Comments on: Thank you, America’s Veterans! UPDATED

By: David Foster

David Foster — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:51:23 +0000

Ymar…from what I’ve read, French tactics were marginally less mindless than British: in particular, attackers were usually given some discretion to use maneuver and cover, whereas British commanders tended to believe that their volunteers and conscripts could not be counted on to use individual discretion and initiative.

There were many causes for the French catastrophe of 1940: re the Maginot Line, it would have been better to make it less elaborate but more complete. (“The best is the enemy of the good,” which I believe is actually a French saying.) But one major factor was extreme political factionalism, with the Communists calling for strikes and slowdowns in defense plants and the extreme rightists with slogans like “better Hitler than Blum.” Both business and labor contributed to the debacle with their resolute opposition to large-scale aircraft production outsourcing to the U.S., where an excellent French design could have been built with mass-production rather than craft methods.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:02:54 +0000

Foster, it was an un-natural selection. All the cowardly risk averse people would stay in the back and send in the brave, but yet cannonfodder.

When Pershing came with the American Expeditionary Forces, the Euros called them Dough Boys, Pershing refused to have his people be separated and put into ‘holes’ in the British and French forces. The British and French commanders always needed more bodies, given the suicidal and ineffective attacks they ordered on machine gun emplaced defensive fortifications.

Americans value the lives of their soldiers as more than just cannon fodder. The same wasn’t true of the French, which meant that their bravest died while their oldest and most cowardly survived. That’s the product that resulted in the Maginot Line’s INSUFFICIENT funding which led to its incompletion. Raise a generation of weaklings and cowards, from the product of older minds, and you’ll get nothing strong enough to stop a Nazi blitzkrieg.

By: » On This Veteran’s Day… NoisyRoom.net: Where liberty dwells, there is my country…

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:28:31 +0000

[...] Bookworm Room – Thank you, America’s Veterans! *UPDATED* [...]

By: Bookworm

Bookworm — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:48:17 +0000

David: Just FYI, “The Great War and Modern Memory” is, in my humble opinion, one of the best books ever written about WWI or about any war. I wonder if it’s still on college curriculums.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:43:13 +0000

I think the First World War had an impact on Europe from which it has not recovered and may never recover. When Americans make jokes about cowardice as some kind of inherited French trait, they should bear in mind things like this: At the French military academy of Saint-Cyr (the French equivalent to West Point) a memorial was erected after the war with the inscription “To the class of 1914.” Every single member of that class was killed in the war. Two important books about the impact of WWI on civilization and culture: –Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory” (nonfiction, and almost unbearably depressing) –Erich Maria Remarque’s “The Road Back”…a better novel, IMNSHO, than his much-better-known “All Quiet on the Western Front”

By: Bookworm

Bookworm — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 16:06:58 +0000

Back in the mid-1980s, as part of a visit to Europe, I found myself at the Somme, Ypres, Bastogne and Dunkirk. Despite the fact that WWI had ended almost almost 70 years before, and WWII almost 40, those areas still had a sullen, depressed air about them. There had been too much death there for cheer to reign.

By: David Foster

David Foster — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:52:14 +0000

F Scott Fitzgerald on the First World War. This passage is from his novel Tender is the Night. The time is about 10 years after the end of the war. The setting is the battlefield of the Somme.

Rosemary waited tensely for Dick to continue.

“See that little stream—we could walk to it in two minutes. It took the British a month to walk to it—a whole empire walking very slowly, dying in front and pushing forward behind. And another empire walked very slowly backward a few inches a day, leaving the dead like a million bloody rugs. No Europeans will ever do that again in this generation.”

“Why, they’ve only just quit over in Turkey,” said Abe. “And in Morocco—”

“That’s different. This western-front business couldn’t be done again, not for a long time. The young men think they could do it but they couldn’t. They could fight the first Marne again but not this. This took religion and years of plenty and tremendous sureties and the exact relation that existed between the classes. The Russians and Italians weren’t any good on this front. You had to have a whole-souled sentimental equipment going back further than you could remember. You had to remember Christmas, and postcards of the Crown Prince and his fiancée, and little cafés in Valence and beer gardens in Unter den Linden and weddings at the mairie, and going to the Derby, and your grandfather’s whiskers.”

“General Grant invented this kind of battle at Petersburg in sixty- five.”

“No, he didn’t—he just invented mass butchery. This kind of battle was invented by Lewis Carroll and Jules Verne and whoever wrote Undine, and country deacons bowling and marraines in Marseilles and girls seduced in the back lanes of Wurtemburg and Westphalia. Why, this was a love battle—there was a century of middle-class love spent here. This was the last love battle.”

“You want to hand over this battle to D. H. Lawrence,” said Abe.

“All my beautiful lovely safe world blew itself up here with a great gust of high explosive love,” Dick mourned persistently.

By: Ymarsakar

Ymarsakar — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:16:58 +0000

John Ringo on the subject of the US military
And quietly bear this pain with pride,
For heaven shall remember the silent and the brave.
And promise me, they will never see
the fear within our eyes. (my eyes are closed)
For we will give strength to those who still remain.

So bury fear, while fate draws near
And hide the signs of pain.
With noble acts
The bravest souls endure,
the heart’s remains.

Discard regret,
That in this debt

A better world is made
And children of a newer day might remember
And avoid our fate.

I waited all day in the pouring rain,
But nobody came,
No nobody came.

(Prepare for battle)

And in the fury of this darkest hour
we will be your light
you’ve asked me for my sacrifice
and I am Winter born
without denying, a faith is come
that I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
and I am Winter born

Hold your head up high
For there is no greater love
Think of the faces of the people you defend
And promise me, they will never see
The tears within our eyes (My eyes are closed)
Although we are men with mortal sins,
Angels never cry

So bury fear for fate draws near
And hide the signs of pain
With noble acts, the bravest souls
Endure the heart’s remains

Discard regret,
That in this debt
A better world is made
That children of a newer day might remember, and avoid our fate.

(prepare for battle)

And in the fury of this darkest hour
We will be your light
You’ve asked me for my sacrifice
And I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith in God
That I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
And I am Winter born

And in the fury of this darkest hour
I will be your light
A lifetime for this destiny
For I am winter born
And in this moment…
I will not run, it is my place to stand
We few shall carry hope
Within our bloodied hands

And in our Dying
We’re more alive- than we have ever been
I’ve lived for these few seconds
For I am Winter born

And in the fury of this darkest hour
We will be the light
You’ve asked me for my sacrifice
And I am Winter born
Without denying, a faith in man
That I have never known
I hear the angels call my name
And I am Winter born

Within this moment
I am for you,
Though better men have failed
I will give my life for love
for I am Winter born

By: Jose

Jose — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:57:26 +0000

In case anyone doesn’t know why November 11 is Veteran’s Day, it began as Armistice Day after WWI. In 1918 both sides agreed to begin the cease fire at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.
My Grandfather was in the 28th Infantry Division and had recently fought through the Argonne, where the events surrounding the “Lost Battalion” and Alvin York occurred. Granddad was skeptical of Alvin York as York’s unit arrived 10 days after the fighting began. The 28th’s artillery never arrived and they basically got hammered.
However, Granddad stated the shelling on Armistice Day was the worst he had seen. Both sides were firing off everything they had until 11am. He sustained his first combat injury that day, if you don’t count mustard gas. A piece of shrapnel broke his wrist.
Eventually he made it home and raised his family. He never spoke much about those times, and it frustrates several of his grandchildren that we know so little of what he experienced.

Comments on: Thank you, America’s Veterans! *UPDATED*

By: David Foster

By: Ymarsakar

By: » On This Veteran’s Day… NoisyRoom.net: Where liberty dwells, there is my country…

By: Bookworm

By: David Foster

By: Bookworm

By: David Foster

By: Ymarsakar

By: Jose

Comments on: Thank you, America’s Veterans! UPDATED