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Those stats on second and subsequent deployments match up with what I've seen. The stuff burns people out. I don't know if there is a way to do it effectively for a long amount of time; by the time a new unit has acclimated and really gotten into the groove of their battle space, they're already starting to approach burn out. It would be nice to end the forever war, for sure.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:17
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ambrose is really bad about this. I have a whole love/hate thing with him. I’m sure I posted that rant either in this thread or it’s predecessor. I didn't actually get that part from Ambrose-LST 30 is specifically mentioned in Cross Channel Attack, the US Army history of the invasion from 1951: quote:In breaking this deadlock during the next hour, naval intervention played an important part. At about 1030 two landing craft, LCT 30 and LCI (L) 544, steamed full ahead through the obstacles off the Colleville beaches, firing all weapons at enemy strong points guarding the Colleville draw. The craft continued to It's worth mentioning since it helps to paint a portrait of the overall chaos that was taking place. With the initial infantry waves pinned down and unable to advance, the subsequent reinforcements waves (who were also often way the gently caress off target thanks to the current) were faced with a confusing mess on shore-and while some crews elected to hold back until they could land in the right place, or until the landing zones became safer, others said "gently caress it" and sailed straight into the teeth of the German defenses to disgorge their cargo. Of course, in many cases their cargo was not exactly ideal for a beach landing (I for one would not want to be in a thin-skinned halftrack with an AA gun stuck on top on loving Omaha beach), but they did their jobs all the same-and in some cases, their contributions were crucial.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:20
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EvilMerlin posted:Ambrose was an author and mostly out to make a buck. The story about Band of Brothers and Ambrose I really remember is that after his book was published someone asked the guy David Schwimmer plays about the depiction of him as incompetent and he said "Nope, they hated me because I was Jewish. That was the real reason they refused to serve and why I got reassigned". Maybe true, maybe not. The show does scrape by the fact that there was anti-antisemitism in the company, but that's just in episode 1 and isn't touched again. Anyway the point is don't do history from a single set of sources, and don't make history programmes about people who are still alive.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:21
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Grey Hunter posted:This has to have an effect on people - fighting in WWII you knew you would go home when you'd won/lost. In an insurgency, everyone has a timer. "I Just gotta survive x months, then I go home." All of the real data we have is on forever wars, so for historical stuff it is really just speculation. But, in the Vietnam/GWOT kind of situation, soldiers essentially had little to no interest in the overall strategic/political status of the war, and were mostly motivated by some mixture of unit cohesion, money, and personal safety. In other words, you want to survive, you want your friends to survive, you want your particular rotation to be over with because this sucks, but the money is alright, I'm going to buy a really cool dodge charger or ridiculously large pickup truck when I get home. It likely will not ever be possible but I'd love to see this kind of analysis for soldiers serving in fanatical but doomed regimes.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:23
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EvilMerlin posted:
This gets into why I love and hate him. He is a great example of how powerful popular (as in for the non academic audience) history can be and I feel very strongly that it’s a vital function of the profession that is badly neglected. However as a historian he was just sloppy and he loving had the training to know better.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:This gets into why I love and hate him. He is a great example of how powerful popular (as in for the non academic audience) history can be and I feel very strongly that it’s a vital function of the profession that is badly neglected. However as a historian he was just sloppy and he loving had the training to know better. Yep. I am totally with you on this. History is just that history, and when its distorted by option or lack of knowledge, it is no longer history. And we all know how dangerous that poo poo can be.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:33
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Alchenar posted:The story about Band of Brothers and Ambrose I really remember is that after his book was published someone asked the guy David Schwimmer plays about the depiction of him as incompetent and he said "Nope, they hated me because I was Jewish. That was the real reason they refused to serve and why I got reassigned". And yet the people under Sopel's command never bought up anything about being Jewish. They always talked about him being "petty and vindictive" by the enlisted and mostly an arrogant fool by fellow officers (he refused to listen to jr. officers or NCO's). What is the truth? Who knows. Probably someplace in the middle.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:37
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Cessna posted:I've heard Ambrose described as "history as seen through the eyes of an adoring child sitting on grandpa's couch." Not a bad way of saying it...
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Feb 5, 2019 16:37
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KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:is the criminal action / malfeasance rate increase only accounting for the period on deployment, or is it also accounting for subsequent criminal acts? The latter sounds like an impossible nightmare for a statistician. Outside of one's deployments, we're talking about the entire rest of the person's life - which could last 70 years after the last deployment, or the person might die in a traffic accident on the first day as a civilian. Not to mention the number of different jurisdictions you'd need to query to know how many indictments the person has got outside military. So probably the former. Nenonen fucked around with this message at 16:47 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 16:42
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Were there many Jews in the Allied forces in WWII? In movies there's always the Jewish guy in the squad so my impression was that there were a ton of Jews that served but that's movies! They are also typically shown taking extra pleasure in killing Nazis/fighting Hitler because of, you know, the WHOLE THING but is that poetic license?
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Feb 5, 2019 16:42
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zoux posted:Were there many Jews in the Allied forces in WWII? In movies there's always the Jewish guy in the squad so my impression was that there were a ton of Jews that served but that's movies! Wikipedia posted:Three Finnish Jews were offered the Iron Cross for their wartime service: Leo Skurnik, Salomon Klass, and Dina Poljakoff. Major Leo Skurnik, a district medical officer in the Finnish Army, organized an evacuation of a German field hospital when it came under Soviet shelling. More than 600 patients, including SS soldiers, were evacuated. Captain Salomon Klass, also of the Finnish Army, who had lost an eye in the Winter War, led a Finnish unit that rescued a German company that had been surrounded by the Soviets. Dina Poljakoff, a member of Lotta Svärd, the Finnish women's auxiliary service, was a nursing assistant who helped tend to German wounded, and came to be greatly admired by her patients. All three refused the award.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:50
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zoux posted:Were there many Jews in the Allied forces in WWII? In movies there's always the Jewish guy in the squad so my impression was that there were a ton of Jews that served but that's movies! About half a million American Jews served in WW2. 16 million Americans served during the whole war. This included both TO's and home units (like WASPs etc). So yeah chances are you did have a Jewish soldier/airman/Marine in your unit... PS: read up on Maurice Rose, not only a Jewish soldier, but also the highest ranking American killed in the line of duty.
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Feb 5, 2019 16:55
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Oh also, I've always heard that the reason that the Brits and US were so amenable to creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine because they were afraid of being flooded by Jewish refugees after the war, how much was that a factor?
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Feb 5, 2019 17:04
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Alchenar posted:The story about Band of Brothers and Ambrose I really remember is that after his book was published someone asked the guy David Schwimmer plays about the depiction of him as incompetent and he said "Nope, they hated me because I was Jewish. That was the real reason they refused to serve and why I got reassigned". Asking the guy himself seems like a pretty pointless endeavor. The written and televised versions all agree that he was a bad officer who either wasn't aware of or would not admit his limitations. What motivation would he have to say, decades later, "Oh yeah, I spent WWII being the biggest possible dick to everyone under my authority, Greatest Generation represent?"
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Feb 5, 2019 17:05
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EvilMerlin posted:About half a million American Jews served in WW2. Well, technically that would be Leslie McNair, but it is still accurate to say that Rose was the highest ranking American killed by enemy fire in the ETO since McNair was the unfortunate answer to the question 'hey so what if we try and use strategic bombers to make tactical strikes in 1944'.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:14
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Went back through the last thread and found my latest version of the Ambrose screed. I've posted variations on it a few times before. It comes up enough that I end up re-reading it and editing it, which means anyone who cares can probably find different versions of it scattered a few years apart in this thread and its predecessors. why I love and hate Stephen Ambrose First off, it’s not just Band of Brothers. I focus on that a lot, but it's the whole "Ambrose phenomenon" although the book is certainly emblematic of it. Basically it comes down to three key issues: 1) issues with Ambrose as a historian and what he actually accomplished. 2) issues with Band of Brothers as a work and its relationship to Citizen Soldiers 3) the idiotic way that BoB has been integrated in popular culture The Controversies Let me start off by saying that the plagiarism issue is a big one, but it isn’t the giant, horrible, damning problem that a lot of his detractors make it out to be. The long and the short of it is that he had a nasty habit of footnoting sources, but not adequately indicating what was a quote from that work and what was his own prose. This is an issue that goes back through his entire career. Now, I used to ride him pretty hard for this, but having done a book-length project myself now I am a lot more understanding about how this kind of thing can happen. Put simply, it is really loving easy to write something in your notes and attribute it to a source without noting whether you copied the wording or simply summarized it. If you’re talking about writing history Grandpa Style - no endnote, no electronic markup to highlight that stuff in whatever way fits your system - I can see it happening a lot more easily. I know that I had a few places in my dissertation where I had to go back and re-read books that I had taken notes from years before to make sure that I wasn’t doing the same thing. Frankly I suspect a couple of attribution errors could be found in my dissertation if put under the microscope, and I wrote it feeding drafts to an advisor and taking every pain possible to make sure I produced a clean manuscript. Doing it on your own (well, before handing it over to your editor), as an established academic with an active publishing career? I could see things getting sloppier. I’m not condoning it, I’m not excusing it, but I’m saying that it is somewhat understandable and has answers that go beyond simply copying someone else’s work for his own benefit. Plagiarism isn’t good under any circumstance, but there is a qualitative difference between cynically stealing someone’s work to pass off as your own and loving up an attribution. If anything it indicates a sloppiness in his technique and work habits rather than maliciousness. I will note that this is a generous reading of the issue. My larger point is that regardless how you come down on this issue he has much larger problems outside it. There are also some factual issues in some of his books. The most notorious is his claim that an American captain had to put a pistol to the head of a British seaman driving a landing craft to get his troops ashore on Omaha, the implication being that the Brit was a coward. The only surviving man from that boat insists it never happened, and as best as anyone can figure out it was either invented for a men’s magazine in the 60s or was a tale that SLA Marshall picked up and that it entered the literature that way (and boy howdy was he famous for taking anecdotes uncritically - SLA Marshall’s problematic place in military history is a whole different issue). Again, there is a generous and a not so generous reading of this. You could argue that Ambrose used a lot of secondary sources very uncritically. On the other hand, he was making a large, synthetic, narrative work and a reliance on those kind of sources is the nature of the beast. A lot of historical work has to rely on a lot of work that has been done before, and these kinds of problems can creep in. It’s unfortunate, but I’m not sure that anyone who has tried to produce something of that scale would be too confident in the infallibility of every anecdote they used if their own work was exposed to the kind of scrutiny that is given to books as popular as the ones Ambrose wrote. Again, if anything it’s probably an indication that he was sloppy in his work and had telling a good story as his chief priority. Remember: these are books being sold to the general population which means that writing an interesting narrative is going to take priority. Ambrose as a historian This is a bit subjective, but in my opinion as a historian he did absolutely nothing of interest from a research point of view - at least with regards to his WW2 books. I’m not familiar with his Eisenhower books so I’m not going to speak on them, and it’s been forever since I read his Lewis and Clark book or his railroad book. Look through all of his books on infantry in the ETO, for example, and you'll find that his general arguments basically boil down to two points - first, that small unit cohesion was key to the success of allied armies, and that the men on the ground were fighting as much for each other and due to the social bonds between them (the "can't let down your buddy" line of thinking) as for any kind of higher ideal. This point is so well worn that it's almost embarrassing to make it the cornerstone of a book in the modern era. poo poo, S.L.A. Marshall wrote about it in Men Under Fire right after WW2, and even then he was more or less just codifying for Pentagon command culture something that was military old wive's wisdom going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This also isn't anything unique to American, Allied, or Western militaries. You find very similar narratives, for example, in German WW2 vet accounts, especially when you get into the totally hosed late war period where everyone knows the fight is lost. (These accounts are problematic in all sorts of ways, of course, especially when it comes to men explaining their motivations for fighting for a genocidal regime decades after its collapse. Still, it’s illustrative.) Second, his arguments about small unit leadership being absolutely crucial to the over-all success of the Allied war effort is beyond lazy, and just as well-worn as his small unit cohesion argument. According to this argument American and British commanders were given objectives rather than specific, rote orders and had the flexibility to respond to situations on the ground as they developed. Given the hypothetical example of an emplaced MG in a hedgerow an American junior officer could decide, on his own initiative, to call in a suppressing company level mortar barrage, flank the emplacement, and keep the advance moving without having to discuss matters with higher command. Again, Marshall wrote about this in the mid-40s, in almost exactly the same terms. What's even more egregious, however, is that Ambrose tried to make the argument that this was a somehow uniquely Anglo-Saxon innovation and held it against a completely imaginary straw man of German, Soviet, and Japanese soldiers who blindly followed precisely the orders given to them - no more, no less. The argument runs that, since they didn't have the flexibility to decide things on the ground and constantly had to seek higher authority, they were consistently out-performed by Americans and Brits who didn't have those strictures and could think for themselves. The really embarrassing part is that he self-consciously ties this supposed freedom of command to democratic traditions and educational systems, and ultimately argues that World War 2 was proof of the superiority of democracy over all other political structures. He casts the conflict as a trial of the fruits of the two systems (represented by the children raised and educated in 1920s-30s USA and Germany) against each other, with the innate strengths of democracy winning out over the illusory benefits of fascism. He makes this almost painfully clear with passages that wax about the triumph of the children of democracy over the children of fascism. This, however, is total bullshit and any second year grad student who works in military history should know better, much less a PhD with a long publication record. What we call "Mission-type tactics" the Germans called "Auftragstaktik." They were thinking and writing about the concept as early as the Prussian military reforms following their initial, catastrophic defeats to Napoleon in the early 19th century. Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, and von Moltke the Elder were all major proponents of it and responsible for instituting it on a systematic basis in first the mid-century Prussian and, later, the early Imperial German army. Far from being subservient worshippers of authority who couldn't do the simplest things without say-so from above, German soldiers in WW2 were trained from day one to exercise maximum individual autonomy and major initiative could be taken by NCOs and junior officers. In this instance he is quite simply arguing counter to well established reality for the sake of making a really sappy patriotic argument. This is my biggest beef with Ambrose, not the least because I did a lot of educational history and hip boy is he even more wrong about how he describes American and German education. There is another side to this, however. As much as I think his actual argument is horse-poo poo, I have a lot of respect for his skill at finding and telling a good story and the actual use that he put those skills to. The man was a popular historian (in the sense of writing for a broad, non-academic audience) and a damned good one. He wrote in a way that non-academics could really sink their teeth into and produced works that made history something that people actually wanted to read. This is something that I feel VERY strongly about and admire him greatly for. Simply put, I think the academy needs to get its head out of its own rear end and that far, FAR more popular histories need to be written in order to get your average non-historian interested in and informed about poo poo that happened before they were born. The approach that Ambrose took in most of his books - narrative history backed up by either interviews or (in the case of his book on Lewis and Clark) diaries - is incredibly well suited to this. Unlike other writers of popular history he didn't shy away from the academic apparatus while doing so, and wasn't condescending enough to think readers would be scared away by footnotes or having a bibliography at the end. Reading Ambrose's books was my own entry point into historical literature that took citation seriously (which is kind of ironic given the subsequent scandals) and they really do a great job at introducing people to the basic structure that an academic monograph will have. Of course that is tempered by the fact that every history book has to have an argument, and his is problematic enough that it has become really unfortunately utilized in popular culture, which I'll get into in a moment. The books themselves Remember where I said that all that plagiarism stuff leveled at him is overblown a bit? There is another academic crime that he's clearly guilty of which goes largely unrecognized, mostly because it isn't a high crime like actual straight up plagiarism. What is this crime? He blatantly recycled previous work when producing new books. This happens to a greater or lesser extent all the time, but generally it is considered poor form to just duplicate text wholesale. A lot of grad students spend a lot of mental energy, for example, trying to figure out if they should submit something for publication as an article or turn it into a chapter of their dissertation. Sure, some crossover happens, but generally you want it to be more that you are using arguments from a paper in a chapter and not just reproducing text wholesale. If you go and read Ambrose's Citizen Soldiers he basically reproduces Band of Brothers in it, in its entirety. By "reproduces" I mean entire 20-30 page swaths are identical, word for word. He also does the same thing with Pegasus Bridge and D-Day. Hell, major chunks of BoB are in both Citizen Soldiers AND D-Day. If you read his books in the order he wrote them (PB, BoB, D-Day, CS) you get some MAJOR loving deja vu towards the end. This is one of the biggest issues I have with him as an academic. It's just lovely practice - even if you want to re-use the research you did in another project because it's pertinent to your current one, you really need to revisit it and rethink it. If you can't find a way to revise the previous work and make it better, why the gently caress do you need to rehash it in this other book? What other reason is there for even doing that 2nd project other than to stretch out your publication list? The real answer probably has something to do with his books being popular and publishers clamoring for more of them. Books are hard to write and squeezing an extra couple out of the same material has to be tempting. He was also in that rarified air of historians who actually get sizable royalties from their writing, so there may have been a personal financial incentive as well. Ambrose and popular culture. As I've said before, I get that he wasn't writing books for the academy. I really, really get this and admire him greatly for it. That said, if you're writing for a non-academic audience you need to be extremely careful with what kind of argument you present, precisely because you are automatically becoming an Authoritative Source and Expert on the subject. Like it or not what you write will probably be taken fairly uncritically. See also: Daniel Goldhagen, hack extraordinaire. Unfortunately for Ambrose he chose to cheap out and go for a really obnoxious “democracy rocks and, in its Anglo-American form is the best thing EVER” thesis for his most popular works. This leads directly to self-identified patriotic Americans holding him up as a great example of how we're just the best country ever, and the second you try to point out that his argument was flawed and WW2 didn't really work like that you immediately become just another of those America-hating intellectuals. Rather than being an argument that can be argued like any other, it them becomes enshrined as some kind of secret capital-T Truth that Ambrose, as apparently the only America-loving historian on the planet, chose to share with the masses. The rest of the academic establishment is meanwhile cast as trying to silence this patriotic message for reasons that probably involve not liking the US. There is a particular kind of person who really latches onto this in an annoying way - self identified conservatives who think that universities are suspiciously full of people who are too liberal for anyone’s good and like to find academics who “tell it like it really is.” If this one guy is maintaining that the US won WW2 because of our innately superior politics and culture, then the people who are denying it must just not like America, right? I can’t completely lay this at Ambrose’s feet, and I’ll admit that I might be overly sensitive to it since I spent a number of years in grad school teaching WW2 and Holocaust classes, but it’s still a product of the Cult of Ambrose that has emerged. If you really want to see it in full bloom go visit the WW2 museum that he helped open in New Orleans. I went and saw it ca ~2011, though, so it may have moderated as he’s been dead longer and people are less invested in staying true to whatever his vision was. Then of course you have the miniseries and the whole awkward and bizarre cult of hero worship that rose up around Easy Company of the 506th as a result of all that. The kind of poo poo that leads people to want guns signed by octogenarian war vets, scammers claiming to be selling Dick Winters's personal bringback K98k, and 14 year olds playing online shooters with screen names like ShiftyPowersSniper[101]. As much as I bag on Ambrose's actual argument in BoB and Citizen Soldiers (they're largely the same), at the end it comes down to celebrating the ordinary infantryman. Of course this is really problematic when you're dealing with the 101st, which was as close to an elite or Guard unit as the US military got at the time, but let's just ignore that for now. (Even though the fact that the airborne was better than regular infantry is something that is played up prominently in his work, both through his presentation and the actual comments of the vets themselves. Lots of riffs on the theme of “I joined airborne because gently caress being in leg infantry with dudes you can’t depend on, join the elite to have the best chance of getting out”.) When you have books that are making the entire point of "these guys were just ordinary dudes and we won the war precisely because this is the material that our entire army was made of" the cult of patriotic hero worship that was generated around a few specific guys 50 years after they did what they did is just bizarre. Again, I can’t really blame Ambrose for this specifically, but it’s part of the larger constellation that he’s created and is due at least in part to how he presented his work and how it was interpreted by the general audience that it was written for. Other issues Ambrose was a shameless self-promoter, which is both a good thing and a bad thing. Unfortunately it looks like it also led him to stretch the truth about his own career and the relationships he had with some of the key people featured in his writings. The most egregious example of this is the controversy surrounding his relationship with Eisenhower. He did a lot of early work on Eisenhower's wartime decisions and claimed that Ike himself approached him to write his story. He further claimed that he had a close personal relationship with Eisenhower, and that he met with him frequently at the White House to go over details of his wartime record. This is, unfortunately, pure BS. There is archival evidence for the fact that he approached Eisenhower rather than the other way around and the interview dates that he claims in one of his key books don't line up with the White House visitation records. Rather than the hundreds of hours that Ambrose claimed that he spent talking with Eisenhower it looks like he spent a total of maybe 10 with the man. tl;dr - Goddamnit you were SO on the ball with the popular history angle, why did you have to taint it with actual arguments that are drat near indefensible and some sloppy habits when it came to your actual research and writing?
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Feb 5, 2019 17:16
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EvilMerlin posted:PS: read up on Maurice Rose, not only a Jewish soldier, but also the highest ranking American killed in the line of duty. I believe that particular honor goes to Lt.Gen Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., KIA at Okinawa. EFB: Or MacNair, I guess. How many American Lt.Gens got killed in the war? dublish fucked around with this message at 17:34 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 17:25
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fully sikk name
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Feb 5, 2019 17:27
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dublish posted:I believe that particular honor goes to Lt.Gen Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., KIA at Okinawa. loving weird his dad fought in the mexican war and the civil war
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Feb 5, 2019 17:27
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Sounds like he was a dumbassquote:On June 18, Buckner arrived in his command jeep which was flying its standard 3-star flag to visit a forward observation post on a ridge approximately 300 yards behind the front lines, as Marine infantry advanced on the Japanese-held Ibaru Ridge. Visits from the general were not always welcome as his presence frequently drew enemy fire, usually as he was departing. Buckner had arrived with his standard three stars showing on the front of his steel helmet and a nearby Marine outpost sent a signal to Buckner's position stating that they could clearly see the general's three stars on his helmet. Told of this, Buckner replaced his own helmet with an unmarked one. What was the first war where the first officer told the first enlisted man not to salute him because of snipers
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Feb 5, 2019 17:31
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Cyrano4747 posted:Then of course you have the miniseries and the whole awkward and bizarre cult of hero worship that rose up around Easy Company of the 506th as a result of all that. The kind of poo poo that leads people to want guns signed by octogenarian war vets, scammers claiming to be selling Dick Winters's personal bringback K98k, and 14 year olds playing online shooters with screen names like ShiftyPowersSniper[101]. WWII reenactments circa 2004 probably had more "Easy Company 506th PIR" reenactors than the rest of the US Army combined. No, I am not exaggerating.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:32
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dublish posted:I believe that particular honor goes to Lt.Gen Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., KIA at Okinawa. Yeah I should have said the ETO. My bad. Sorry folks.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:35
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Cessna posted:WWII reenactments circa 2004 probably had more "Easy Company 506th PIR" reenactors than the rest of the US Army combined. That happens every time a movie or TV series drops. The Civil War folks were flooded by 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment after Glory and the 20th Maine after Gettysburg.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:37
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zoux posted:Sounds like he was a dumbass I know it happened in the Civil War a lot. Both sides had loving deadly snipers that could hit targets 1000 yards out. With a loving black powder rifle...
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Feb 5, 2019 17:38
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Cyrano4747 posted:Ambrose is really bad about this. I have a whole love/hate thing with him. I’m sure I posted that rant either in this thread or it’s predecessor. It was already both, but that should be in the OP of the next one.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:38
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EvilMerlin posted:That happens every time a movie or TV series drops. Oh god please tell me they weren't all in blackface
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Feb 5, 2019 17:39
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Cyrano4747 posted:(and boy howdy was he famous for taking anecdotes uncritically - SLA Marshall’s problematic place in military history is a whole different issue). Could you possibly touch on this issue some more? I’ve seen it alluded to a few times, or maybe it stuck with me from the last time you did the awesome Ambrose post, but having read a few of his books when I was younger, I’m curious about his various issues.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:44
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fartknocker posted:Could you possibly touch on this issue some more? I’ve seen it alluded to a few times, or maybe it stuck with me from the last time you did the awesome Ambrose post, but having read a few of his books when I was younger, I’m curious about his various issues. In very brief terms, Marshall published a book called Men Against Fire, which was a Hot Take on WWII infantry combat. One of his big points was that the majority of soldiers don't fire their weapons effectively - only 10-15% or so are actually engaging the enemy with accurate fire, while the rest are confused, disoriented, etc. Turns out he fabricated a lot of his evidence and made up a lot of his after-action interviews.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:49
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EvilMerlin posted:Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters I had the pleasure of meeting Compton, Guarnere, Heffron, Malarkey, and a few others. Guarnere was loving hilarious, and the actor who played him in the miniseries nailed his voice as perfectly as it's possible to sound like another person. fartknocker posted:Could you possibly touch on this issue some more? I’ve seen it alluded to a few times, or maybe it stuck with me from the last time you did the awesome Ambrose post, but having read a few of his books when I was younger, I’m curious about his various issues. SLA Marshall's claim that most soldiers never fired their weapons is totally bogus and he never actually asked soldiers about whether or not they fired their weapons in the first place. It's a claim that's tremendously influential and it's something he basically made up out of whole cloth. https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/208wwa/sla_marshall_dave_grossman_and_the_case_of_the/ Alchenar posted:The story about Band of Brothers and Ambrose I really remember is that after his book was published someone asked the guy David Schwimmer plays about the depiction of him as incompetent and he said "Nope, they hated me because I was Jewish. That was the real reason they refused to serve and why I got reassigned". Not true, because Sobel died in 1987, years before the book came out. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 17:51
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zoux posted:Oh god please tell me they weren't all in blackface No they all wanted to be officers. Funny thing... my ancestors couldn't serve with white troops in the Civil War either and were assigned to either the USSS or the USCT.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:57
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zoux posted:Oh god please tell me they weren't all in blackface I know blackface is bad and all that but for some reason I find the notion of a bunch of white union soldier re-enactors in blackface to be an amusing and endearing tribute.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:59
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Phanatic posted:I had the pleasure of meeting Compton, Guarnere, Heffron, Malarkey, and a few others. Guarnere was loving hilarious, and the actor who played him in the miniseries nailed his voice as perfectly as it's possible to sound like another person. Lucky bastard. A few years ago I met the last surviving pilots of the Red Tails (322nd). Its a real bummer to know as of today not one of them I spoke with is alive now.
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Feb 5, 2019 17:59
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bewbies posted:I know blackface is bad and all that but for some reason I find the notion of a bunch of white union soldier re-enactors in blackface to be an amusing and endearing tribute. that_one_mitchell_and_webb_sketch.mp4
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Feb 5, 2019 18:00
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EvilMerlin posted:Jokes are amusing. Your post wasn't. drat GOT HIS rear end!!
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Feb 5, 2019 18:01
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bewbies posted:- Soldiers on their second deployment are usually significantly less efficient for the first 6 to 8 weeks. The likely cause for this is some mix of "the way my old unit did things was better" and "I'm a pro, I know all this poo poo already" To keep the high efficiency of Second Deployment soldiers and avoid the short timer and Third Deployment loss of efficiency I propose that once soldiers are sent on their second deployment we keep them there forever. I call it the Rabaul plan. FrangibleCover fucked around with this message at 18:25 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 18:08
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SeanBeansShako posted:It's perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry...pranged his kite right in the how's yer father...hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie. Bunch of monkeys on your ceiling, sir. Grab your egg-and-fours and let's get the bacon delivered!
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Feb 5, 2019 18:38
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EvilMerlin posted:Lucky bastard. A few years ago I met the last surviving pilots of the Red Tails (322nd). Its a real bummer to know as of today not one of them I spoke with is alive now. Met Guarnere at the book signing for his and Babe's book, we had a mutual friend who photographed him for a book on veterans and their tattoos. My sister would see Babe in Philly riding the bus, and he'd still get up and give his seat away on a crowded bus. Then I met them again, getting them to sign the holster for the Luger my grandfather brought back from WWII. On that day, I was talking with Bill's son and apparently Bill was signing autographs all day with a broken collarbone. Bill was directly from central casting. Thick south Philly accent, women were still "broads," Germans were still "krauts." For years, until the book came out, he'd tell any neighbors who asked about the leg that he lost it in a boating accident. And Winters said he was a "natural killer," which seems totally incongruous. Don Malarkey and Ed Mauser:  Buck:  Bill:  
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Feb 5, 2019 18:40
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Phanatic posted:Met Guarnere at the book signing for his and Babe's book, we had a mutual friend who photographed him for a book on veterans and their tattoos. My sister would see Babe in Philly riding the bus, and he'd still get up and give his seat away on a crowded bus. Then I met them again, getting them to sign the holster for the Luger my grandfather brought back from WWII. On that day, I was talking with Bill's son and apparently Bill was signing autographs all day with a broken collarbone. loving amazing. AMAZING. Everything I've read that the guys said about Winters is that he knew his poo poo inside and out and knew the only way to keep his guys safe is to make sure the Germans didn't shoot first. He wasn't vicious, he wasn't mean, he was a solider that loved his men. And if you couldn't follow orders, pay attention or do your job, he made it well known you were a loving idiot. EvilMerlin fucked around with this message at 18:55 on Feb 5, 2019 |
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Feb 5, 2019 18:52
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EvilMerlin posted:No they all wanted to be officers. Found USCT on google but is USSS secret service like it says on google? Acebuckeye13 posted:Pretty much Are you able or willing to do one on the Commonwealth beaches? I know basically nothing about them
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Feb 5, 2019 19:05
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But for those who don't know:
cathedral and a thousand year old tapestry, what's not to like?
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 05:55 |
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Milo and POTUS posted:Found USCT on google but is USSS secret service like it says on google? USSS: United States Sharp Shooters. Specifically the 2nd. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2nd_United_States_Sharpshooters
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Feb 5, 2019 19:18
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