strike as they were down for fighting Germans, but not the Japanese. HMS Uganda was sent home, and everybody was distracted from this by the atomic bombings and the end of the Pacific War.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:48
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zoux posted:He's foolish, but it's explicable. He's trying to impress Danes but he's a Saxon and they don't trust him, so he over compensates. That was the show that didnt understand there was actually law in the middle ages, right?
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Oct 2, 2018 20:52
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Cornwall is an okay writer but he knows exactly one story and he's written it over and over and over again. Also the irony of the series that made him (Sharpe) is that he writes over and over again the same line about British infantry being good because they could do 3-4 volleys a minute and it's totally wrong and not at all an accurate description of how the British army fought.
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Oct 2, 2018 20:59
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I do like that the Canadian army apparently has frigging voltigeurs like it's Napoleonic France - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Voltigeurs_de_Qu%E9bec
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Oct 2, 2018 21:03
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Jobbo_Fett posted:So I've been reading a book on booby traps and holy poo poo, there's nothing that has given me a better appreciation for the work combat engineers do. Pisspiggrandad (aka the twitter leftist who volunteered for the YPG) said in an interview that the Kurds in Syria have entire units of women whose job it was to disarm ISIS mines & other booby traps. His assessment was something like "that looked like it loving sucked, bro". Alchenar posted:Also the irony of the series that made him (Sharpe) is that he writes over and over again the same line about British infantry being good because they could do 3-4 volleys a minute and it's totally wrong and not at all an accurate description of how the British army fought. Isn't he writing about riflemen anyway, who could never fire that fast because the Minie ball hadn't been invented yet?
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Oct 2, 2018 21:05
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zoux posted:Did you watch The Last Kingdom? It's all on Netflix. I did and recalled enjoying it but to be honest it is kind of getting mixed up with Vikings in my head
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Oct 2, 2018 21:09
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MikeCrotch posted:Pisspiggrandad (aka the twitter leftist who volunteered for the YPG) said in an interview that the Kurds in Syria have entire units of women whose job it was to disarm ISIS mines & other booby traps. His assessment was something like "that looked like it loving sucked, bro". He's fairly accurate about the Baker being slow to load. Throughout most of the Peninsular books Sharpe has a mixed light company with a small detachment of rifles and mostly muskets. The prequel India books are all smoothbore.
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Oct 2, 2018 21:39
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feedmegin posted:I do like that the Canadian army apparently has frigging voltigeurs like it's Napoleonic France - tight
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Oct 2, 2018 21:40
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Alchenar posted:Cornwall is an okay writer but he knows exactly one story and he's written it over and over and over again. If the show is representative that's only really a thing in one episode where an arsehole General tells Sharpe's gang to get with the regular infantry, and it seems ambiguous whether Sharpe is teaching the raw recruits that stuff (with a French assault imminent) because it's generally helpful or whether it boosts the men's confidence to tell them that they just need to do a thing quickly and they will be okay. quote:You don't see a battle. You *hear* it. Black powder blasting by the ton on all sides. Black smoke blinding you and choking you and making you vomit. Then the French come out of the smoke - not in a line, but in a column. And they march towards our thin line, kettledrums hammering like hell and a golden eagle blazing overhead. They march slowly, and it takes them a long time to reach you, and you can't see them in smoke. But you can hear the drums. They march out of the smoke, and you fire a volley. And the front rank of the column falls, and the next rank steps over them, with drums hammering, and the column smashes your line like a hammer breaking glass... and Napoleon has won another battle. But if you don't run - if you stand until you can smell the garlic, and fire volley after volley, three rounds a minute - then they slow down. They stop. And then they run away. All you've got to do is stand, and fire three rounds a minute. Now, you and I know you can fire three rounds a minute. But can you stand? (The column stuff is wrong though  )
Fangz fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Oct 2, 2018 |
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Oct 2, 2018 22:00
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Fangz posted:If the show is representative that's only really a thing in one episode where an arsehole General tells Sharpe's gang to get with the regular infantry, and it seems ambiguous whether Sharpe is teaching the raw recruits that stuff (with a French assault imminent) because it's generally helpful or whether it boosts the men's confidence to tell them that they just need to do a thing quickly and they will be okay. It's Cornwall. He can be very repetitive in his prose. I can only read 'wyrd bith ful araed' so many times tbqh
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Oct 2, 2018 22:08
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I imagine the speech being 'men the British soldier can fire off a volley a minute in calm quiet drill conditions but you'll only manage one off before shooting your ramrod then dying' would have been a bit of lovely speech too.
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Oct 2, 2018 22:17
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Epicurius posted:That was the show that didnt understand there was actually law in the middle ages, right? Every time the main character gets in trouble he is dragged directly in front of the king who listens to both sides and then punishes him. One time he gets a trial by combat as a favor and once he just has to publicly crawl through the town on his knees and say he's sorry. Can't remember if that's how the book handled it or if it was just a show thing.
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Oct 2, 2018 22:33
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Every time the main character gets in trouble he is dragged directly in front of the king who listens to both sides and then punishes him. One time he gets a trial by combat as a favor and once he just has to publicly crawl through the town on his knees and say he's sorry. Can't remember if that's how the book handled it or if it was just a show thing. To be fair there is a reason 'the king's advisors' and 'that place with a judge in it' are both called courts. The king is also the mediaeval equivalent of the Supreme Court.
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Oct 2, 2018 23:14
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Tias posted:Tell us about hard to remove traps Its like.. the entire book is about crazy traps from WW1 to Vietnam (I think). There's a bunch of stuff I know, and a bunch of stuff covered in my explosives blog, but some of the ways they were used are just cold. Once I'm done reading it ill prob give it a second flipping through and pick out all the various things.
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Oct 2, 2018 23:22
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Every time the main character gets in trouble he is dragged directly in front of the king who listens to both sides and then punishes him. One time he gets a trial by combat as a favor and once he just has to publicly crawl through the town on his knees and say he's sorry. Can't remember if that's how the book handled it or if it was just a show thing. It is, though Alfred comes across a lot sterner than the books. Uhtred also comes across worse, the framing device is that Uhtredis now an elderly Christian monk writing his memoirs (also the framing device in the Warlord Trilogy 🤔), so he can editorialize about how stubborn and immature he was, which you don't get in the TV show. Alfred obviously earned his “the Great” but what's the history behind other people with that sobriquet? Were most of them conferred relatively contemporaneously or many years later? Are there many known as The Great who probably don't deserve it?
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Oct 3, 2018 00:43
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Bhumibol is probably not deserving
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Oct 3, 2018 01:41
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:is it young Uhtred because he is a loving idiot knob in the books Idiots make for good characters in historical/fantasy/science fiction because when they get explanations about poo poo the reader gets them too.
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Oct 3, 2018 02:10
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Its like.. the entire book is about crazy traps from WW1 to Vietnam (I think). There's a bunch of stuff I know, and a bunch of stuff covered in my explosives blog, but some of the ways they were used are just cold. You can't post about a book and not post the author and title! 
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Oct 3, 2018 02:19
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thatbastardken posted:
  drat. And the back story: This young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission has just jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot who was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul. Since Japanese coastal defense guns were firing at the plane while it was in the water during take-off, this brave young man, after rescuing the pilot, manned his position as machine gunner without taking time to put on his clothes. A hero photographed right after he’d completed his heroic act. Naked. Photo taken by Horace Bristol (1908-1997). In 1941, Bristol was recruited to the U.S. Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, as one of six photographers under the command of Captain Edward J. Steichen, documenting World War II in places such as South Africa, and Japan. He ended up being on the plane the gunner was serving on, which was used to rescue people from Rabaul Bay (New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea), when this occurred. In an article from a December 2002 issue of B&W magazine he remembers: “…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.”
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Oct 3, 2018 02:49
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historical butt
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I mean the Last Kingdom is pretty early middle ages though right? like the late 800's?
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Oct 3, 2018 03:09
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Pontius Pilate posted:“…we got a call to pick up an airman who was down in the Bay. The Japanese were shooting at him from the island, and when they saw us they started shooting at us. The man who was shot down was temporarily blinded, so one of our crew stripped off his clothes and jumped in to bring him aboard. He couldn’t have swum very well wearing his boots and clothes. As soon as we could, we took off. We weren’t waiting around for anybody to put on formal clothes. We were being shot at and wanted to get the hell out of there. The naked man got back into his position at his gun in the blister of the plane.” Horace Bristol posted:“And well, there was his butt, and I had a camera. I mean I AM a historian.”
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Oct 3, 2018 03:23
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Pontius Pilate posted:
Is this thread going to get another six pages of early modern soldiers with bubble butts again. Because I am... not entirely opposed.
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Oct 3, 2018 03:56
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OctaviusBeaver posted:Every time the main character gets in trouble he is dragged directly in front of the king who listens to both sides and then punishes him. One time he gets a trial by combat as a favor and once he just has to publicly crawl through the town on his knees and say he's sorry. Can't remember if that's how the book handled it or if it was just a show thing. Isnt there some lawsuit where a bishop sues somebody over a failure to pay a pledged tithe and it goes to the Bishop's Court? Ah, found it. Here's historian/blogger Dr. Andrew Larsen on the weird portrayal of law in the TV series. https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/the-land-kingdom-the-law-the-church-and-marriage/
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Oct 3, 2018 04:49
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Tias posted:Tell us about hard to remove traps The classic one is capsaicin inside a sandwich labelled clearly with your name on it in the breakroom fridge.
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Oct 3, 2018 05:15
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Don't forget about the DIY Indiana Jones boulder scene and the ol' spicy wheelchair:https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2018/10/fbi_agent_shot_by_booby-trappe.html posted:They slipped by the minivan outfitted with the spring-loaded jaws of animal snares and avoided a circular hot tub turned on its side and designed to roll over trespassers who triggered a tripwire — something reminiscent of "a scene from the movie 'Indiana Jones.'"
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Oct 3, 2018 05:32
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feedmegin posted:Well yes because everyone knows the Germans were masters of precision and order while Russians are basically orcs, right Za rodina! WAAAGH! 
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Oct 3, 2018 08:45
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sullat posted:The classic one is capsaicin inside a sandwich labelled clearly with your name on it in the breakroom fridge. but capsacin is delicious...
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Oct 3, 2018 09:11
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I think one of the worst traps for the 'ick' factor were Viet Cong tunnels containing a container loosely sealed with a kapok cork, so when you brushed against it, it released a pissed off and extremely poisonous snake (possibly a green krait!)  JcDent posted:Za rodina! WAAAGH! When you think about it, a jihadi army is basically just WAAAGH! ALLAH, right! Right? I'll see myself out. HEY GUNS posted:but capsacin is delicious... Having had my share of cop pepper spray, I gotta say the taste is.. Incapacitating
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Oct 3, 2018 09:44
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bewbies posted:Also a bunch of them are in French, not sure why Quebec.
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Oct 3, 2018 11:01
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There was some post within the last few months about the Japanese defenders at manila bay (?) I think who had guys with machineguns in the exposed portions of sunk ships (maybe intentionally as blockships, IDK). I'm trying to figure out the context of the whole thing cuz it recently just popped in my head again. e: oh god, I think I know what it might be. e2: (even bigger) oh god, I was right. Crisis averted Milo and POTUS fucked around with this message at 12:04 on Oct 3, 2018 |
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Oct 3, 2018 11:47
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Tias posted:
More for the improvised combat vehicles and homemade rocket artillery than anything else. 
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Oct 3, 2018 12:30
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I'm going to Washington DC for business. What cool milhist stuff should I check out?
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Oct 3, 2018 12:41
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Geisladisk posted:I'm going to Washington DC for business. What cool milhist stuff should I check out? I really liked the international spy museum when I went. A nicely put together and engaging set of exhibits about the development of espionage. Admittedly this is getting on for a decade ago when I went but it still looks to be well reviewed.
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Oct 3, 2018 12:48
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Polyakov posted:I really liked the international spy museum when I went. A nicely put together and engaging set of exhibits about the development of espionage. Admittedly this is getting on for a decade ago when I went but it still looks to be well reviewed. that poo poo costs money and everything else other than the newseum is free air and space both the downtown and Udvar Hazy. the national building museum is kind of cool because it's in the building where they kept all the records (for pension purposes) of Civil War Vets. There are some beautiful friezes representing scenes from the war, and the history and logistics of early mass record keeping is pretty interesting. you're not far from lots of battlefields in particular Manassas (kind of overrun by suburbs) and Antietam, if you have a car.
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Oct 3, 2018 12:56
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:you're not far from lots of battlefields in particular Manassas I believe you mean Bull Run.
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Oct 3, 2018 13:09
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:I believe you mean Bull Run. i actually hate the Union method of naming battles after terrain features
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Oct 3, 2018 13:36
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Geisladisk posted:I'm going to Washington DC for business. What cool milhist stuff should I check out? Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy
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Oct 3, 2018 13:43
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Cyrano4747 posted:Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy Udvar Hazy This is a very correct opinion. Seriously, it's an excellent museum of aviation.
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Oct 3, 2018 13:47
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feedmegin posted:You...have heard of Quebec, right? Vincent Van Goatse posted:Quebec. Nebakenezzer posted:Some units in the Canadian Army are historically French-Canadian. good god people it was a loving joke, i've played hockey my whole life for christs sake
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