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Battles Bernd 07/16/2017 (Sun) 10:27:19 [Preview] No. 8950
I've already mentioned the book titled On Killing - The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman (Lt. Col. of US Army). It gave some food for thought and I'm planning to write some of my speculation.
But what did the author write? Let's summarize.
He starts with the observation that most men has a natural resistance to kill (only 2% of men - those who have "predisposition toward aggressive psychopathic personality" - can go on killing without becoming a nervous wreck). This resistance is so high that even at times that our life is directly threatened (like others shoot at us) still difficult to overcome it. This resistance is the reason why infantry fire was so embarrassingly ineffective in the past 300 years - with the exception of machine guns - despite the fact that infantry weaponry (rifles) are reliable and accurate enough to cause massive losses among the enemy.
The author gives examples and sources, such as a Prussian experiment in the late 18th century, several reports and notices from several authors during 19-20th centuries (American, French, Israeli etc.), and an interesting work by a US Army historian who (and his coworkers) made mass interviews with fighting GIs during and after WWII. Also he cites his own conversation with veterans of WWII and Vietnam.
He gives new ideas on what's really happening on the battlefield. He compliments the widely known fight-or-flight model with two other options: in reality the soldiers can fight, posture, submit or flight. And most soldiers choose the second option.
Then he ponders on what enables killing (I'm gonna write more about this later) and how modern (post-WWII) armies achieve this. Then he compares these methods with the ways of contemporary mass media. His conlcusion is (after pointing out the exponential rise of violent crimes) that mass media has an undesirable effect on society.
What interesting for me is this resistance, and the enabling part. These things are actually give an entirely new way of looking warfare, and how and why battles were won.
For example the part officers (the demanding authority to kill) play in the enabling. When people (professional historians, history pros and other armchair generals) comparing the Hellenic phalanx with Roman manipulus and why the latter was more successful they compare everything but the officers. In the phalanx he's only one among those who stand in line and do the poking with pikes, but a Roman officer is one outside the formation and pressuring the soldiers to kill. It makes a huge difference if someone shouting in your ears "stab! stab! stab!" and generally pressuring you to kill. Especially if this one person is an exemplary one, a veteran whose skill in killing surpasses all the others in that particular unit. However noone talks about this because noone thinks about it.
I'll continue this sometimes, maybe only next weekend, we'll see. If you wish to read the book you can probably find it on libgen.
Bernd 07/16/2017 (Sun) 12:46:11 [Preview] No. 8952 del
>He starts with the observation that most men has a natural resistance to kill (only 2% of men
I think that premise is wrong. People easily kill each other in so called affect state, i.e. when they are enraged or afraid of death. I guess he says about 2% only when there is calm person who need to kill someone unrelated to him at all.
>This resistance is the reason why infantry fire was so embarrassingly ineffective in the past 300 years - with the exception of machine guns - despite the fact that infantry weaponry (rifles) are reliable and accurate enough to cause massive losses among the enemy.
There are plenty of reasons why armed warfare wasn't too costly in past times, and most of them are technological. But this is very broad theme to discuss. Avoiding of unnecessary violence sure has relation to it, but putting it forward seems wrong. Although broader concept like "discipline" can include it too.
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I read the book when it came out OP. US Marine. Some people, with European heritage, love fighting. Most of the rest of the world does not. People are different. It is useless to compile statistics on education without considering the ethnic make-up of the study, and so the same principle applies here.
Getting faggots to fight is like getting a negro to read. Its a real chore.
>easily kill each other
That's a very huge overstatement. Even in affect state. Among normal people. It doesn't goes easily even to that 2%.
- Hungary is a country of 10 million people.
- From the 10 million 1,4 million was under 15 in 2014.
- In 2015 we had 280 113 (registered) crimes, 205 was homicide.
- The 8,6 million (more or less) adult committed 205 homicide.
- If every murder was committed by a different person that means 205 murderer, that's about 0,000023% of the adult population, and 0,0011% of that 172 000 person who has some predisposition towards "aggressive psychopathic personality".
- From that 280 113 crimes many (about 13-14 000 in 2015) are assaults (not exactly assault but it's the closest juristical term) which tells me that even when enraged people rather choose to beat up others over killing them.
However with this and the other stuff you wrote you highlighted an important thing. I cannot expect Bernd to accept the premise just like that and while it wasn't my intention I'll write or more like copypaste some proofs.
My original thought which flowered from the soil of the book is about the warfare of the medieval Europe or rather the changes of it. So for my purpose the contents of the book is very fit.
Also I think (I hope) most of us don't have first hand experience on killing so our perception how it get done is influenced by the depictions of popular culture (movies, books, comics, other products of art).
Intradesting. I think we discussed it on old /kc/ tho.
There is one thing: it isn't easy to kill someone, especially if you have no weapons. And even with knife it isn't easy as may look. People are sturdy creatures, and you can easily stop being in affect while being in fight, and everyone will live. Beating, for example. easily gets your anger off in few minutes.
Being good in classic hand-to-hand combat also requires training, that is why in Medieval times warrior class wasn't numerous, and there often was shortage of proper soldiers while general population was large. When guns appeared, everything changed. I think it is mostly technical thing.
>Also I think (I hope) most of us don't have first hand experience on killing
I almost killed one person in self-defense situation when I was kid. Maybe he even died later, I don't know results. I clearly remember that I didn't care about severity of my actions when I did this and didn't had any moral block. I was very affected and didn't control myself (although I had no choice).
>He starts with the observation that most men has a natural resistance to kill (only 2% of men - those who have "predisposition toward aggressive psychopathic personality" - can go on killing without becoming a nervous wreck). This resistance is so high that even at times that our life is directly threatened (like others shoot at us) still difficult to overcome it.
Pretty sure this only exists in-group. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the westerner, who also exhibits pathological altruism regardless of group-affiliation as well, i somehow psychologically impaired compared to other races, not having a mechanism to tell a difference between "us" and "them".
Yes, we discussed it briefly, however back then I just recommended after reading a few paragraph as it had some unusual hence interesting points. We didn't have much talk on it. Now I've an ulterior motive as ultimately I'd like to present some of my ideas and I need to explain some stuff explained in that book.
Also I hoped it would give us some topic to seriously discuss.
There are some factors which enables us to kill (as I mentioned in OP) and I'll present them in time. But basically most of these are just the same: somehow denying the humanity of the victim. For example police officers can rely on moral distance to rationalize a killing of theirs: they are on the side of the law, the criminal is an outlaw and this makes the criminal less then a human bean for them, so it's not that big of a problem if they die. Self defense also gives us justification and makes it easier to cross the line - the attacker violates the societies moral so this makes him less then human.
It's very good you mentioned knife and training. Both are topics in the book.
Have you, Bernds, know that Roman legionaries were trained and conditioned to use the point of their gladius? The officers shunned slashing with the sword as it gave shittier results then stabbing. If you slash a person on his torso while it makes a nasty cut the ribcage shields the important organs while the stabbing can reach those. In a battle a stab in the torso will most probably lethal. However soldiers of all epochs tend not to stab so legionaries had to be forced to stab with training and with the encouragement of their superiors in battle.
You probably notices however that bayonets tend not to have a sharp edge also the first bayonets were nothing more than a round metal rod with a pointy end. The reason is the soldiers resistance to stabbing and prefering the edge of a weapon in fight and this forced to soldiers to use their bayonets as their superiors wanted them to. In theory at least because it was extremely rare that a bayonet charge resulted in stabbing contest. Most of the time one side or the other fled but when the charge ended with a fight the soldiers turned their rifle and used the butt of it as a club despite the fact that stabbing would be more productive.
This is all because men will choose the less lethal option.
Nevertheless I'm glad that you don't live a life as a child child-killer.
>Pretty sure this only exists in-group.
Nope. Of course it's easier to deny the humanity of an outsider. Tribe names comes to my mind when the meaning of the name of my tribe is human but the other tribe is something else (like food).
I think good to have the sense of "us" and "them". But it's even better if one can look over it and judge things on different basis but still can apply it on demand.
>Nope. Of course it's easier to deny the humanity of an outsider.
That's a very Eurocentric view of the matter, through the eyes and instincts of an European. Non-Europeans automatically don't view foreigners as humans.
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>Non-Europeans automatically don't view foreigners as humans.
same as e*ropeans
Bernd 07/17/2017 (Mon) 04:38:39 [Preview] No. 8964 del
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Napolean said to his Dragoons as they passed in review, "The tip, the tip!" This was to remind them to stab. During the Napoleonic Wars it was found that a slahed man would return to the front after 3 months, with a low percentage of fatalities, but a stabbed man had a very high chance of being killed and if only wounded, would be wounded much longer. General Patton designed a straight cavalry sword, the last sword adopted by the US Army, that was exclusively for thrusting. The best dagger was the long and slender stabbing short-swords of rennisance Italy, because you coyld get the vital organs and not get stopped by the ribcage. Stabbing is superior. This was even learned by the Japanese although they had a curved Katana. The curve, like the Cossack sabers, was to enable a cut on horseback. On foot the use of spears in hand-to-hand combat was more common than swords, and of course they used bows and arrows a lot. Swords were expensive and knives had a short range. I kbow I've ranted here but the point is that stabbing has been the preferred way to fight by most countries over history. Hell, those Wolly Mammoths weren't clubbed of slashed to death, because primitive people used spears to stab them with great effect. Stabbing is the preferred way to use a blade.
Now for the motivation part, that is probably easier than I said earlier, if you have the right genes for it. If you read the book then you have Operant and Pavlonian conditioning. Just practice, practice, practice, and you will have no problem doing what needs to be done. You will then just not think about it and rely on your training. In WW2 they had lousy rates of participation because they didn't have enough time to practice. Often they got one week of rifle training before being sent to the front, and shot less than 400 rounds of ammo in training.
That's an interesting claim and it needs some form a validation. I might guess what you think about tho. I've a longer reply addressing some points but it's morning, and probably I'll arrive to those anyway by going through the proofs Grossman presents in his book.
However I can say: maybe so, but pretty much this >>8963 as we don't talk about the typical sample of a modern westerners you mentioned here >>8960 and taking dehumanizing into practice and start to kill is a different matter then simply think others as not a human.
Also there will be other examples of denying humanity and it's largely different what you would think it really means.
>I kbow I've ranted here
It's /kc/ this is the place for long winded ramblings on topics only a handful of people would be interested.
I wondered about the katana if it was made on purpose a slashing weapon so when they defeat unarmored peasants (the intended use) the workforce would remain more intact with crazy but more easily healing wounds which impairs less but scares the peasants more (basically a tool of posturing to submit the enemy for longer periods).
Kevin B. MacDonald talks a lot about it, the uniqueness of European culture of indiscriminate help and compassion towards any human.
He also explains pretty well why we jews are superior, greenly with envy.
Katana is designed as a slashing weapon because of poor quality of Japanese iron ore and process of manufacturing, where steel of different hardness is layered to give a hard but brittle edge on a softer bulkier back. When a sword cools down, the back contracts more than the blade, giving the sword curvature. This wasn't necessary in, say, Chinese swords, due to higher ore quality, and they are generally straight.
There are, however, other weapons that are much more obviously made for slashing and crowd control of unarmoured opponents (i.e. peasants); the southern Indian urumi, made of very soft steel and extremely long, basically a cross between a whip and a sword.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=uZ0Nc2kHba4 [Embed]
https://youtube.com/watch?v=eMAsCuDFSUI [Embed]
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Now I'm gonna post about that Prussian experiment I mentioned then ramble a bit. Let's start with a quote from the book:
"John Keegan and Richard Holmes in their book Soldiers tell us of a Prussian experiment in the late 1700s in which an infantry battalion fired smoothbore muskets at a target one hundred feet long by six feet high, representing an enemy unit, which resulted in 25 percent hits at 225 yards, 40 percent hits at 150 yards, and 60 percent hits at 75 yards. This represented the potential killing power of such a unit."
This experiment shows how accurate were these rifles (well muskets, they weren't rifled) in the trained hand of the Prussian line infantry. A musketman of the era could fire 4-5 shots per minute, but let's say just 4. This would mean a unit consisting of 200 men was capable of inflicting 480 casualties per minute from about 70-75 metres. This also means they could have obliterated a same sized unit under 30 seconds. Battles should have concluded in an minutes.
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Let's review a battle of the Napoleonic Wars and do a bit of counting. I tried to search for one optimal but on such short notice I had to compromise a bit. Still sounds all right for the purpose.
Battle of Eylau in 1807
This is a battle between the French and Russians (with a smaller Prussian contingent).
Why is it ideal for us? It's a middle sized battle, both sides are largely the same and the losses are quite high. It took the most part of two days, let's say 20 hours in all with longer periods when line infantry engaged each other.
Why isn't ideal? The weather can be blamed to counter my argument, as a snowstorm made fighting and targeting harder then usual. But the high number of casualties still speak of efficiency, also there wouldn't be any battle if their marshalls didn't think the weather adequate for fighting.
The two sides fielded 75-75 000 men. Now let's take a closer look on the French side.
They employed 32 line infantry regiments, about 1000 men each (or more), that's about 32 000 riflemen fighting like the Prussian experiment supposed. There were other types of infantry of course but their role could differ (like picketing, skirmishing, leading assaults against fortified posotions etc.) so they don't count now.
The French caused 20 000 casualities (dead and wounded) in all if we are generous 15 000 if we aren't. Let's say we are. Very few people surrendered during this particular battle however we don't know about the fate of some but let's make things simpler and assume all dead and wounded. So 20 000 it is.
The losses were caused by the three arms: infantry, cavalry, artillery. The field artillery was the most effective in that era basically they were the precursor of machine gun teams both in usage (for example grapeshot from point blank range can be seen as a parallel of impact of a machine gun) and in efficiency. While I would estimate the cavalry the least efficient in inflicting losses (in battle but during chase or harrassing it's a different story) but this particular battle had seen some of the greatest cavalry charge of the era resulting in some nice figting against infantry and between cavalry units. Probably with high losses.
So how much could these 32 000 brave young soldiers kill or wound? I'm gonna be very generous (and lazy) and say 10 000 (I hope this will keep the counting easy). How much were line infatry from these 10 000 who could die the way the Prussian experiments supposed? How much were other types of infanty, cavalry and artillery gunner? Oh no I won't go there. I won't calculating the uncalculatable, let's just estimate 8000 dead line infantrymen for the kicks.
How long these engagements took between infantry units? Sadly, no idea. There's no timetable of the battle available. Surely they don't stand there loading and firing through the whole 20 hours. Let's say lowly 5 hours. All the other were cavalry fights, arillery bombardment, marching up and down, charging and retreating, picking noses.
Summary: 32 000 soldiers inflicted 8000 casualties in 5 hours.
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Let's count!
This means that 32 000 soldiers inflicted 27 casualties in a minute.
This means that a unit of 200 soldiers (like in the Prussian experiment) inflicted 0,16 losses in a minute when they should have kill or wound:
- 1250 times that many from 220 m;
- 2000 times that many from about 150 m;
- 3000 times that many from 70-75 m.
But what if the line infantry's participatoin were much shorter? What if their combined fighting time is only 1 hour.
32 000 soldiers inflicted 135 casualities in a minute.
Which means a unit of 200 soldiers inflicted 0,85 casualities per minute but they should have kill or wound:
- 235 times that many from 220 m;
- 376 times that many from about 150 m;
- 564 times that many from 70-75 m.
The difference is still unexplainably huge.
This is prime example of inefficient fireing.
And the explanation of the otherwise unexplainable difference is: most soldiers just postured (loaded, shouted, pretended to fire, ducked, covered etc.) while didn't actually fight, and most of those who fired on the enemy misfired on purpose.
Terrible argument based on not understanding how fighting works. Anyone who has ever done as much as play paintball knows why this doesn't work: because troops in combat will not present themselves fully to the opponent, minimising the options for successful firing. If we go back to paintball (which I have played about half a dozen times with different groups of people), an 8v8 fight should end in about 15 seconds easily, however, from my experience most games took about 5-10 minutes. Amounting to a factor of 20-40. Take into account that paintball fields are generally arranged for dynamic play, and that mistakes don't cost a life.
Fortifications can also easily and quickly be mocked up, as everyone who has watched livestreams of protests in Kiev (holy fuck it's been three and a half years already?) knows.
But line infantry fought precisely that way. Right up to times of the American Civil War. They stood straight, shoulder to shoulder in lines and fired at each other from few dozen meters.
Similarly, one might compare performance of basketball players in pre-game throw routines to actual in-game performance, arguing that basketball players don't seem to be playing seriously as based on their practice accuracy, game scores should be in 500-500 range.
I heard/read about the quality (or rather the lack of it) of the Japanese iron they had to use for their swords. The shitty iron card is usually played against weaboos raving about the sword of the gods, the katana. However it's overplayed now into memetic level. Probably because the people of the internet all right, people in general can only think in extremes. Bipolar world.
Of course most katanas as all the swords all around the word were just a hunk of sharpened steel and not much more. However lots of other products of the weaponsmiths all around a workd were better quality from mediocre to excellent one could find any kind.
The accentuating the brittleness of the hard steel is also overplayed. From the talks one could gather it was porcelain. It's the same when "bushcrafters" and other "experts" babbling about the steel of different knives and why to choose which. It literally hurts.
Also this ore quality sounds dubious. There could be difference between ore and ore but after they're transformed into iron bars how can anyone say that there's a difference between the Fe atoms forming those bars? Two Fe atoms cannot be different else one of them wouldn't be Fe. So a bunch of Fe atoms cannot be different from another bunch of Fe atoms. There could be difference in coal quantity but to making steel one should add more C into the mix anyway.
But why I don't see your post a good argument is this: assuming Japanese couldn't shape their steel into whatever shape they wanted is just wrong. Just imagine a swordsmith and his apprentice conversation in the 8-9th century of Japan:
- Hey let's make a sword!
- All right, master!
- I've a great idea, here's how we're gonna do it.
- But master we already know how to make swords.
- No, my idea is genious! Shut you mouth and bring me the file-grease instead!
- This furnace is fucking hot.
- Shut up, you lazy bastard and work harder!
- Yes, master!
- Oh shit, master! The blade become curved. It doesn't supposed to be that way! Our previous swords were all straight. This new technique fucked us over.
- Oh well. I cannot let my genious idea vanish. We will force everyone to use it by telling the people how straight swords are gay and then we'll make curved swords for a thousand years until they go out of fashion.
No. They perfectly knew what they were doing. They needed curved swords for some reason and this need led to inventing a technique which gave them curved swords.
Also the length of their musket and the way how it had to be loaded (through the muzzle and not from behind) forced them to use it standing straight.
>There could be difference between ore and ore but after they're transformed into iron bars how can anyone say that there's a difference between the Fe atoms forming those bars? Two Fe atoms cannot be different else one of them wouldn't be Fe. So a bunch of Fe atoms cannot be different from another bunch of Fe atoms. There could be difference in coal quantity but to making steel one should add more C into the mix anyway.
Hardly even close to the actual reality of metallurgy.
There are two important issues: 1) iron ore often contains other metals (chromium, vanadium, etc) which cannot easily be distilled away in the refining process (even in binary mixtures result would be an eutectic mixture, not pure Fe), and secondly, carbon itself forms an alloy with iron, again making the whole system much more complicated.
Also, iron undergoes several phase transitions when cooling down from melt to room temperature. At each phase transition there is an abrupt change in mechanical properties of the metal; it is what leads to tension present in final product. By finetuning composition, one can change temperatures at which those phase transitions occur, or even access hidden phases that aren't possible with pure iron or binary steel.
In any case, I'd assume swords gradually got more curved with time; that there was no phase transition from straight to curved blade. At first, they'd work hard to try to make it straight; later on, slightly curved became the norm and nobody worried about curvature anymore since it isn't too bad.
>There could be difference between ore and ore but after they're transformed into iron bars how can anyone say that there's a difference between the Fe atoms forming those bars?
Oh, this is very serious question. German in >>8987 said mostly true things, although different phases not really related to internal tensions as is, it is mostly about crystallic structure, size of grain etc.
Using term "iron" is incorrect, it is all about steel. Steel is actually an alloy, where iron and carbon are required, and other elements, even in small amounts, can do very serious shift in properties. And processing method, temperatures, speed of cooling/heating, time etc - all this can change property of metal seriously.
This was known in past, but not fully, so smiths often got best results by luck and intuition.
t. metallurgy pro
>although different phases not really related to internal tensions as is, it is mostly about crystallic structure, size of grain etc.
Indeed – I meant to point out (but didn't explain it properly) that when a phase transition occurs, it doesn't occur through entire block of metal at the same time, so for a while you get tension between pieces that suddenly don't match anymore.
Bernd 07/18/2017 (Tue) 00:10:20 [Preview] No. 8994 del
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>Terrible argument based on not understanding how fighting works
>But line infantry fought precisely that way.
understanding.jpeg
Well, it would seem that line infantry fought the wrong way ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It wasn't wrong as you can see it was pretty safe business considering. Well up until cannons started peppering them.
For the minds of the rulers like Friedrich the Great or Napoleon and the generals of the era the musket infantry was just pikemen with extremely long pikes. They thought them as such and used them as such. This is why the musketeers took over the place of the pikemen in the pike and shot formations (after the adaptation of bayonet), pikes are nice but we can reach farther with muskets.
The evolution of the artillery and the appearance of rapid firing infantry weapons were the cause which forced the infantry behind cover, barricades and finally into trenches.
>swords gradually got more curved with time
This would be right if we could see how the Japanese swords evolved from straight to the point when it's a circle. But there's no such pattern. If you pick a decade and hoard all the swords made in that decade you would see curvatures of all degree. Swordsmiths shaped their swords as they preferred.
Here under the
>rapid firing infantry weapons
I did not just mean machine guns, but simple rifles with magazines which compared to muzzle loading muskets can be considered as rapid.
I'm familiar with metallurgy on that level I just don't feel the need to overcomplicate my replies to topics which derails the continuity of the thread.
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Let's go on with some quotes as I promised. Posted images are just illustrations, no other purpose.
Ardant du Picq became one of the first to document the common tendency of soldiers to fire harmlessly into the air simply for the sake of firing. Du Picq made one of the first thorough investigations into the nature of combat with a questionnaire distributed to French officers in the 1860s. One officer's response to du Picq stated quite frankly that "a good many soldiers fired into the air at long distances," while another observed that "a certain number of our soldiers fired almost in the air, without aiming, seeming to want to stun themselves, to become drunk on rifle fire during this gripping crisis."
Lieutenant George Roupell encountered this same phenomenon while commanding a British platoon in World War I. He stated that the only way he could stop his men from firing into the air was to draw his sword and walk down the trench, "beating the men on the backside and, as I got their attention, telling them to fire low.
The easiest way of pretending to fight or posturing is to fire toward the enemy but just a little bit high.
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[Paddy] ''Griffith notes:
Even in the noted "slaughter pens" at Bloody Lane, Marye's Heights, Kennesaw, Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor an attacking unit could not only come very close to the defending line, but it could also stay there for hours — and indeed for days — at a time. Civil War musketry did not therefore possess the power to kill large numbers of men, even in very dense formations, at long range. At short range it could and did kill large numbers, but not very quickly.''
Also Grossman adds:
''Griffith estimates that the average musket fire from a Napoleonic
or Civil War regiment firing at an exposed enemy regiment at
an average range of thirty yards, would usually result in hitting
only one or two men per minute!''
Our previous count fits to his observation more or less. A regiment is about 1000 men, five times more then our 200 which killed 0,16 in a minute. Multiply this and we get 0,8 men per minute. However our closest distance was 70-75 m, Griffith calculated with about 30 (which I think would be the closest range, the next step would be a "Fit bayonets!" order and a charge). Let's say on that range our 200 would kill double amount: 0,32. Then 1000 would kill (or wound actually) 1,6 which a rough equivalent of 1-2 men per minute.
Bad visibility but on even closer range:
Sometimes the fire was completely harmless, as Benjamin McIntyre observed in his firsthand account of a totally bloodless nighttime firefight at Vicksburg in 1863. "It seems strange . . . ," wrote McIntyre, "that a company of men can fire volley after volley at a like number of men at not over a distance of fifteen steps and not cause a single casualty. Yet such was the facts in this instance." The musketry of the black-powder era was not always so ineffective, but over and over again the average comes out to only one or two men hit per minute with musketry.
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Some hit rate:
Richard Holmes, in his superb book Acts of War, examines the hit rates of soldiers in a variety of historical battles. At Rorkes Drift in 1897 a small group of British soldiers were surrounded and vastly outnumbered by the Zulu. Firing volley after volley into the massed enemy ranks at point-blank range, it seems as if no round could have possibly missed, and even a 50 percent hit rate would seem to be low. But Holmes estimates that in actuality approximately thirteen rounds were fired for each hit.
In the same way, General Crook's men fired 25,000 rounds at Rosebud Creek on June 16, 1876, causing 99 casualties among the Indians, or 252 rounds per hit.
And in the French defense from fortified positions during the Battle of Wissembourg, in 1870, the French, shooting at German soldiers advancing across open fields, fired 48,000 rounds to hit 404 Germans, for a hit ratio of 1 hit per 119 rounds fired.
And the trend can be found in the firefights of Vietnam, when more than fifty thousand bullets were fired for every enemy soldier killed. " One of the things that amazed me," stated Douglas Graham, a medic with the First Marine Division in Vietnam, who had to crawl out under enemy and friendly fire to aid wounded soldiers, "is how many bullets can be fired during a firefight without anyone getting hurt."
There's an endnote here which says that this 50 000 bullets were fired from automatic weapons, much of these was used to suppress the enemy or as recon probes. Also crew-served weapons, like machine guns are add much to this tally. The more noteworthy part is the observation of the quoted medic.
Feel free to add your radishes.
Bernd 07/19/2017 (Wed) 17:52:15 [Preview] No. 9020 del
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This is how real niggaz fought. In packed mass on the open field firing at each other from few dozen steps.
https://youtu.be/boImKf5625o?t=185
https://youtu.be/ng3WOK_e94k?t=2371
Bernd 07/20/2017 (Thu) 19:17:32 [Preview] No. 9043 del
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Now this is funny:
The Dilemma of the Discarded Weapons
Author of the Civil War Collector's Encyclopedia F. A. Lord tells us that after the Bade of Gettysburg, 27,574 muskets were recovered from the battlefield. Of these, nearly 90 percent (twenty-four thousand) were loaded. Twelve thousand of these loaded muskets were found to be loaded more than once, and six thousand of the multiply loaded weapons had from three to ten rounds loaded in the barrel. One weapon had been loaded twenty-three times. Why, then, were there so many loaded weapons available on the battlefield, and why did at least twelve thousand soldiers misload their weapons in combat?
A loaded weapon was a precious commodity on the black-powder battlefield. During the stand-up, face-to-face, short-range battles of this era a weapon should have been loaded for only a fraction of the time in battle. More than 95 percent of the time was spent in loading the weapon, and less than 5 percent in firing it. If most soldiers were desperately attempting to kill as quickly and efficiently as they could, then 95 percent should have been shot with an empty weapon in their hand, and any loaded, cocked, and primed weapon available dropped on the battlefield would have been snatched up from wounded or dead comrades and fired.
There were many who were shot while charging the enemy or were casualties of artillery outside of musket range, and these individuals would never have had an opportunity to fire their weapons, but they hardly represent 95 percent of all casualties. If there is a desperate need in all soldiers to fire their weapon in combat, then many of these men should have died with an empty weapon. And as the ebb and flow of battle passed over these weapons, many of them should have been picked up and fired at the enemy.
The obvious conclusion is that most soldiers were not trying to kill the enemy. Most of them appear to have not even wanted to fire in the enemy's general direction.
That one dude really did not want to fire his rifle.
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With the changes occurred in warfare we can't rely on similar calculations, estimations, we left with subjective observations of the participants.
We get stuff like this:
In many circumstances highly trained modern soldiers have fought poorly trained guerrilla forces, and the tendency of poorly prepared forces to instinctively engage in posturing mechanisms (such as firing high) has given a significant advantage to the more highly trained force. Jack Thompson, a Rhodesian veteran, observed this process in combat against untrained forces. In Rhodesia, says Thompson, their immediate action drill was to "shed our packs and assault into the fire . . . always. That was because the [guerrillas] were not able to deliver effective fire, and their bullets went high. We would quickly establish fire superiority, and rarely ever lost a man."
One of the best examples of an intentional miss was the experience of my grandfather John, who had been assigned to a firing squad during World War I. A major source of pride from his days as a veteran was that he was able to not kill while a member of that firing squad. He knew that the commands would be "Ready, aim, fire," and he knew that if he aimed at the prisoner on the command of "aim," he would hit the target he was aiming at on the command of "fire." His response was to aim slightly away from the prisoner on the command of "aim," enabling him to miss when he pulled the trigger on the command of "fire." My grandfather bragged for the rest of his life about outsmarting the army in this manner.
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''Another excellent example of soldiers exercising their right to miss is this mercenary-journalist's account of going with one of Eden Pastora's (a.k.a. Commandante Zero) Contra units on an ambush of a civilian river launch in Nicaragua:
I'll never forget Surdo's words as he gave his imitation of a Pastora harangue prior to going into battle, telling the entire formation, "Si mata una mujer, mata unapiricuaco; si mata un nino, mata unpiricuaco." Piricuaco is a derogatory term, meaning rabid dog, we used for the Sandinistas, so in effect Surdo was saying "If you kill a woman, you're killing a Sandinista, if you kill a child, you're killing a Sandinista." And off we went to kill women and children. Once again I was part of the 10 men who would actually perform the ambush. We cleared our fields of fire and settled back to await the arrival of women and children and whatever other civilian passengers there might be on this launch. Each man was alone with his thoughts. Not a word was spoken among us regarding the nature of our mission. Surdo paced back and forth nervously some yards behind us in the protection of the jungle.
. . . The loud throb of the powerful diesels of the 70-foot launch preceded its arrival by a good two minutes. The signal to commence firing was given as it appeared in front of us and I watched the RPG-7 [rocket] arc over the boat and into the jungle on the opposite bank. The M60 [machine gun] opened up, I rattled off a 20-round burst from my FAL. Brass was flying as thick as the jungle insects as our squad emptied their magazines. Every bullet sailed harmlessly over the civilian craft.
When Surdo realized what was happening he came running out of the jungle cursing violently in Spanish and firing his AK [rifle] at the disappearing launch. Nicaraguan peasants are mean bastards, and tough soldiers. But they're not murderers. I laughed aloud in relief and pride as we packed up and prepared to move out.
Grossman adds here:
Note the nature of such a "conspiracy to miss." Without a word being spoken, every soldier who was obliged and trained to fire reverted — as millions of others must have over the centuries — to the simple artifice of soldierly incompetence. And like the firing- squad member mentioned earlier, these soldiers took a great and private pleasure in outmaneuvering those who would make them do that which they would not.
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The previous observations can be dissmissed as isolated cases on the other hand Grossman cites a bunch of more throughout his book and refers to his conversations with lots of veterans with similar experiences like this tunnel rat's memories:
Then I cautiously raised the upper half of my body into the tunnel until I was lying flat on my stomach. When I felt comfortable, I placed my Smith Wesson .38-caliber snub-nose (sent to me by my father for tunnel work) beside the flashlight and switched on the light, illuminating the tunnel.
There, not more than 15 feet away, sat a Viet Cong eating a handful of rice from a pouch on his lap. We looked at each other for what seemed to be an eternity, but in fact was probably only a few seconds.
Maybe it was the surprise of actually finding someone else there, or maybe it was just the absolute innocence of the situation, but neither one of us reacted.
After a moment, he put his pouch of rice on the floor of the tunnel beside him, turned his back to me and slowly started crawling away. I, in turn, switched off my flashlight, before slipping back into the lower tunnel and making my way back to the entrance. About 20 minutes later, we received word that another squad had killed a VC emerging from a tunnel 500 meters away. I never doubted who that VC was. To this day, I firmly believe that grunt and I could have ended the war sooner over a beer in Saigon than Henry Kissinger ever could by attending the peace talks.
Colonel Milton Mater served as an infantry company commander in World War II and relates several World War II experiences that strongly support Marshall's observations. Mater also provides us with several instances in which World War I veterans warned him to expect that there would be many nonfirers in combat.
When he first joined the service in 1933, Mater asked his uncle, a veteran of World War I, about his combat experience. "I was amazed to find that the experience foremost in his mind was 'draftees who wouldn't shoot.' He expressed it something like this: 'They thought if they didn't shoot at the Germans, the Germans wouldn't shoot at them.'"
Of course all this still can be considered as anecdotal evidence.
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However some less subjective data is available.
Prior to World War II it had always been assumed that the average soldier would kill in combat simply because his country and his leaders have told him to do so and because it is essential to defend his own life and the lives of his friends. When the point came that he didn't kill, it was assumed that he would panic and run.
During World War II U.S. Army Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall asked these average soldiers what it was that they did in battle. His singularly unexpected discovery was that, of every hundred men along the line of fire during the period of an encounter, an average of only 15 to 20 "would take any part with their weapons." This was consistently true "whether the action was spread over a day, or two days or three."
Marshall was a U.S. Army historian in the Pacific theater during World War II and later became the official U.S. historian of the European theater of operations. He had a team of historians working for him, and they based their findings on individual and mass interviews with thousands of soldiers in more than four hundred infantry companies, in Europe and in the Pacific, immediately after they had been in close combat with German or Japanese troops. The results were consistently the same: only 15 to 20 percent of the American riflemen in combat during World War II would fire at the enemy. Those who would not fire did not run or hide (in many cases they were willing to risk great danger to rescue comrades, get ammunition, or run messages), but they simply would not fire their weapons at the enemy, even when faced with repeated waves of banzai charges.
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While the next part doesn't really fit into my order I'm intend to present these thoughts in the book this comes next immediately:
The question is why. Why did these men fail to fire? As I examined this question and studied the process of killing in combat from the standpoints of a historian, a psychologist, and a soldier, I began to realize that there was one major factor that was missing from the common understanding of killing in combat, a factor that answers this question and more. That missing factor is the simple and demonstrable fact that there is within most men an intense resistance to killing their fellow man. A resistance so strong that, in many circumstances, soldiers on the battlefield will die before they can overcome it.
And what I've already scratched a bit:
To some, this makes "obvious" sense. "Of course it is hard to kill someone," they would say. "I could never bring myself to do it." But they would be wrong. With the proper conditioning and the proper circumstances, it appears that almost anyone can and will kill. Others might respond, "Any man will kill in combat when he is faced with someone who is trying to kill him." And they would be even more wrong, for in this section we shall observe that throughout history the majority of men on the battlefield would not attempt to kill the enemy, even to save their own lives or the lives of their friends.
That's it for today. Tomorrow I'm not sure I'll have the time to continue but on the weekend I sure will.
Thank you Bernd for today, this is a really good thread.
I hope this continues.
You know what I'm thinking right here?
How fucking small number of irregulars actually willing to kill one would need to completely overwhelm the apparently average pussy.
It's yet again as how mere 5% of people can easily control public opinion.
Fuck OP don't give me any ideas.
Bernd 07/21/2017 (Fri) 05:37:38 [Preview] No. 9056 del
Thanks. Will do continue. I think a short summary is in order.
I had similar thoughts. That a small number of resolute fighters can defeat a larger number of average. Sometimes they did. But much depends on posturing. A larger number of average soldiers could frighten the irregulars even if they determined and willing to kill. Also everyone just assumes almost all soldier would kill.
However the average pussy can be trained to overcome their restraints and modern armies do train them through conditioning as we'll see. The results came in Vietnam and with that came the PTSD for the returning soldiers.
sum Bernd 07/22/2017 (Sat) 10:15:23 [Preview] No. 9181 del
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A quick summary.
So we talked so far about:
- non-participating and
- mis-firing soldiers.
Touched key concepts:
- the four possible options a soldier faces on the battlefield
- enabling factors of killing
- denying humanity
- conditioning via training
- predisposition toward "aggressive psychopathic personalities"
Next we'll move on the stress the soldiers have to endure and it's impact.
Bernd 07/22/2017 (Sat) 15:43:32 [Preview] No. 9183 del
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Probably noone would deny that the job a soldier during war is pretty stressful but rarely anyone would guess that a very significant part of the casualties are psychiatric casualties.
During World War II more than 800,000 men were classified 4-F (unfit for military service) due to psychiatric reasons. Despite this effort to weed out those mentally and emotionally unfit for combat, America's armed forces lost an additional 504,000 men from the fighting effort because of psychiatric collapse — enough to man fifty divisions! At one point in World War II, psychiatric casualties were being discharged from the U.S. Army faster than new recruits were being drafted in.
In the brief 1973 Arab-Israeli War, almost a third of all Israeli casualties were due to psychiatric causes, and the same seems to have been true among the opposing Egyptian forces. In the 1982 incursion into Lebanon, Israeli psychiatric casualties were twice as high as the number of dead.
What's more:
Swank and Marchand's much-cited World War II study determined that after sixty days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties of one kind or another. Swank and Marchand also found a common trait among the 2 percent who are able to endure sustained combat: a predisposition toward "aggressive psychopathic personalities."
Grossman adds:
It is interesting to note that spending months of continuous exposure to the stresses of combat is a phenomenon found only on the battlefields of this century. Even the years-long sieges of previous centuries provided ample respites from combat, largely due to limitations of artillery and tactics. The actual times of personal risk were seldom more than a few hours in duration. Some psychiatric casualties have always been associated with war, but it is only in this century that our physical and logistical capability to sustain combat has completely outstripped our psychological capacity to endure it.
Humorous paraphrase:
War is an environment that will psychologically debilitate 98 percent of all who participate in it for any length of time. And the 2 percent who are not driven insane by war appear to have already been insane — aggressive psychopaths — before coming to the battlefield.
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There are many manifestations of these casualties but the treatment is simple, they have to be withdrawn from fight and rest for a period of time in calm environment.
But the problem is that the military does not want to simply return the psychiatric casualty to normal life, it wants to return him to combat! And he is understandably reluctant to go.
The evacuation syndrome is the paradox of combat psychiatry. A nation must care for its psychiatric casualties, since they are of no value on the battlefield — indeed, their presence in combat can have a negative impact on the morale of other soldiers — and they can still be used again as valuable seasoned replacements once they've recovered from combat stress. But if soldiers begin to realize that insane soldiers are being evacuated, the number of psychiatric casualties will increase dramatically. An obvious solution to this problem is to rotate troops out of battle for periodic rest and recuperation — this is standard policy in most Western armies — but this is not always possible in combat.
The solution is to treat the mentally wounded as close to the front as possible and constantly communicate to the soldiers that they will return ASAP. One could try medicate the problem away, the US and Israel used 'truth serum' with some success to release the emotion via talking out their experiences and preventing to bottle it up.
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Now, what gets to the soldiers? What is the source of stress that cripple their nerves?
Grossman starts with Fear of course. What is the source of Fear?
All soldiers face death in some form, there's always a risk of them dying and generally people don't find the thought of that too entertaining. It's widely accepted to consider the fear of death (or getting maimed) the source of psychial casualties. Simple and easy explanation.
But clinical studies that tried to demonstrate that fear of death and injury are responsible for psychiatric casualties have been consistently unsuccessful. An example of such a study is Mitchell Berkun's 1958 research into the nature of psychiatric breakdown in combat. [...] The men put through the controversial — and by today's standards unethical — fear-provoking situations in these Human Resources Research Office tests were then given "long psychiatric interviews before and after and again weeks later to see whether there were any hidden effects. None were found."
The Israeli military psychologist Ben Shalit asked Israeli soldiers immediately after combat what most frightened them. The answer that he expected was "loss of life" or "injury and abandonment in the field." He was therefore surprised to discover the low emphasis on fear of bodily harm and death, and the great emphasis on "letting others down."
Very heroic answer huh - could one add with a cynical tone. But there's a continuation of this research:
Shalit conducted a similar survey of Swedish peacekeeping forces who had not had combat experience. In this instance he received the expected answer of "death and injury" as the "most frightening factor in battle. His conclusion was that combat experience decreases fear of death or injury.
Continuing:
...even in the face of a society and culture that tell the soldiers that selfish fear of death and injury should be their primary concern, it is instead the fear of not being able to meet the terrible obligations of combat that weighs most heavily on the minds of combat soldiers.
A comment on the acceptance of Fear:
How many times have we heard in movies and on television that only fools are not afraid? Such acceptance of fear is a part of modern culture.
Indeed, during World War II, in a widely distributed pamphlet entitled Army Life, the U.S. Army told its soldiers: " YOU'LL BE SCARED . Sure you'll be scared. Before you go into batlle you'll be frightened at the uncertainty, at the thought of being killed." A statistician would call that biasing the sample.
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Modern warfare doesn't limit itself to the front lines anymore. WWII is the prime example how the hinterland got it's own share of hardships.
The Italian infantry officer Giulio Douhet became the world's first recognized airpower theoretician with the publication of his book Command of the Air in 1921. Douhet declared, "The disintegration of nations [which] in the last war was brought about by [attrition] will be accomplished directly by . . . aerial forces."
Prior to World War II, psychologists and military theoreticians such as Douhet predicted that mass bombing of cities would create the same degree of psychological trauma seen on the battlefield in World War I. During World War I the probability of a soldier becoming a psychiatric casualty was greater than that of his being killed by enemy fire. As a result of this, authorities envisioned vast numbers of "gibbering lunatics" being driven from their cities by a rain of bombs. Among civilians the impact was projected to be even worse than that seen in combat. When the horror of war touched women, children, and the elderly, rather than trained and carefully selected soldiers, the psychological impact was sure to be too great, and even more civilians than soldiers were expected to snap.
This idea led to the bombing of cities by both sides in WWII. Pesky Italians I would break all their spaghetti in half. But actually everything went better than expected:
And yet, incredibly, the incidence of psychiatric casualties among these individuals was very similar to that of peacetime. There were no incidents of mass psychiatric casualties. The Rand Corporation study of the psychological impact of air raids, published in 1949, found that there was only a very slight increase in the "more or less long-term" psychological disorders as compared with peacetime rates. And those that did appear seemed to "occur primarily among already predisposed persons." Indeed, bombing seemed to have served primarily to harden the hearts and empower the killing ability of those who endured it.
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There are other types of human elements who participate in war beside those on the front. Grossman call them nonkillers.
Nonkillers are frequently exposed to the same brutal conditions as killers, conditions that cause fear, but they do not become psychiatric casualties. In most circumstances in which nonkillers are faced with the threat of death and injury in war, the instances of psychiatric casualties are notably absent. These circumstances include civilian victims of strategic bombing attacks, civilians and prisoners of war under artillery fire and bombings, sailors on board ship during combat, soldiers on reconnaissance missions behind enemy lines, medical personnel, and officers in combat.
He takes and examines these groups one by one just like he did with the civilians. Then he concludes:
It would appear that, at least in the realm of psychiatric casualty causation, fear does not reign supreme on the battlefield. The effect of fear should never be underestimated, but it is clearly not the only, or even the major, factor responsible for psychiatric casualties on the battlefield.
The point is that fear is only one of many factors, and it seldom, if ever, is the sole cause of psychiatric casualties.
The magnitude of the exhaustion and the horror suffered by combat veterans and victims of strategic bombing is generally comparable. The stress factors that soldiers experienced and bombing victims did not were the two-edged responsibility of (1) being expected to kill (the irreconcilable balancing of to kill and not to kill) and (2) the stress of looking their potential killers in the face (the Wind of Hate).
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"Physiological Exhaustion" comes next, let's just summarize it with a short quote:
Psychologist F. C. Bartlett emphasized the psychological impact of physical exhaustion in combat. "In war," he wrote, "there is perhaps no general condition which is more likely to produce a large crop of nervous and mental disorders than a state of prolonged and great fatigue." The four factors of (1) physiological arousal caused by the stress of existing in what is commonly understood as a continual fight-or-flight-arousal condition, (2) cumulative loss of sleep, (3) the reduction in caloric intake, and (4) the toll of the elements — such as rain, cold, heat, and dark of night — assaulting the soldier all combine to form the "state of prolonged and great fatigue" that is the Weight of Exhaustion.
Next: Horror.
Beyond fear and exhaustion is a sea of horror that surrounds the soldier and assails his every sense.
Hear the pitiful screams of the wounded and dying. Smell the butcher-house smells of feces, blood, burned flesh, and rotting decay, which combine into the awful stench of death. Feel the shudder of the ground as the very earth groans at the abuse of artillery and explosives, and feel the last shiver of life and the flow of warm blood as friends die in your arms. Taste the salt of blood and tears as you hold a dear friend in mutual grieving, and you do not know or care if it is the salt of your tears or his.
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What is Wind of Hate?
Basically close interpersonal aggression that one needs to face not just on the battlefield but during our daily lives. Grossman gives a lengthy description of this civilian hardship, let's just grab a line:
All of us have had to face hostile aggression. On the playground as children, in the impoliteness of strangers, in the malicious gossip and comments of acquaintances, and in the animosity of peers and superiors in the workplace.
It's not unknown to any of us and Bernds on KC main oftentimes cry about their anxiety if they need to go to the outside world supposing they have to face this Wind of Hate in all their interactions.
Some people just cannot cope with this and takes action.
Indeed, history is full of tales of soldiers who have committed suicide or inflicted terrible wounds upon themselves to avoid combat. It isn't fear of death that motivates these men to kill themselves. Like many of their civilian counterparts who commit suicide, these men would rather die or mutilate themselves than face the aggression and hostility of a very hostile world.
It has a military application:
Psychologically, aerial and artillery bombardments are effective, but only in the front lines when they are combined with the Wind of Hate, as manifested in the threat of the personal infantry attack that usually follows such bombardments.
This is why there were mass psychiatric casualties following World War I artillery bombardments, but World War II's mass bombings of cities were surprisingly counterproductive in breaking the enemy's will. Such bombardments without an accompanying close-range assault, or at least the threat of such an assault, are ineffective and may even serve no other purpose than to stiffen the will and resolve of the enemy!
[...]What maneuver warfare advocates have discovered is that over and over in history, civilians and soldiers have withstood the actuality of fear, horror, death, and destruction during artillery bombardments and aerial bombardments without losing their will to fight, while the mere threat of invasion and close-up interpersonal aggression has consistently turned whole populations into refugees fleeing in panic.
[...]The potential of close-up, inescapable, interpersonal hatred and aggression is more effective and has greater impact on the morale of the soldier than the presence of inescapable, impersonal death and destruction.
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Before Grossman proceeds with the Burden of Killing he ends this train of thought with a metaphor:
Many authorities speak and write of emotional stamina on the batllefield as a finite resource. I have termed this the Well of Fortitude. Faced with the soldier's encounters with horror, guilt, fear, exhaustion, and hate, each man draws steadily from his own private reservoir of inner strength and fortitude until finally the well runs dry.
Not just individuals but units as a whole has this Well, and sometimes green ones can perform better then veterans as they have more Fortitude to spare.
One can replenish from the well of others, for example a good leader can inspire his subordinates and help them holding on longer. Victory and success also helps the individual and the unit to go on.
Now I'm gonna end this for today too. I'm not sure if my editing is adequate and clear which lines are the quotes, if something not clear just write.
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Despite the picture the media paints for us soldiers aren't capable of casually slaughtering masses of men without remorse or psychological impact on themselves.
William Manchester, author and U.S. Marine veteran of World War II, felt remorse and shame after his close-range personal killing of a Japanese soldier. "I can remember," he wrote, "whispering foolishly, 'I'm sorry' and then just throwing up . . . I threw up all over myself. It was a betrayal of what I'd been taught since a child." Other combat veterans tell of the emotional responses associated with a close-range kill that echo Manchester's horror.
"Killing is the wont thing that one man can do to another man . . . it's the last thing that should happen anywhere." - Israeli lieutenant
"I reproached myself as a destroyer. An indescribable uneasiness came over me, I felt almost like a criminal." - Napoleonic-era British soldier
"This was the first time I had killed anybody and when things quieted down I went and looked at a German I knew I had shot. I remember thinking that he looked old enough to have a family and I felt very sorry." - British World War I veteran after his first kill
"It didn't hit me all that much then, but when I think of it now — I slaughtered those people. I murdered them." - German World War II veteran
"And I froze, 'cos it was a boy, I would say between the ages of twelve and fourteen. When he turned at me and looked, all of a sudden he turned his whole body and pointed his automatic weapon at me, I just opened up, fired the whole twenty rounds right at the kid, and he just laid there. I dropped my weapon and cried." - U.S. Special Forces officer and Vietnam veteran
"I fired again and somehow got him in the head. There was so much blood . . . I vomited, until the rest of the boys came up." - Israeli Six-Day War veteran
"So this new Peugeot comes towards us, and we shoot. And there was a family there — three children. And I cried, but I couldn't take the chance. . . . Children, father, mother. All the family was killed, but we couldn't take the chance." - Israeli Lebanon Incursion veteran
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The magnitude of the trauma associated with killing became particularly apparent to me in an interview with Paul, a VFW post commander and sergeant of the 101st Airborne at Bastogne in World War II. He talked freely about his experiences and about comrades who had been killed, but when I asked him about his own kills he stated that usually you couldn't be sure who it was that did the killing. Then tears welled up in Paul's eyes, and after a long pause he said, "But the one time I was sure . . ." and then his sentence was stopped by a little sob, and pain racked the face of this old gentleman. "It still hurts, after all these years?" I asked in wonder. "Yes," he said, "after all these years." And he would not speak of it again.
The next day he told me, "You know, Captain, the questions you're asking, you must be very careful not to hurt anyone with these questions. Not me, you know, I can take it, but some of these young guys are still hurting very badly. These guys don't need to be hurt anymore." These memories were the scabs of terrible, hidden wounds in the minds of these kind and gentle men.
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But if they're there they kinda have to do it.
Numerous studies have concluded that men in combat are usually motivated to fight not by ideology or hate or fear, but by group pressures and processes involving (1) regard for their comrades, (2) respect for their leaders, (3) concern for their own reputation with both, and (4) an urge to contribute to the success of the group.
Repeatedly we see combat veterans describe the powerful bonds that men forge in combat as stronger than those of husband and wife.
This bonding is so intense that it is fear of failing these comrades that preoccupies most combatants. Countless sociological and psychological studies, the personal narratives of numerous veterans, and the interviews I have conducted clearly indicate the strength of the soldier's concern for failing his buddies. The guilt and trauma associated with failing to fully support men w h o are bonded with friendship and camaraderie on this magnitude is profoundly intense. Yet every soldier and every leader feels this guilt to one degree or another. For those who know that they have not fired while their friends died around them, the guilt is traumatic.
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Of course there's always denial.
Balancing the obligation to kill with the resulting toll of guilt forms a significant cause of psychiatric casualties on the battlefield. Philosopher-psychologist Peter Marin speaks of the soldier's lesson in responsibility and guilt. What the soldier knows as a result of war is that "the dead remain dead, the maimed are forever maimed, and there is no way to deny one's responsibility or culpability, for those mistakes are written, forever and as if in fire, in others' flesh."
Ultimately there may be no way to deny one's responsibility or culpability for mistakes written "forever and as if in fire, in others' flesh," but combat is a great furnace fed by the small flickering flames of attempts at denial. The burden of killing is so great that most men try not to admit that they have killed. They deny it to others, and they try to deny it to themselves. Dinter quotes a hardened veteran who, upon being asked about killing, stated emphatically that
"Most of the killing you do in modern war is impersonal. A thing few people realize is that you hardly ever see a German. Very few men — even in the infantry — actually have the experience of aiming a weapon at a German and seeing the man fall."
Even the language of men at war is full of denial of the enormity of what they have done. Most soldiers do not "kill," instead the enemy was knocked over, wasted, greased, taken out, and mopped up. The enemy is hosed, zapped, probed, and fired on. The enemy's humanity is denied, and he becomes a strange beast called a Kraut, Jap, Reb , Yank, dink, slant, or slope. Even the weapons of war receive benign names — Puff the Magic Dragon, Walleye, TOW , Fat Boy, and Thin Man — and the killing weapon of the individual soldier becomes a piece or a hog, and a bullet becomes a round.
For next time I'll try to gather some quotes by soldiers who didn't give a shit just for the sake completness. I remember this book has some of that too.
There was a thread on KC today about infanticide in Papuan tribes and Aborigines doing fucked up stuff
Thread: https://archive.is/6ee4C
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kek, I accidentally hit the reply button, before writing more. Some Bernds claim that this is natural behaviour and serves as population control and this kind of killing and eating humans or witches was done in pre-Christian Europe as well.
original link of the story: http://psychohistory.com/books/the-origins-of-war-in-child-abuse/chapter-7-child-abuse-homicide-and-raids-in-tribes/
Soon I'll arrive the part about the enabling factors of killing. Grossman writes about atrocity too and it's place in human psychology.
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I collected a few lines from the book on the easiness of killing. Some are actual quotes some just data or observation of the author. Some of them are removed from context but whatever.
"I could not visualize the horrible deaths my bombs. . . had caused here. I had no feeling of guilt. I had no feeling of accomplishment." - J. Douglas Harvey, World War II bomber pilot, visiting rebuilt Berlin in the 1960s
From January 7 to July 24, 1969, U.S. Army snipers in Vietnam accounted for 1,245 confirmed kills, with an average of 1.39 bullets expended per kill.
"At 2109 [on February 3, 1969] five Viet Cong moved from the woodline to the edge of the rice paddy and the first Viet Cong in the group was taken under fire . . . resulting in one Viet Cong killed. Immediately the other Viet Cong formed a huddle around the fallen body, apparently not quite sure of what had taken place. Sergeant Waldron continued engaging the Viet Cong one by one until a total of [all] five Viet Cong were killed."
Gray states the matter clearly: "Many a pilot or artilleryman who has destroyed untold numbers of terrified noncombatants has never felt any need for repentance or regret."
Even in the case of the individuals who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contrary to popular myth, there are no indications of psychological problems.
The future field marshal Slim wrote of experiencing this euphoria upon shooting a Turk in Mesopotamia in 1917. "I suppose it is brutal," wrote Slim, "but I had a feeling of the most intense satisfaction as the wretched Turk went spinning down."
An Australian soldier in World War I, writing in a letter to his father, puts a distinctly different light on bayoneting Germans:
"Strike me pink the square heads are dead mongrels. They will keep firing until you are two yds. off them & then drop their rifles & ask for mercy. They get it too right where the chicken gets the axe. . . . I . . . will fix a few more before I have finished. Its good sport father when the bayonet goes in there eyes bulge out like prawns. [Sic]"
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>The future field marshal Slim wrote of experiencing this euphoria upon shooting a Turk in Mesopotamia in 1917. "I suppose it is brutal," wrote Slim, "but I had a feeling of the most intense satisfaction as the wretched Turk went spinning down."
top kek
Apparently killing T*rks and Germans is fun.
>>91876
This is proof that modern police officers are either dehumanized or psychopaths.
meant for
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Not necessarily. Policemen are conditioned to kill just like modern soldiers. For example shooting at targets looks like people or combat shooting is part of the conditioning.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ijJFVA_AWQI [Embed]
Of course that 2% of nutcases tends to converge toward certain groups and organizations. In the army they become snipers or members of special forces. In civil life they seek employment at the police.
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Well when you compare the war stats where the soldiers would not fire under direct combat - the police have the most compliance for less intensity than military combat.
And there is DHS targets that have mothers and children. This is madness.
Those army firing rates are pre-modern training (some places Grossman refers to it as WWII training). Those reports by Marshall drove the US military command to make some changes. They started conditioning the soldiers via different training techniques. In Korea they got numbers that were enough to prove them they are on the right track and perfected these techniques so in Vietnam they got 90-95% firing rates.
Basically they made killers from a bunch of ordinary people who didn't have any predisposition toward killing. This and other factors led to their PTSD.
I should have read the thread.
>Those army firing rates are pre-modern training rates.
fix'd
It's not too late. Still a bunch's coming.
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What enables killing?
Here's a concise summary:
Demands of Authority
- Proximity of the obedience-demanding authority figure to the subject
- Subject's subjective respect for the obedience-demanding authority figure
- Intensity of the obedience-demanding authority figure's demands of killing behavior
- Legitimacy of the obedience-demanding authority figure's authority and demands
Group Absolution
- Subject's identification with the group
- Proximity of the group to the subject
- Intensity of the group's support for the kill
- Number in the immediate group
- Legitimacy of the group
Total Distance from the Victim
1. Physical distance between the killer and the victim
2. Emotional distance between the killer and the victim, including:
- Social distance, which considers the impact of a lifetime of viewing a particular class as less than human in a socially stratified environment
- Cultural distance, which includes racial and ethnic differences that permit the killer to "dehumanize" the victim
- Moral distance, which takes into consideration intense belief in moral superiority and "vengeful" actions
- Mechanical distance, which includes the sterile "video game" unreality of killing through a TV screen, a thermal sight, a sniper sight, or some other kind of mechanical buffer
The Shalit Factors
Israeli military psychology has developed a model revolving around the nature of the victim, which I have incorporated into this model. This model considers the tactical circumstances associated with:
1. Relevance and effectiveness of available strategies for killing the victim
2. Relevance of the victim as a threat to the killer and his tactical situation
3. ''Payoff of the killer's action in terms of
- Killer's gain
- Enemy's loss
The Predisposition of the Killer
- Training/conditioning of the soldier (Marshall's contributions to the U.S. Army's training program increased the firing rate of the individual infantryman from 15 to 20 percent in World War II to 55 percent in Korea and nearly 90 to 95 percent in Vietnam.)
- Recent experiences of the soldier (For example, having a friend or relative killed by the enemy has been strongly linked with killing behavior on the battlefield.)
The temperament that predisposes a soldier to killing behavior is one of the most difficult areas to research. However, Swank and Marchand did propose the existence of 2 percent of combat soldiers who are predisposed to be "aggressive psychopaths" and who apparently do not experience the trauma commonly associated with killing behavior. These findings have been tentatively confirmed by other observers and by USAF figures concerning aggressive killing behavior among fighter pilots.
Now, at "distance from the victim" Grossman isn't precise because dehumanizing is true all the other options as he states in his book elsewhere. For example artillerymen aren't killing people, they just shooting at coordinates or proletarian revolutionaries aren't killing people but the opressor bourgeoisie.
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Let's review these factors a little more closely.
The first on the list is the Demands of Authority.
Grossman builds his arguments on dr. Stanley Milgram's studies on obedience and aggression. Here's the wiki article for details:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
Even our favourit Austro-Jewish psychologist used to say:
"never underestimate the power of the need to obey,"
and he was actually right in this particular case.
In these experiments some egghead in a labcoat was the demanding authority and he could ride the 65% of the subjects to administer lethal amount of electricity.
Now let's imagine this authority as someone who in the eye of the public opinion is there to order his subordinates and to be obeyed by his subordinates. Someone who got it's authority from the state through the chain of command. Someone who might even be a decorated war veteran, a soldier with high prestige. Or even someone who has the air of command, an air of authority by his nature, a born leader, inspiring and respected.
As Ardant du Picq put it in words:
"The mass needs, and we give it, leaders who have the firmness and decision of command proceeding from habit and an entire faith in their unquestionable right to command as established by tradition, law and society."
And he commands people who are trained to be obedient. Who are expected to be obedient else they'll have to face the court-martial or in certain situation sure death.
I'll add something about the training. All of my relatives, friends and acquaintances who served as conscripts told me when they spoke about their times in the army that they constantly had to perform nonsense unnecessary tasks or simple tasks made difficult by certain requirements and they all thought these were useless. But they are wrong. This is part of the training to be obedient. To perform orders without question or second-guessing even those which seem irrational to the soldier. We have a saying in the Hungarian Army: "if it's round we carry it, if it's angular we roll it, this is the Hungarian Defense Force".
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Now some quotes:
1973 study by Kranss, Kaplan, and Kranss investigated the factors that make a soldier fire. They found that the individuals who had no combat experience assumed that "being fired upon" would be the critical factor in making them fire. However, veterans listed "being told to fire" as the most critical factor.
More than a century ago, Ardant du Picq found the same thing in his study based on a survey of military officers. He noted one incident during the Crimean War in which, during heavy fighting, two detachments of soldiers suddenly met unexpectedly face-to-face, at "ten paces." They "stopped thunderstruck. Then, forgetting their rifles, threw stones and withdrew." The reason for this behavior, according to du Picq, was that "neither of the two groups had a decided leader."
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This Authority has some factors:
1. Proximity of the authority figure to the subject. Marshall noted many specific World War II incidents in which almost all soldiers would fire their weapons while their leaders observed and encouraged them in a combat situation, but when the leaders left, the firing rate immediately dropped to 15 to 20 percent.
2. Killer's subjective respect for the authority figure. To be truly effective, soldiers must bond to their leader just as they must bond to their group. Shalit notes a 1973 Israeli study that shows that the primary factor in ensuring the will to fight is identification with the direct commanding officer. Compared with an established and respected leader, an unknown or discredited leader has much less chance of gaining compliance from soldiers in combat.
3. Intensity of the authority figure's demands for killing behavior. The leader's mere presence is not always sufficient to ensure killing activity. The leader must also communicate a clear expectancy of killing behavior. When he does, the influence can be enormous. When Lieutenant Calley first ordered his men to kill a group of women and children in the village of My Lai, he said, "You know what to do with them," and left. When he came back he asked, "Why haven't you killed them?" The soldier he confronted said, "I didn't think you wanted us to kill them." "No," Calley responded, "I want them dead," and proceeded to fire at them himself. Only then was he able to get his soldiers to start shooting in this extraordinary circumstance in which the soldiers' resistance to killing was, understandably, very high.
4. Legitimacy of the authority figure's authority and demands. Leaders with legitimate, societally sanctioned authority have greater influence on their soldiers; and legitimate, lawful demands are more likely to be obeyed than illegal or unanticipated demands. Gang leaders and mercenary commanders have to carefully work around their shortcomings in this area, but military officers (with their trappings of power and the legitimate authority of their nation behind them) have tremendous potential to cause their soldiers to overcome individual resistance and reluctance in combat.
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Grossman reflects on the historical role of the leaders. Earlier I mentioned the difference between the Greek phalanx and the Roman manipulus. He writes about this in this chapter. In short:
In the Greek phalanx the leader at squad and platoon level was a spear-carrying member of the masses. The primary function of these leaders (as defined by their equipment and lack of mobility within the formation) was to participate in the killing. The Roman formation, on the other hand, had a series of mobile, highly trained, and carefully selected leaders whose primary job was not to kill but to stand behind their men and demand that they kill.
Many factors led to the military supremacy that permitted the Romans to conquer the world. For example, their volleys of cleverly designed javelins provided physical distance in the killing process, and their training enabled the individual to use the point and overcame the natural resistance to thrusting. But most authorities agree that a key factor was the degree of professionalism in their small-unit leaders, combined with a formation that facilitated the influence of these leaders.
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Second: Group Absolution
Soldiers don't just fight as individuals but also as units.
A tremendous volume of research indicates that the primary factor that motivates a soldier to do the things that no sane man wants to do in combat (that is, killing and dying) is not the force of self preservation but a powerful sense of accountability to his comrades on the battlefield.
Of course this bond has to be created and nurtured. The training and the common 'adventures' and trials should guarantee this. It needs time. Of course this bond can be surpassed by failures, losses, defeat.
The defeat of even the most elite group is usually achieved when so many casualties have been inflicted (usually somewhere around the 50 percent point) that the group slips into a form of mass depression and apathy. Dinter points out that " The integration of the individual in the group is so strong sometimes that the group's destruction, e.g. by force or captivity, may lead to depression and subsequent suicide." Among the Japanese in World War II this manifested itself in mass suicide. In most historical groups it results in the group suicide of surrender.
''Marshall noted that a single soldier falling back from a broken
and retreating unit will be of little value if pressed into service in
another unit. But if a pair of soldiers or the remnants of a squad
or platoon are put to use, they can generally be counted upon to
fight well.''
[...] If the individual is bonded with his comrades, and //"he is with "his" group, then the probability that the individual will participate in killing is significantly increased. But if those factors are absent, the probability that the individual will be an active participant in combat is quite low.
''Du Picq sums this matter up when he says, "Four brave men
who do not know each other will not dare to attack a lion. Four
less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability
and consequently of mutual aid, will attack resolutely. There,"
says du Picq, "is the science of the organization of armies in
a nutshell."''
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The group also hides us.
In addition to creating a sense of accountability, groups also enable killing through developing in their members a sense of anonymity that contributes further to violence. In some circumstances this process of group anonymity seems to facilitate a kind of atavistic killing hysteria that can also be seen in the animal kingdom. Kruck's 1972 research describes scenes from the animal kingdom that show that senseless and wanton killing does occur. These include the slaughter of gazelles by hyenas, in quantities way beyond their need or capacity to eat, or the destruction of gulls that could not fly on a stormy night and thus were "sitting ducks" for foxes that proceed to kill them beyond any possible need for food. Shalit points out that "such senseless violence in the animal world — as well as most of the violence in the human domain — is shown by groups rather than by individuals."
Konrad Lorenz tells us that "man is not a killer, but the group is."
''Shalit demonstrates a profound understanding of this process
and has researched it extensively:''
"All crowding has an intensifying effect. If aggression exists, it will become more so as a result of crowding; if joy exists, it will become intensified by the crowd."
Good here examples are mass demonstrations like the recent one in Hamburg, how things can spiral out of hand.
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There were certain unit types throughout history which utilized the potential of the team, Grossman usually calls these "crew-served weapons".
The first one was the chariot which was a genious idea for several reasons (most likely unknown by contemporaries):
Several factors were at play here — the bow as a distance weapon, the social distance created by the archers' having come from the nobility, and the psychological distance created by using the chariot in pursuit and shooting men in the back — but the key issue is that the chariot crew traditionally consisted of two men: a driver and an archer. And this was all that was needed to provide the same accountability and anonymity in close-proximity groups that in World War II permitted nearly 100 percent of crew- served weapons (such as machine guns) to fire while only 15 to 20 percent of the riflemen fired.
The second one stretches the boundaries of the "crew-served" expression, however it really enables anonimity with it's relatively uniformed equipment and order.
The chariot was defeated by the phalanx, which succeeded by turning the whole formation into a massive crew-served weapon. Although he did not have the designated leaders of the later Roman formations, each man in the phalanx was under a powerful mutual surveillance system, and in the charge it would be hard to fail to strike home without having others notice that your spear had been raised or dropped at the critical moment. And, of course, in addition to this accountability system the closely packed phalanx provided a high degree of mob anonymity.
Times fly by:
And when gunpowder was introduced, it was the crew-served cannon, later augmented by the machine gun, that did most of the killing.
During World War I the machine gun was introduced and termed the "distilled essence of the infantry," but it really was the continuation of the cannon, as artillery became an indirect-fire weapon (shooting over the soldiers' heads from miles back), and the machine gun replaced the cannon in the direct-fire, mid-range role.
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I dunno there probably are some men who would kill for her. But one can find insane men left and right.
I would kill whomever told her using makeup like that is a good idea
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I've no idea how should I do this correctly the pic clearly isn't a BONG so you got picrel.
better already
>infantry fire was so embarrassingly ineffective in the past 300 years
I'm not so sure about accurancy of rifles in 1700-until breach loading became popular in military.
Hm I'm seeing a few flaws in that experiment. To kill one soldier sometimes you need just one hit. Meanwhile in one salvo one soldier (that on front line) could get multiple hits, dying but also serving as a shield for those behind him. Also ball could have gone between soldiers landing somewhere where it have done little harm, while on a 100 metres long target it would show a hit. Line infatry didn't neccesarily stand in super tight arm to arm formations, right? Also also you will get different results while doing a prepared experiment in calm conditions then in real battle when bullets fly everywhere, people around you are dying violenty, gunpowder is gettin wet, your weapon is failing, officers are nowhere to be seen and you just shat in your pants.
So I'm not totally convinced about those number differences.
I'm a bit late to discussion and I haven't read entire thread yet so please forgive if it was already adressed.
Another problems I see there.
1) Black powder weapons fail sometimes (as any weapon tbh). And when they do it takes fuckload of time to make it werk again. Often it would mean weapon is out of this fight. Maybe breech-loaded rifle could be cleaned more easily, but for muzzle-loaded gun it's a huge broblem.
2) When in formation where everyone is shooting, there's a lot of smoke and light and noise, you could sometimes not notice that your rifle didn't fire and load it again after pulling the trigger.
3) It seems there was much more discipline in firing in those times. No fire at will whenever you think it's ok, everyone is loading at the same rate, firing is done according to officer instructions, so no firing as fast as possible and no grabbing weapons from the dead.
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While all points are valid they aren't contributing so much to explain the difference.
On the other hand I left out such facts as in practice the opposing forces many times fired at each other from much closer distance then 70 m (sometimes they fired shots after shots from a literal few steps inside a room without any result - only hoping the other will forced into submission with superior posturing).
Or while I took under consideration of artillery fire contributing the sum of losses in my calculation if I remember right I downplayed it's effectiveness (maybe to third instead of half), moreover I did not calculated the role of grenadiers who were the most effective troops of the infantry. These soldiers weren't equipped with just rifle/musket but with grenades which was so successful weapon that eventually all infantry troops were equipped with that (rendering "grenadier" to a simple title used to elite troops). We can't calculate how much percentage of the total casualties were caused by grenades but we know this was the preferred killing method of infantry during WW I and II (a WW II battalion used up about 500 grenades on a good fighting day). Why? Because it's easier to lob an iron knob (or and iron knob on a stick) into the vicinity of the enemy and waiting for fate to run it's course then actually target a fellow man, pull the trigger then watch him fall.
Also don't forget that the times of line infantry while the grenadiers lobbed grenades at the enemy lines the other troops stood and fired on the enemy... from grenade throwing range which is somewhere between 20 and 30 m.
All in all with rifles infantry killed much less then what I calculated.
Also you're not late I'm going to continue I'm just more interested in the content of the CD right now.
Or more liek 15-25 m.
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The Battle of Lepanto
>The turning of the tide of the Ottoman advance is due to the prayers of the millions of Catholics in Christendom. October 7th, the day the battle took place, is now the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, and the month of October is the month of the Rosary.
I didn't forget this thread I've just too much on my plate right now.
Yes, Lepanto was an important naval battle but might be overrated in the sense that it didn't caused the halt of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire but it was the sign of the sprouting weakness every empire has to face. So it's not a cause but an effect.
If you are interested in an interesting Ottoman story look up the last year or so of the life of Mehmed II and the siege of Otranto.
Bernd 09/29/2017 (Fri) 20:37:30 [Preview] No. 10766 del
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription
>Modern conscription, the massed military enlistment of national citizens, was devised during the French Revolution, to enable the Republic to defend itself from the attacks of European monarchies. Deputy Jean-Baptiste Jourdan gave its name to the 5 September 1798 Act, whose first article stated: "Any Frenchman is a soldier and owes himself to the defense of the nation." It enabled the creation of the Grande Armée, what Napoleon Bonaparte called "the nation in arms," which overwhelmed European professional armies that often numbered only into the low tens of thousands.
That feel when universal conscription wasn't really a thing until French Revolution. That changes my perspective about fearing of kill. Of course professional, paid soldier is more willing to shoot enemy then some peasant forced into military.
Bernd 09/30/2017 (Sat) 06:39:28 [Preview] No. 10775 del
After Napoleon it was abolished and was reestablished sometimes after the Commune. Funny thing in England it was introduced in 1916.
I really should pick up the story where I left and continue this. I'm planning to go on for some times now but first I'd no time then I wasted more on the Blackguards to be frank. And now I'm going to the woods and not sure when I'll return and still have stuff to do. So not today either.
Warfare is more about shooting to kill. Numerical superiority makes maneuver warfare so much easier and let's you strategically do so many more things. This is why Napoleon got so successful and famous.
Bernd 11/09/2017 (Thu) 18:22:34 [Preview] No. 11798 del
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Tonight's the night.
Finally I'll continue this after a long break. I hope Bernd'll forgive.
Previously I wrote about two of the killing enabling factors: Demands of Authority and Group Absolution. Today comes (after I bring a mug of tea and maybe a bite to eat):
Physical Distance.
It's kinda self explanatory. The farther the victim the easier the kill. It is already known for a while now.
''It has long been understood that there is a direct relation-
ship between the empathic and physical proximity of the victim,
and the resultant difficulty and trauma of the kill.''
The farthest distance is when the killer doesn't even see his victims. It's a totally ''impersonal act of war in which specific deaths are
unintended and almost accidental in nature''. Rarely a regret there. The closest distance couldn't be more personal. Killing the victim with bare hands feeling his/her skin, organs, even maybe breath. Seeing the victim's face as the life slips away. And remember it forever.
A quick rundown:
Maximum Range: "They Can Pretend They Are Not Killing Human Beings"
Long Range: " Not Eyeball to Eyeball with the Sweat and the Emotions of Combat"
Midrange: Denial Based "on the Thinnest of Evidence"
Hand-Grenade Range: "We Heard the Shrieks and Were Nauseated"
Killing at Close Range: "I Knew That It Was up to Me, Personally, to Kill Him"
Killing at Edged- Weapons Range: An "Intimate Brutality"
Killing at Hand-to-Hand-Combat Range
Killing at Sexual Range: ' 'The Primal Aggression, the Release, and the Orgasmic Discharge"
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Maximum range.
Artillery crews, bomber crews, naval gunners, and missile crews — at sea and on the ground — are all protected by the same powerful combination of group absolution, mechanical distance, and, most pertinent to our current discussion, physical distance.
...gunners fire at grid references they cannot see; submarine crews fire torpedoes at "ships" (and not, somehow, at the people in the ships); pilots launch their missiles at "targets."
In years of research and reading on the subject of killing in combat I have not found one single instance of individuals who have refused to kill the enemy under these circumstances, nor have I found a single instance of psychiatric trauma associated with this type of killing. Even in the case of the individuals who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, contrary to popular myth, there are no indications of psychological problems. Historical accounts indicate that the pilot of the aircraft that made the weather reconnaissance for the Enola Gay had a series of disciplinary and criminal problems before the bombing, and it was his continued problems after leaving the service that formed the sole basis of the popular myth of suicide and mental problems among these crews.
Long range.
...is...the range at which the average soldier may be able to see the enemy, but is unable to kill him without some form of special weaponry — sniper weapons, anti-armor missiles, or tank fire.
Here we begin to see some disturbance at the act of killing as an WWI Australian sniper remembered: "a queer thrill shot through me, it was a different feeling to that which I had when I shot my first kangaroo when I was a boy. For an instant I felt sick and faint; but the feeling soon passed."
These people have the same buffers as maximum range killers have. snipers doctrinally operate as teams, and like maximum-range killers they are protected by the same potent combination of group absolution, mechanical distance (the rifle scope), and physical distance.
They also can rationalize as they can choose targets and many of them opts with killing the brass which is a also a very productive way to destroy the enemy fighting power. If there's no officer to call the shots the grunts won't know what to do.
Nice statistics: From January 7 to July 24, 1969, U.S. Army snipers in Vietnam accounted for 1,245 confirmed kills, with an average of 1.39 bullets expended per kill.
Despite this only a small number of snipers are real killing machines. Only a few of them who produces such long lists of corpses.
Fighter pilots are long range firers too, they have two layers of machinery between them and their victims (other pilots) what they lack is the team's support. ...only 1 percent of U.S. fighter pilots accounted for nearly 40 percent of all enemy pilots shot down in World War II; the majority apparently did not shoot anyone down or even try to.
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Midrange.
''...the soldier can see and engage the enemy with rifle fire while still unable to perceive the
extent of the wounds inflicted or the sounds and facial expressions of the victim when he is hit. In fact, at this range, the soldier can still deny that it was he who killed the enemy.''
Holmes states, "Most of the veterans I interviewed were infantrymen with front-line service, yet fewer than half of them believed that they had actually killed an enemy, and often this belief was based on the thinnest of evidence."
This type of killing has emotional stages:
- the kill is usually described as being reflexive or automatic
- then a period of euphoria and elation,
- followed by a period of guilt and remorse.
If a soldier goes up and looks at his kill the trauma grows even worse, since some of the psychological buffer created by a midrange kill disappears upon seeing the victim at close range.
Hand-Grenade Range
anywhere from a few yards to as many as thirty-five or forty yards and it's a specific kill in which a hand grenade is used. A hand-grenade kill is distinguished from a close kill in that the killer does not have to see his victims as they die.
A very great drawback is that the killers are usually hear their victims scream. Other than that this a killing method that is largely free of trauma, if the soldier does not have to look at his handiwork.
''In the close-in trench battles of World War I hand grenades were psychologically and physically easier to use, so much so that Keegan and Holmes tell us that "the infantryman had forgotten how to deliver accurate fire with his rifle; his main weapon had become the grenade."
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Close range.
A ...kill with a projectile weapon from point-blank range, extending to midrange. The key factor in close range is the undeniable certainty of responsibility on the part of the killer.
A typical case by an Israeli paratrooper from 1967:
"We looked at each other for half a second and I knew that it was up to me, personally, to kill him, there was no one else there. The whole thing must have lasted less than a second, but it's printed on my mind like a slow motion movie. I fired from the hip and I can still see the bullets splashed against the wall about a meter to his left. I moved the Uzi, slowly, slowly it seemed, until I hit him in the body. He slipped to his knees, then he raised his head, with his face terrible, twisted in pain and hate, yes such hate. I fired again and somehow got him in the head. There was so much blood . . . I vomited, until the rest of the boys came up."
Similar to midrange the killers have euphoria and elation but it's a very short period which is suppressed by overwhelming guilt and remorse sometimes with physical reaction (like vomiting). Beside the visual they also hear the screams and cries. Sometimes the kill isn't instant so they there to witness their extended agony. Sometimes the killer even tries to comfort the victim.
Major General Frank Richardson told Holmes that "it is a touching fact that men, dying in battle, often call upon their mothers. I have heard them do so in five languages."
A ranger remembers: "Later I walked over to take another look at the VC I had shot. He was still alive and looking at me with those eyes. The flies were beginning to get all over him. I put a blanket over him and rubbed water from my canteen onto his lips. That hard stare started to leave his eyes."
But of course on this range the resistance to killing an opponent is tremendous. [...] It is here that many personal narratives of nonkilling situations occur.
Instead of shooting at a uniform and killing a generalized enemy, now the killer must shoot at a person and kill a specific individual. Most simply cannot or will not do it.
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Edged-weapons range.
When a projectile weapon is not an option.
it is psychologically easier to kill with an edged weapon that permits a long stand-off range, and increasingly more difficult as the stand-off range decreases. Thus it is considerably easier to impale a man with a twenty-foot pike than it is to stab him with a six inch knife.
This is an interesting observation: The physical range provided by the spears of the Greek and Macedonian phalanx provided much of the psychological leverage that permitted Alexander the Great to conquer the known world. The psychological leverage provided by the hedge of pikes was so powerful that the phalanx was resurrected in the Middle Ages and used successfully in the era of mounted knights. Ultimately the phalanx was only replaced by the advent of the superior posturing and psychological leverage provided by gunpowder projectile weapons.
It is also easier to slash than to stab. Stabbing has it's sexual overtones. For a bayonet-, spear-, or sword-armed soldier his weapon becomes a natural extension of his body - an appendage [...] To reach out and penetrate the enemy's flesh and thrust a portion of ourselves into his vitals is deeply akin to the sexual act, yet deadly, and is therefore strongly repulsive to us.
Of course the thought of getting stabbed isn't much fun. "The thought of cold steel sliding into your guts," says McKenna, "is more horrific and real than the thought of a bullet doing the same - perhaps because you can see the steel coming." ...in Rwanda, where the Hutu tribesmen made their Tutsi victims purchase the bullets they would be killed with in order to avoid being hacked to death.
John Keegan's landmark book The Face of Battle makes a comparative study of Agincourt (1415), Waterloo (1815), and the Somme (1916). [...] Keegan repeatedly notes the amazing absence of bayonet wounds incurred during the massed bayonet attacks at Waterloo and the Somme. [...] "...there being no evidence of the armies having crossed bayonets at Waterloo." By World War I edged-weapon combat had almost disappeared, and Keegan notes that in the Battle of the Somme, "edged-weapon wounds were a fraction of one per cent of all wounds inflicted."
I already mentioned that at the end of a bayonet charges soldiers just turned their weapon and used the butt of their rifles on the enemy - despite their rigorous training. "Prince Frederick Charles asked a German infantryman why he did this. 'I don't know,' replied the soldier. 'When you get your dander up the thing turns round in your hand of itself.'"
...the resistance to killing with the bayonet is equal only to the enemy's horror at having this done to him.
Another German infantryman told: "I stabbed him through the chest. He dropped his rifle and fell, and the blood shot out of his mouth. I stood over him for a few seconds and then 1 gave him the coup de grace. After we had taken the enemy position, I felt giddy, my knees shook, and I was actually sick."
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Grossman goes on and on with examples of bayonet fights it's a very interesting chapter. Then he arrives to knives. Killing with a knife in hand is different then killing with a bayonet on the end of the rifle.
Many knife kills appear to be of the commando nature, in which someone slips up on a victim and kills him from behind. These kills, like all kills from behind, are less traumatic than a kill from the front, since the face and all its messages and contortions are not seen. But what is felt are the bucking and shuddering of the victim's body and the warm sticky blood gushing out, and what is heard is the the final breath hissing out.
Special forces got training on how to kill silently and efficiently with a knife or dagger in such situation.
Holmes tells us that the French in World War II preferred knives and daggers for close-in work, but Keegan's findings of the singular absence of such wounds would indicate that few of these knives were ever used. Indeed, narratives of incidents in which individuals used a knife in modern combat are extremely rare, and knife kills other than the silencing of sentries from behind are almost unheard of.
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Hand-to-hand-combat range.
Not much to tell here. In warfare there's not much space to kill with bare hands. Soldiers have weapons and they reluctant to use even those. We could check murders but most of them are committed with other "tools" and these cases were mostly committed by those 2% anyway. And fistfights, wrestling, beatings aren't this category.
It's not easy causing significant damage with just hand-to-hand. Grossman mentions two possibilities: punch in the throat and a thumb into the eye and the brain (his description isn't big on the details).
Man has a tremendous resistance to killing effectively with his bare hands. When man first picked up a club or a rock and killed his fellow man, he gained more than mechanical energy and mechanical leverage. He also gained psychological energy and psychological leverage that was every bit as necessary in the killing process.
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Sexual range.
[...] One old Vietnam vet hit on a popular theme during the discussion and said, "Fuck Jane Fonda." Another old sergeant vet who was sitting next to me was roused to respond by saying, "Fuck Jane Fonda? Huh! Skull-fuck Jane Fonda! Pop an eyeball out and skull-fuck the bitch."
Sex and agression of course are linked. The most powerful ... gorilla wins the harem and such or seeing warfare as a rite of manhood. War make boys into men. Also ...relationship between male sexuality and the power of motorcycles (1,200 cc of power throbbing between your legs) and muscle cars.
...sex-power linkage also exists in the gun world. A video recently advertised in gun magazines, Sexy Girls and Sexy Guns, taps this same vein. "You've got to see this tape to believe it," says the ad. "14 outrageous sexy girls in string bikinis and high heels blasting away with the sexiest full auto machine guns ever produced."
...familiar image of a barely clad woman clinging to James Bond as he coolly brandishes a pistol.
And from a time when people didn't brag on the internet about fapping: One American soldier compared the killings at My Lai to the closely linked guilt and satisfaction that accompany masturbation.
Ben Shalit observed: [...]It struck me then (and was confirmed by him and many others later) that squeezing the trigger — releasing a hail of bullets — gives enormous pleasure and satisfaction. These are the pleasures of combat, not in terms of the intellectual planning — of the tactical and strategic chess game — but of the primal aggression, the release, and the orgasmic discharge.
A Vietnam vet said: "a gun is power. To some people carrying a gun was like having a permanent hard-on. It was a pure sexual trip every time you got to pull the trigger."
The juicy part comes.
The concept of sex as a process of domination and defeat is closely related to the lust for rape and the trauma associated with the rape victim. Thrusting the sexual appendage (the penis) deep into the body of the victim can be perversely linked to thrusting the killing appendage (a bayonet or knife) deep into the body of the victim.
This process can be seen in pornographic movies in which the sexual act is twisted, such that the male ejaculates — or "shoots his wad" — into a female's face. The grip of a firer on the pistol grip of a gun is much like the grip on an erect penis, and holding the penis in this fashion while ejaculating into the victim's face is at some level an act of domination and symbolic destruction. The culmination ... can be seen in snuff films,...
What images I will upload for this as illustrations?!
This really squeezes my mind grapes. How is that personal dynamics weigh more heavily on human minds than random chance of death? I know that we are social animals but the thought of this is just so alien to me. It makes sense but damn, people being mean to you is more damaging psychologically than being helpless and in danger of an agonizing death?
Perhaps Jung was on to something with his idea of a collective subconscious because at some point one cannot chalk this up to mere superego and body language.
Although, whereas most people have had experience in their early childhood of being screamed at or threatened, very few have had any formative experiences with the weapons of war. Such things are some level of abstract to the potenial sufferer, as are all experiences yet to be experienced.And to understand something before it happens to you makes it much less shocking. The power of early trauma cannot be overestimated it would seem.
I think in a normal life the thought of death can be put easily out of mind as it's an uncertain thing we have barely influence over it. We know it'll happen but usually think of it as something far in the future what we don't have to worry about just right now.
So more immediate sources of stress what grinds us and can wear us down. Some people commit suicide because of it. Or some do mass shootings as a reply to Wind of Hate. Some even imagines that everyone hate or judge them and get social anxiety.
In war lots of deaths seems happenstance too. For example why an artillery shell kills someone just arrived to the front and doesn't kill someone who spent years there? And most of the time it's quite impersonal. But dealing with someone in front of you, his immediate aggression...
Bernd 11/12/2017 (Sun) 02:31:24 [Preview] No. 11841 del
That is an excellent point that you have exexpounded upon. Familiarity breeds contempt, in a way the Wind of Hate affects the mind like Chinese Water Torture; it is mild, but inescapable and constant.
Horrific death is at least a novel and rare experience to its victims. A real once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Love the thread by the way. Very informative, very well-delivered. As pleasant as it is educational to read.
Bernd 11/13/2017 (Mon) 06:19:07 [Preview] No. 11863 del
I also think it would be interesting to take a look at the ranges and situations from the victims view. Of course the impersonality also ends in the short range where no denial who kills him, but it still could be useful anyway.
That would be fascinating. Of course, we would be dealing almost exclusively with the almost killed, the maimed, and those who took a while to die from their wounds inflicted.
This would mean another layer to the experience, though. The degree of physical suffering that occurs (or could have occured) from the act/attempt of killing.
Modern data would require legwork but historical data would be easy enough to acquire. The Hibakusha, for example, have been very open about their experiences related to the Enola Gay Bombings. Vietnam vets are similarly communicative and a lot of those guys are still around.
Bernd 11/14/2017 (Tue) 05:27:41 [Preview] No. 11888 del
>How is that personal dynamics weigh more heavily on human minds than random chance of death?
Because it's a form of betrayal. Not by the enemy frontline, but by our own peers who gave the enemy that power: we only recognize the adversarial attitude from experience when our own countrymen hated us more personally than an enemy soldier ever could. Matters of death are fundamentally impersonal, you either live or die but if you die you won't carry that with you, if you lose a limb you get trauma that's already over and done with and you may focus on other things. Humanizing enemy soldiers is merely what opens our eyes to the fact that the humans around us were always enemy-izing us. They don't want you to die for them, but they do want you to live for them, even if miserably. And then get out of the way and die anyway. It's the random chance of death, and then some. Of course its worse.
>it's a form of betrayal. Not by the enemy frontline, but by our own peers who gave the enemy that power
That's also the reason why Viet vets got PTSD. In previous wars of the US the soldiers came home and they were celebrated by the people which helped ease their guilt (of killing). But when they returned from Vietnam they were shunned as killers, every one of them from the rifleman to the cooks and truck drivers, which not just didn't help but pushed them into that disorder.
Public opinion was not against the soldiers.
Even Lieutenant Calley, perpatrator of the My Lai Massacre, had a lot of civilian support.
Link related, a patriotic song commending his actions that hit the top 40 on our charts and eventually went gold.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=4JoacW7woBY [Embed]
Anger was mainly at the brass and the politicians that started the war, remember that the Kent State Shootings were triggered after the campus ROTC building was burned.
Although the disappointment that the returning vets were faced with on all sides was crushing. The disillusionment was no illusion.
Bernd 11/15/2017 (Wed) 06:23:47 [Preview] No. 11907 del
I saw otherwise in Rambo. I'll reply more seriously late. To this >>11885 too.
Thread theme album Bernd 11/15/2017 (Wed) 16:50:07 [Preview] No. 11915 del
https://youtube.com/watch?v=5sQlnUy6iKM [Embed]
Could have picked some Slayer but that just too mainstream.
Bernd 11/18/2017 (Sat) 16:51:47 [Preview] No.11997 del
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Emotional distance
Sometimes happens on the front the combatants get to know each other. They talk, offer smoke to each other or even play football, they share a human moment and they are no enemies anymore. They don't just stop wishing to kill the other but they start to care. The situations described above represent a breakdown in the psychological distance that is a key method of removing one's sense of empathy and achieving this "emotional withdrawal."
Similar occurs in hostage situations. Not only the victims are touched by Stockholm syndrome but in it's last stage the hostage taker experiences an increase in identification and bonding with the victim.
Grossman gives four types of emotional distance:
- cultural
- moral
- social
- mechanical
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Cultural distance.
Consider the enemy as "inferior forms of life,". As simple is that. The propaganda machine of a country can prepare the future soldiers to look at the enemy like that. The book quotes War on the Mind by Peter Watson: "to get the men to think of the potential enemies they will have to face as inferior forms of life [with films] biased to present the enemy as less than human: the stupidity of local customs is ridiculed, local personalities are presented as evil demigods."
This of course greets us back at places like KC main where the narration of the posters often turns for such tools as namecalling which was very common on battlefields. Kraut, gook, Tommy or the simple Vietnam era "body count" mentality is all part of it this type of distance.
Using racial differences is a classic example, Grossman here pulls the Nazi card but at least mentions the colonial conflicts too.
It's easier to create this distance against someone who seems more alien in the first place 44 percent of American soldiers in World War II said they would "really like to kill a Japanese soldier," but only 6 percent expressed that degree of enthusiasm for killing Germans. In Vietnam the US made an effort not to play this card against the Vietnamese as their ally was the same as the enemy.
Sometimes even minor differences (for an outsider at least) can be magnified well out of proportion like it happened during the Yugo Wars.
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Moral distance
Our cause is always just and legitimate. The enemy is a lawbreaker, a tyrant, a criminal, a villain without honor and morality. He attacked first and murders innocent babies in their cradles as well. We condemn his actions, we have to punish him and restore the lawful order, peace and freedom. Familiar?
Useful tool in civil wars or wars between culturally very similar sides. Or when pulling the racial card isn't too practical like in Vietnam where they apostrophed the war as a crusade against communism.
...there is a danger associated with moral distance. That danger is, of course, that every nation seems to think that God is on its side.
Police forces has the same mentality btw.
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Social distance.
One could think of the conflicts where a communist/socialist side used this to send soldiers to defend the exploited proletariat from the imperialistic bourgeoisie. This can be entwine with moral distance too. However Grossman talks about something very different which can be applied to many more conflicts. This is the distance between officers and the simple soldiers and this distance helps the officers to send his subordinates into their deaths.
..we must understand how hard it is to be the one to give the orders that will send your friends to their deaths, and how easy is the alternative of surrendering honorably and ending the horror. The essence of the military is that to be a good leader you must truly love (in a strangely detached fashion) your men, and then you must be willing to kill (or at least give the orders that will result in the deaths of) that which you love. The paradox of war is that those leaders who are most willing to endanger that which they love can be the ones who are most liable to win, and therefore most likely to protect their men.
In nearly all historical batlles prior to the age of Napoleon, the serf who looked down his spear or musket at the enemy saw another hapless serf very much like himself, and we can understand that he was not particularly inclined to kill his mirror image. And so it is that the great majority of close-combat killing in ancient history was not done by the mobs of serfs and peasants who formed the great mass of combatants. It was the elite, the nobility, who were the real killers in these battles, and they were enabled by, among other things, social distance.
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Mechanical distance.
This is a technologically based form of psychological distance. During the Gulf War this was referred to as "Nintendo warfare." Thermal imagery, night-vision devices are the most typical examples.
an Israeli tank gunner who told Holmes that "you see it all as if it were happening on a TV screen. . . . It occurred to me at the time; I see someone running and I shoot at him, and he falls, and it all looks like something on TV. I don't see people, that's one good thing about it."
Bernd 11/19/2017 (Sun) 19:18:14 [Preview] No.12023 del
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>In nearly all historical batlles prior to the age of Napoleon, the serf who looked down his spear or musket at the enemy saw another hapless serf very much like himself, and we can understand that he was not particularly inclined to kill his mirror image
It is more true for Napoleonic times and later. Until 17th century armies (at least in Europe) had much more professional/mercenary composition, and masses of poor serfs weren't active participants of most wars.
>And so it is that the great majority of close-combat killing in ancient history was not done by the mobs of serfs and peasants who formed the great mass of combatants. It was the elite, the nobility, who were the real killers in these battles, and they were enabled by, among other things, social distance.
This statement looks pretty strange. Amount of nobility that engaged in large battles weren't very large, often it is about 100-200 proper knights or something like this in large battles. They did heavy damage of course, but they couldn't do majority of close-combat killings.
Although he is right about some social distance thing. For example. knight-vs-knight conflict often ended with capturing and ransom scheme. Even in cross-religion wars there were many examples of this.
Most killings happened after the battles when one side broke and fled. Grossman writes about this too. This type of killing has two components:
1. the killer doesn't see the face of the fleeing enemy
2. the ancient hunting instinct kicks in, chasing is a very thrilling experience which makes easier to murder
The best chasing unit was the cavalry which is usually considered a noble unit (however lots of man-at-arms - who are often confused with knights - were commoner).
Also I think nobles in the described situation you quote were more of a killers through their commands they gave.
>Until 17th century armies (at least in Europe) had much more professional/mercenary composition, and masses of poor serfs weren't active participants of most wars.
Untrue. The usage of mercenary bands were very limited by the lack of money and the suitable social strata up to the 13-14th century. After that it was still very varied in different regions but of course the paid soldiering became the norm. For example in England during the Wars of Roses parts of the troops still came from the feudal levy (maybe even they got some moniez) on the other hand in the Italian Wars mercenaries were extremely popular. Probably such factors as scope of conflicts and the partaking sides also influenced this.
>Most killings happened after the battles when one side broke and fled. Grossman writes about this too.
Where he got that info? It would be interesting to view the statistics about casualties in Medieval age for example, although it doesn't exist in proper form I guess.
>Also I think nobles in the described situation you quote were more of a killers through their commands they gave.
Yes, it is true even for today. But saying that killer is the person who gives orders is rather idealistic view.
>For example in England during the Wars of Roses parts of the troops still came from the feudal levy (maybe even they got some moniez)
I think that feudal levy can be counted as "semi-professionals", not as "hapless serfs" as he wrote. Although serfs who don't really want to be in army surely existed, many people did it voluntarily (for money of course, and because they had nothing to do at home, especially when there were shortage of land). And in situation when required amount of recruits isn't that big, avoiding army wasn't impossible task.
Even first attempts of mass conscription wasn't really mass in modern sense.
>Where he got that info?
It's not just his info.
Lots of contemporary descriptions of battles depicts the closing accord of a battle that way. From the top of my head: Battle of Clontarf (or how it is written), the fleeing vikings were drowned into the sea. But for me it's quite natural knowledge. The warfare of the steppe people based on breaking the lines of the enemy, creating chaos and confusion, send them to flee then hunt them down. Hungarian did this to Euros then Mongols did this to Hungarians in - for example - the Battle of Muhi. The Hungarian camp was surrounded with the exception of a small gap and crushed until the soldiers started to flee then their small bands were hunted down at the gap. Of course the main reason for this move was the wish of Batu to capture king Béla but they salughtered anyone they could reach.
And the casualties aren't just dead but wounded and missing (deserters or unknown dead) and Grossman talks about killings. The battlefield produced wounded, maimed and dying very efficiently, less "right at that moment" dead.
Bernd 11/21/2017 (Tue) 18:12:15 [Preview] No.12068 del
I looked it up what Grossman writes at the section where he reflects on killing an enemy who turned his back.
Clausewitz and du Picq both expound at length on the fact that the vast majority of casualties in historical battles were inflicted upon the losing side during the pursuit that followed the victory.
So following the book's bibliography we/you could check Clausewitz's On War and Ardant du Picq's Battle Studies.
First: http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/OnWar1873/TOC.htm
Second: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7294
I didn't wrote public opinion. Maybe more than 50% of the American citizens weren't against the soldiers but they didn't give their support either and the vocal minority, the protesters were very hostile. The fact is the returning soldiers met enmity, misunderstanding and lack of care. They even got their monuments 20 years late. Veteran associations formed also about 20 years late. Grossman devotes a whole chapter for this topic.
I'm gonna pull another book out: Guerrillas in the mist by Bob Newman. He says that the US did not lose on the battlefields in Vietnam but at home on the Main Street. The public opinion was exploited by Ho Chi Minh and Giap and turned against the war.
Let me pull another book: 10,000 days of thunder by Philip Caputo. He says: When the Vietnam War ended, a collective amnesia seemed to grip the American people. Not only did they want to forget the war, they wanted to have nothing to do with the men and women who fought in it. [...] And Vietnam veterans who had been discharged discovered that they were now social outcasts. Sensational news reports about criminal acts committed by veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome even made getting a job difficult.
Another one: The Columbia Guide to the Vietnam War by David L. Anderson. ''the fact remains that military
veterans of the Vietnam War often experienced social alienation. [...] The American warriors had no victory parades, and, in fact, they returned to a country that seemed pointedly disinterested in them and what they had experienced. Even worse, some citizens blamed them alone for what was, in truth, a shared national debacle. [...] There was a lot of bitterness in the men and women (primarily military nurses) who had been through a difficult ordeal and now felt rejected and unappreciated by other Americans.''
Another: The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of The Vietnam War by Jeff T. Hay. However, the Vietnam veterans' postwar experience was significantly different from that of veterans of previous wars. Many complained of the unsympathetic welcome they received and a lack of recognition and thanks for their service. Public opinion over the war was bitterly divided, and many opponents and protesters of the war focused their criticism and even contempt on returning veterans.
Bernd 11/23/2017 (Thu) 19:33:44 [Preview] No.12101 del
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When I looked this up in one book (A Companion to Vietnam War edited by Marilyn B. Young and Robert Buzzanco, Chapter Twenty-Two: Sanctuary!: A Bridge Between Civilian and GI Protest Against the Vietnam War by Michael S. Foley) I found a line:
Perhaps it has been too easy to accept the stories that portray returning soldiers as mistreated by civilian opponents of the war; images of long-haired protesters spitting on Vietnam veterans or calling them "baby killers" persist in the American consciousness despite a lack of evidence?
This part has a endnote reference:
The image of antiwar protesters spitting on returning veterans has recently been challenged persuasively in Jerry Lembcke, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam (New York New York University Press, 1998). Lembcke, a Vietnam veteran and a sociologist at Holy Cross, argues that not one single instance of an antiwar protester spitting on a veteran has ever been convincingly documented.
Now this spitting thing is fairly marginal. According to Grossman Bob Greene in his book, Homecoming, mentions he got over thousand letters from veterans stating they were spat upon. I dunno how wide were the audience of Green who could now about his request to send letter to him but I guess many spitting victim didn't know about it. But if we compare this 1000 cases (and an unkown number of unknown cases but probably not that many to tip the scale) to the number of personnel deployed in Vietnam by the US (cca. 2.600.000), it's nothing. Even if we compare it the possible 500.000-1.500.000 cases of PTSD...
However I looked up the dude, he has a page here:
https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/sociology-anthropology/jerry-lembcke
This lists his works, and places he got mentioned or referd to. I got the book in question (''The Spitting Image'). It's over 200 pages so I won't read this tonight.
I couldn't find the Homecoming. Well I found one actually but it's password protected. 123456, 654321 and password aren't working.
I will admit, my impressions on Vietnam are badly stained by the modern American opinion: those pretty cool guys got screwed.
Vietnam occupies an odd place in the American psyche. Beyond the Civil War and WWII it is the most emotionally charged. Nostalgia for rock and roll's glory days, the optimum relatability between the modern American and the soldiers of the period, the moment where the mainstream finally gave up on our government, and the pain. God, how we Americans celebrate suffering. Usually as a badge of honor, but catharsis is not unheard of.
The picture seems very colorful. The Companion has three chapters on the antiwar movement one I already mentioned here >>12101 and another is titled: The Veterans Antiwar Movement in Fact and Memory.
I just glanced inside them but it's clear that lots of veterans joined to or founded movements against the war. Many people saw the problem with the war on many different level. But it's sure noone - especially not the government - knew how those deeds will effect mentally and emotionally the soldiers who were trained and basically conditioned to do them and how should the society deal with the baggage which came with them.
I think the image you described as "pretty cool guys got screwed" already existed back then but wasn't that widespread.
Bernd 12/15/2017 (Fri) 03:01:23 [Preview] No.12569 del
OP, I have an unrelated question, if you do not mind the tangent.
Well, I'm not planning anymore to post my speculation in such fashion I originally intended to do so feel free to post anything related to warfare.
I'm gonna try sometimes to check what Clausewitz and du Picq wrote about retreating and fleeing and look up some contemporary narratives of ancient and medieval battles. I also came up with other stuff to post on the board ofc in an other thread.
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Let's read some Bede.
He was a Northumbrian monk, lived from 672/673 to 735. His relevant work to our topic is the Historia ecclesiatical gentis Anglorum. I just searched some keywords like "battle", "fought", "fled" or "slain" and gathered the parts which at least have some less generic and more detailed descriptions of battles. Still, Bernd, don't expect much.
I used the copy of his book from Project Gutenberg Library btw.
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Chapter XX
How the same Bishops brought help from Heaven to Britons in battle, and then returned home [430 A.D.]
pg 38-40
"...Germanus offered to be their leader. He picked out the most active, explored the country round about, and observed, in the way by which the enemy was expected, a valley encompassed by hills of moderate height. In that place he drew up his untried troops, himself acting as their general. And now a formidable host of foes drew near, visible, as they approached, to his men lying in ambush. Then, on a sudden, Germanus, bearing the standard, exhorted his men, and bade them all in a loud voice repeat his words. As the enemy advanced in all security, thinking to take them by surprise, the bishops three times cried, "Hallelujah." A universal shout of the same word followed, and the echoes from the surrounding hills gave back the cry on all sides, the enemy was panic-stricken, fearing, not only the neighbouring rocks, but even the very frame of heaven above them; and such was their terror, that their feet were not swift enough to save them. They fled in disorder, casting away their arms, and well satisfied if, even with unprotected bodies, they could escape the danger; many of them, flying headlong in their fear, were engulfed by the river which they had crossed. The Britons, without a blow, inactive spectators of the victory they had gained, beheld their vengeance complete. The scattered spoils were gathered up, and the devout soldiers rejoiced in the success which Heaven had granted them. The prelates thus triumphed over the enemy without bloodshed, and gained a victory by faith, without the aid of human force."
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Chapter XXXIV.
How Ethelfrid, king of the Northumbrians, having vanquished the nations of the Scots, expelled them from the territories of the English. [603 A.D.]
pg. 74.
"Hereupon, Aedan, king of the Scots that dwell in Britain, being alarmed by his success, came against him with a great and mighty army, but was defeated and fled with a few followers; for almost all his army was cut to pieces at a famous place, called Degsastan, that is, Degsa Stone, In which battle also Theboald, brother to Ethelfrid was killed, with almost all the forces he commanded."
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Chapter II.
How Augustine admonished the bishops of the Britons on behalf of Catholic peace, and to that end wrought a heavenly miracle in their presence; and of the vengeance that pursued them for their contempt. [Circ. 603 A.D.]
pg. 88-89
"For afterwards the warlike king of the English, Ethelfrid, of whom we have spoken, having raised a mighty army, made a very great slaughter of that heretical nation, at the city of Legions, which by the English is called Legacaestir, but by the Britons more rightly Carlegion. Being about to give battle, he observed their priests, who were come together to offer up their prayers to God for the combatants, [...] the monastery being divided into seven parts, with a superior set over each, none of those parts contained less than three hundred men, [...] Many of these, having observed a fast of three days, had come together along with others to pray at the aforesaid battle, having one Brocmail173 for their protector, to defend them, whilst they were intent upon their prayers, against the swords of the barbarians. King Ethelfrid being informed of the occasion of their coming, said, "If then they cry to their God against us, in truth, though they do not bear arms, yet they fight against us, because they assail us with their curses." He, therefore, commanded them to be attacked first, and then destroyed the rest of the impious army, not without great loss of his own forces. About twelve hundred of those that came to pray are said to have been killed, and only fifty to have escaped by flight. Brocmail, turning his back with his men, at the first approach of the enemy, left those whom he ought to have defended unarmed and exposed to the swords of the assailants."
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Chapter XII.
How Edwin was persuaded to believe by a vision which he had once seen when he was in exile. [Circ. 616 A.D.]
pg. 116
"For as soon as the messengers had returned home, he raised a mighty army to subdue Ethelfrid; who, meeting him with much inferior forces, (for Redwald had not given him time to gather and unite all his power,) was slain on the borders of the kingdom of Mercia, on the east side of the river that is called Idle. In this battle, Redwald's son, called Raegenheri was killed."
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Chapter XX.
How Edwin being slain, Paulinus returned to Kent, and had the bishopric of Rochester conferred upon him. [633 A.D.]
"A great battle being fought in the plain that is called Haethfelth, Edwin was killed [...] and all his army was either slain or dispersed."
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Chapter XVIII.
Of the life and death of the religious King Sigbert. [Circ. 631 A.D.]
pg. 173.
"A long time after this, it happened that the nation of the Mercians, under King Penda, made war on the East Angles; who finding themselves no match for their enemy, entreated Sigbert to go with them to battle, to encourage the soldiers. He was unwilling and refused, upon which they drew him against his will out of the monastery, and carried him to the army, hoping that the soldiers would be less afraid and less disposed to flee in the presence of one who had formerly been an active and distinguished commander. But he, still mindful of his profession, surrounded, as he was, by a royal army, would carry nothing in his hand but a wand, and was killed with King Ecgric; and the pagans pressing on, all their army was either slaughtered or dispersed."
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Chapter XXIV.
How when King Penda was slain, the province of the Mercians received the faith of Christ, and Oswy gave possessions and territories to God, for building monasteries, as a thank offering for the victory obtained. [655 A.D.]
"After this he gave battle with a very small army: indeed, it is reported that the pagans had thirty times the number of men; for they had thirty legions, drawn up under most noted commanders. [...] King Oswald's son Oidilwald, who ought to have supported them, was on the enemy's side, and led them on to fight against his country and his uncle; though, during the battle, he withdrew, and awaited the event in a place of safety. The engagement began, the pagans were put to flight or killed, the thirty royal commanders, who had come to Penda's assistance, were almost all of them slain; among whom was Ethelhere, brother and successor to Anna, king of the East Angles. He had been the occasion of the war, and was now killed, having lost his army and auxiliaries. The battle was fought near the river Winwaed, which then, owing to the great rains, was in flood, and had overflowed its banks, so that many more were drowned in the flight than destroyed in battle by the sword."
Basically that's it.
The descriptions are generally too short and kinda topos-like. He wrote two case where he noted that fleeing enemy died in greater number. But in most case it feels like the rivers just engulfed them and they weren't the particular doings of the chasing armies (especially in the case of the first bloodless battle).
One more interesting part from Book III. It's funny.
Chapter X.
How the dust of that place prevailed against fire [After 642 A.D.]
"About the same time, another traveller, a Briton, as is reported happened to pass by the same place, where the aforesaid battle was fought. Observing one particular spot of ground greener and more beautiful than any other part of the field, he had the wisdom to infer that the cause of the unusual greenness in that place must be that some person of greater holiness than any other in the army had been killed there."
Did this traveler find a shallow mass grave of human fertilizers?
Bernd 12/18/2017 (Mon) 02:53:44 [Preview] No.12624 del
Yeah, Bede isn't a great source for early medieval period warfare in Britain. The most descriptive sources are Celtic. St. Gildas' "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae" was quite good, and expounded greatly, if obscurely, on the why of things during the period covered.
The Historia Brittonum is less useful, more clogged with mythological bullshit but is still work a browse or two.
also, here's a link to the Book of Aneirin in English, the poem "Y Gododdin" will be of most use to you, it is mainly tributes to Brythonic warriors who died in battle against the Saxons in what is now Lothian.
http://www.maryjones.us/ctexts/aindex.html
I chose the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the next one to review.
> He wrote two case where he noted that fleeing enemy died in greater number.
I believe most killing is done when one side begins to run away and the other just follow them and mow them down.
I remember two battles, one from reconquista times, and the other from albigensian crusade, where small force of warriors caused incredibly high loses to the enemy. Unfortunately I don't remember what exact battles those were, but the numbers were like 200-800 knights vs tens of thousands soldiers. They made some bold move, in case of albigensian war they charged and killed the commander, and the rest of enemies panicked.
Thanks for the read btw.
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What did you wanna ask?
Are you Ferenc? Something about your post style reminds me of him, years ago when he posted on Krautchan more frequently and about serious things.
I have suspected this for months, but it felt like a stupid question. Now, I am on the brink of getting a good job/killing myself so I am trying to hunt him down to make sure he gets his plushie, whatever happens.
I'm not.
I think Ferenc might be moar liek a concept rather than a particular person. I posted my hypothesis back on 8 that it just means furry: the diminutive form of Ferenc (Franz, Francis) is Feri in Hungarian which kinda sounds like furry. Also there's a /feri/ Hungarian board on 8ch.
The plushy guy still posts on KC main, I suspect the other Hungarian who posts here like in every two months might even be him when he's banned for a few days for some trivial reason. But might be I'm wrong. Who knows.
>our post style reminds me of him,
We arr rook simirar.
>I am on the brink of getting a good job/killing myself
Getting a good job sounds good, try that one, with the money you can buy the plushy easy peasy.
Probably I'm not the best person to talk someone out of killing himself but I'd prefer you not do it. I cannot promise I won't mistake than and then in the future tho.
Also we have many great threads to live for. :wink::wink:
Ok. If I have caused you offense, I apologize. He is not without controversy, I will admit.
Yeah, there's at least four, maybe 5 Ferencs. Just Magyars who are either weebs or homosexuals and thusly find themselves in the family group. The Dread Pirate Roberts of the KC queers, lmao.
I don't know, maybe its just something stemming from the native Magyar tongue. A unique mindset to approaching the English language. Slavic and Germanic posters also have their lingual quirks, but as they are more common, it is easier to know these habits as being racial, not personal.
It's not as serious as it might sound. As a rule, all channers are suicidal so we might as well speak plainly. You know how it is and so do I. It would be rude to ask for the sympathy that goes unspoken, between all posters of all kinds. But I do feel that I needed your kind words. Thank you. :)
>If I have caused you offense
You haven't.
Well, then I have the good deed for the year.
>Slavic and Germanic posters also have their lingual quirks
I dont want to offtopic much itt but I'm interested what quirks we have. I know some poles don't translate their posts too good and other slavs do it in similar way and thanks to it I can understand clearly what they meant.
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also anyone else see burgerball same as me?
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I don't. But I've all kinds of weird shit with Palemoon, text slide together with filenames and images.
Half of the time I can't see my post at all dude.
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Odilidud is fucking up.
Mewch when
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This is actually an interesting topic.
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mewch now
You know, it's hard to pin down at times. But I know without looking whether someone is a Slav. Usually it's just a lack of commas, a tendency to make longer sentences and phrases, which Westerners would break up into smaller ones, or tighten up with colloquialisms. Y'all use paragraphs like the rest of us, though. I think Americans are the worst about using paragraphs to give the reader a break. I think it is the way our schools taught Language Arts, because the Brits and the Strayans are much less tl;dr.
I don't speak any Slavic languages so I'm not sure about the sentence structures in them. I've been reading stuff written by Poles, Russians, etc. tor over ten years now, so a lot of the stuff I pick up on has become instinctual and I have to really think about it to point it out. I'm going to go dig around aand see if there's anything else that comes to mind.
>mewch
this is a meme right? Mewch is just an 8gag refuge now.
>Mewch is just an 8gag refuge now.
lol no
8gaggers refuse to even go to mewch when their /b/ is being spammed, purged, fucked up by mods
I don't know where you got that idea but 8gaggers who still go to 8gag are such head-up-their-ass loyalists that they would never post on another imageboard
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>I don't speak any Slavic languages so I'm not sure about the sentence structures in them
At least in Russian sentence structure is pretty loose, so you can change word order easily and get same results by changing word endings. Some people like to write in specific style, and their English writing style depends on this. I, for example, tend to overcomplicate everything and write much, even in Russian, and it often sucks.
Translating some sentences may be really hard because Russian lang has only three proper grammatical tenses (past, present, future, and some constructs to make intermediate results), and English has 12 or something like this (at least they said it in school). Using that variability is hard to non-native, especially when he has no real practice except internet speak.
However, most Russians in internet write in Russian like literal retards who didn't even visited a school, even when they are old people. They use short sentences (sometimes even only one short sentence in message), no paragraphs etc. So, if they would write in English, results would be very different. Thankfully, they don't know English at all.
I think this loose sentence structure is an interesting idea. We don't really see much like that in English.
Some people speak in a different active noun/verb/passive noun order, but it is still very strictly adhered to. It is very rare, I think most folks like that are from the American Southwest but I don't really know why that is or how to describe it to a search engine or Wikipedia.
Like, they say "You want I should leave soon?" instead of "Do you want me to leave soon?", like the passive noun and verb are treated as though they were the active, and the actual active noun can be at the end of the sentence or in its proper place, but worded as though it were the passive.
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All right, let's move forward a bit with the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
These annals follow the years from Augustus (with an honorary mention of Julio Kaiser) to the last Norman king Stephen of Blois. I used a copy from the Project Gutenberg which is a compilation of several copies, of course neither of which the original one. The storms of history and such.
The original and the first copies were probably written at the times of Alfred the Great then they continuously logged new events into them. This makes the post-Alfred stuff contemporary observations and the pre-Alfred events second-hand information added from other sources. This shows in the length and detail of the records ofc.
I only gathered the notes on battles and a great divide can be observed in the style of these descriptions about Alfred's time. I grouped the quotes by this divide.
First I'll post the not so interesting lines. Well, lots of good stuff can be found in those too but neither mentions any fleeing.
Next I'll post those which I found interesting for some reason, most of them mentions some kind of fleeing and pursuit.
Would be nice to post pretty pictures as illustration sadly I lack of suitable ones.
Also most likely I won't finish this today, there are some conclusions waiting to be concluded.
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Here comes the first half of the "boring" stuff, the short notes from Roman, Briton and pre-Viking Anglo-Saxon times. They lack of details and most looks like this: "someone fought someone else at somewhere".
''B.C. 60. Gaius Julius the emperor ... he crushed the Britons in battle, and overcame them
A.D. 189. ... Severus came to the empire; and went with his army into Britain, and subdued in battle a great part of the island.
A.D. 455. ... Hengest and Horsa fought with Wurtgern the king on the spot that is called Aylesford. His brother Horsa being there slain, Hengest afterwards took to the kingdom with his son Esc.
A.D. 465. ... Hengest and Esc fought with the Welsh, nigh Wippedfleet; and there slew twelve leaders, all Welsh. On their side a thane was there slain, whose name was Wipped.
A.D. 473. ... Hengest and Esc fought with the Welsh, and took immense Booty. And the Welsh fled from the English like fire.
A.D. 485. ... Ella fought with the Welsh nigh Mecred's-Burnsted.
A.D. 495. This year came two leaders into Britain, Cerdic and Cynric his son, with five ships, at a place that is called Cerdic's-ore. And they fought with the Welsh the same day. Then he died, and his son Cynric succeeded to the government
A.D. 519. ... Cerdic and Cynric undertook the government of the West-Saxons; ... they fought with the Britons at a place now called Charford
A.D. 527. ... Cerdic and Cynric fought with the Britons in the place that is called Cerdic's-ley.
A.D. 556. ... Cynric and Ceawlin fought with the Britons at Beranbury.
A.D. 571. ... Cuthulf fought with the Britons at Bedford,
A.D. 577. ... Cuthwin and Ceawlin fought with the Britons, and slew three kings,
A.D. 584. ... Ceawlin and Cutha fought with the Britons on the spot that is called Fretherne. There Cutha was slain.
A.D. 628. ... Cynegils and Cwichelm fought with Penda at Cirencester
A.D. 652. ... Kenwal fought at Bradford by the Avon.
A.D. 675. ... Wulfere, the son of Penda, and Escwin, the son of Cenfus, fought at Bedwin.
A.D. 679. ... Elwin was slain, by the river Trent, on the spot where Everth and Ethelred fought
A.D. 710. ... Alderman Bertfrith fought with the Picts between Heugh and Carau. Ina also, and Nun his relative, fought with Grant, king of the Welsh;
A.D. 715. ... Ina and Ceolred fought at Wanborough;
A.D. 722. ... Ina fought with the South-Saxons
A.D. 725. ... Ina this year also fought with the South-Saxons,
A.D. 728. ... He was succeeded in the kingdom of Wessex by Ethelhard ... he fought this same year with Oswald the etheling.
A.D. 743. ... Ethelbald, king of Mercia, and Cuthred, king of the West-Saxons, fought with the Welsh.
A.D. 750. ... Cuthred, king of the West-Saxons, fought with the proud chief Ethelhun.
A.D. 753. ... Cuthred, king of the West-Saxons, fought against the Welsh.
A.D. 755. ... Cynewulf fought many hard battles with the Welsh
A.D. 774. ... the Mercians and the men of Kent fought at Otford;
A.D. 775. ... Cynewulf and Offa fought near Bensington, and Offa took possession of the town.
A.D. 780. ... a battle was fought between the Old-Saxons and the Franks;
A.D. 798. ... a severe battle was fought in the Northumbrian territory, ... wherein Alric, the son of Herbert, was slain, and many others with him.''
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The interesting stuff from the previously mentioned era which contains some details making them more exciting.
These lines tell us about losses.
A.D. 457. ... Hengest and Esc fought with the Britons on the spot that is called Crayford, and there slew four thousand men.
A.D. 603. ... Aeden, king of the Scots, fought with the Dalreathians, and with Ethelfrith, king of the Northumbrians, at Theakstone; where he lost almost all his army.
A.D. 607. ... Ceolwulf fought with the South-Saxons. And Ethelfrith led his army to Chester; where he slew an innumerable host of the Welsh; ... There were also slain two hundred priests, who came thither to pray for the army of the Welsh. Their leader was called Brocmail, who with some fifty men escaped thence. (Oh I remember something similar from Bede here: >>12611)
A.D. 614. ... Cynegils and Cwichelm fought at Bampton, and slew two thousand and forty-six of the Welsh. ("2046" is a very specific number)
Some pursuit, not really relevant for our topic tho.
''A.D. 568. ... Ceawlin, and Cutha the brother of Ceawlin, fought with Ethelbert, and pursued him into Kent.
A.D. 658. ... Kenwal fought with the Welsh at Pen, and pursued them to the Parret.
A.D. 661. ... at Easter, Kenwal fought at Pontesbury; and Wulfere, the son of Penda, pursued him as far as Ashdown.''
This is more like it, still not very helpful with the lack of info. They also look too standardized to base any arguments on them.
''A.D. 514. This year came the West-Saxons into Britain, with three ships, at the place that is called Cerdic's-ore. And Stuff and Wihtgar fought with the Britons, and put them to flight.
A.D. 552. ... Cynric fought with the Britons on the spot that is called Sarum, and put them to flight.
A.D. 752. ... Cuthred, king of the West-Saxons, fought at Burford with Ethelbald, king of the Mercians, and put him to flight.''
Ehh I messed up the quotes. Oh, well.
I think that's it for today I'll continue with the contemporary notes tomorrow. If everything goes well.
something about seeing Gaelic proper nouns like "Dalriada" and "Vortigern" getting telephone gamed into Eald Ænglisc is oddly pleasing to my autism
t. hates England passionately
It might be the modern editors courtesy.
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Here's the battles of the Viking and Norman era, first the "boring" ones.
The writers dazzle us with a new exciting formula: "they fought" + "great slaughter + "they gained/obtained vitory" or "become the masters of the battlefield".
The last phrase reflects perfectly the case which was true up to modern warfare: those was considered winners who took the battlefield, basically capturing it. This means the other side always fled, retreated or was dispersed.
''A.D. 823. ... a battle was fought between the Welsh in Cornwall and the people of Devonshire, at Camelford; ... Egbert, king of the West-Saxons, and Bernwulf, King of Mercia, fought a battle at Wilton, in which Egbert gained the victory, but there was great slaughter on both sides.
A.D. 833. ... fought King Egbert with thirty-five pirates at Charmouth, where a great slaughter was made, and the Danes remained masters of the field.
A.D. 845. ... Alderman Eanwulf, with the men of Somersetshire, and Bishop Ealstan, and Alderman Osric, with the men of Dorsetshire, fought at the mouth of the Parret with the Danish army; and there, after making a great slaughter, obtained the victory.
A.D. 867. ... having collected a vast force, with which they fought the army at York; and breaking open the town, some of them entered in. Then was there an immense slaughter of the Northumbrians, some within and some without; and both the kings were slain on the spot.
A.D. 870. ... And in the winter King Edmund fought with them; but the Danes gained the victory, and slew the king;
A.D. 881. This year went the army higher up into Frankland, and the Franks fought with them; and there was the army horsed after the battle.
A.D. 887. ... But they held their dominion in great discord; fought two general battles, and frequently overran the country in partial encounters, displacing each other several times. ...
A.D. 905. ... Whereupon the army surrounded them, and there they fought. ... And there was on either hand much slaughter made; but of the Danes there were more slain, though they remained masters of the field.
A.D. 910. ... They slew many of the Danes, and remained in the country five weeks. This year the Angles and the Danes fought at Tootenhall; and the Angles had the victory.
A.D. 937. This year King Athelstan and Edmund his brother led a force to Brumby, and there fought against Anlaf; and, Christ helping, had the victory
A.D. 982. ... The same year went Otho, emperor of the Romans, into Greece; and there met he a great army of the Saracens, who came up from the sea, and would have proceeded forthwith to plunder the Christian folk; but the emperor fought with them. And there was much slaughter made on either side, but the emperor gained the field of battle. ...''
More coming from the same in the next post.
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''A.D. 1025. This year went King Knute to Denmark with a fleet to the holm by the holy river; where against him came Ulf and Eglaf, with a very large force both by land and sea, from Sweden. There were very many men lost on the side of King Knute, both of Danish and English; and the Swedes had possession of the field of battle.
A.D. 1030. This year returned King Olave into Norway; but the people gathered together against him, and fought against him; and he was there slain, in Norway, by his own people, and was afterwards canonised.
A.D. 1067. ... he child Edric and the Britons were unsettled this year, and fought with the castlemen at Hereford, and did them much harm. ... they advanced upon Somersetshire, and there went up; and Ednoth, master of the horse, fought with them; but he was there slain, and many good men on either side; and those that were left departed thence.
A.D. 1079. ... This year, therefore, Robert fought with his father, without Normandy, by a castle called Gerberoy; and wounded him in the hand; and his horse, that he sat upon, was killed under him; and he that brought him another was killed there right with a dart. That was Tookie Wiggodson. Many were there slain, and also taken.
A.D. 1095. ... Then, soon after that the king was gone south, went the earl one night out of Bamborough towards Tinemouth; but they that were in the new castle were aware of him, and went after him, and fought him, and wounded him, and afterwards took him. And of those that were with him some they slew, and some they took alive.''
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The following four battles are noteworthy for some reason despite they aren't really related to the topic. I will write my thoughts briefly among the lines.
A.D. 837. ... Alderman Wulfherd fought at Hamton with thirty-three pirates, and after great slaughter obtained the victory, ... Alderman Ethelhelm also, with the men of Dorsetshire, fought with the Danish army in Portland-isle, and for a good while put them to flight; but in the end the Danes became masters of the field, and slew the alderman.
This is a battle with a twist: "put them to flight; but in the end the Danes" won. Very interesting. How did the battle go I wonder.
Also note the numbers: "thirty-three pirates" sounds awfully small, especially with the "great slaughter" phrase next to it. It will be more clear after the next battle.
A.D. 840. ... King Ethelwulf fought at Charmouth with thirty-five ship's-crews, and the Danes remained masters of the place.
See? The pirate is not a person at the previous battle but a ship. A longship carrying 10-60 sometimes maybe even more bloodthirsty northmen. Erm, eastman if we view it from England.
A.D. 992. ... Then the king and all his council resolved, that all the ships that were of any account should be gathered together at London; and the king committed the lead of the land-force to Alderman Elfric, and Earl Thorod, and Bishop Elfstan, and Bishop Escwy; that they should try if they could anywhere without entrap the enemy. Then sent Alderman Elfric, and gave warning to the enemy; and on the night preceding the day of battle he sculked away from the army, to his great disgrace. The enemy then escaped; except the crew of one ship, who were slain on the spot.
Not much of a battle but a good story about treachery. What could have been Alderman Elfric's motivation?
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Now this part will be exciting.
The Year of the Three Battles and the Two Dead Kings
A.D. 1066. ... But, ere King Harold could come thither, the Earls Edwin and Morkar had gathered from their earldoms as great a force as they could get, and fought with the enemy. They made a great slaughter too; but there was a good number of the English people slain, and drowned, and put to flight: and the Northmen had possession of the field of battle. ... Thither came Harold, king of the English, unawares against them beyond the bridge; and they closed together there, and continued long in the day fighting very severely. ... There was slain Harald the Fair-hair'd, King of Norway, and Earl Tosty, and a multitude of people with them, both of Normans and English; and the Normans that were left fled from the English, who slew them hotly behind; until some came to their ships, some were drowned, some burned to death, and thus variously destroyed; so that there was little left: and the English gained possession of the field. But there was one of the Norwegians who withstood the English folk, so that they could not pass over the bridge, nor complete the victory. An Englishman aimed at him with a javelin, but it availed nothing. Then came another under the bridge, who pierced him terribly inwards under the coat of mail. And Harold, king of the English, then came over the bridge, followed by his army; and there they made a great slaughter, both of the Norwegians and of the Flemings. ... Meantime Earl William came up from Normandy ... This was then told to King Harold; and he gathered a large force, and came to meet him at the estuary of Appledore. William, however, came against him unawares, ere his army was collected; but the king, nevertheless, very hardly encountered him with the men that would support him: and there was a great slaughter made on either side. There was slain King Harold, and Leofwin his brother, and Earl Girth his brother, with many good men: and the Frenchmen gained the field of battle, as God granted them for the sins of the nation.
Well known story of course, the Battles of Fulford, Stamford Bridge and Hastings, but some snippets of useful info for us.
First battle, Earl Edwin and Merkar vs Hardrada and Tostig: "good number of the English people slain, and drowned, and put to flight" - the picture of drowning men resurfaced.
Second battle, H. Godwinson vs Hardrada and Tostig: "the Normans that were left fled from the English, who slew them hotly behind" - quite explicit confession. I can imagine King Harold's personal retinue not having any problem while slaughtering them casually.
Very nice the story of the lone Viking holding the bridge until he was overrun by Godwinson and his bodyguard.
Third battle, King Harold vs William the future conqueror: boooooooring.
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Flights but not really what we're looking for.
A.D. 851. .. Alderman Ceorl, with the men of Devonshire, fought the heathen army at Wemburg, and after making great slaughter obtained the victory. ... came three hundred and fifty ships into the mouth of the Thames; the crew ... stormed Canterbury and London; putting to flight Bertulf, king of the Mercians, with his army; and then marched southward over the Thames into Surrey. Here Ethelwulf and his son Ethelbald, at the head of the West-Saxon army, fought with them at Ockley, and made the greatest slaughter of the heathen army that we have ever heard reported to this present day. There also they obtained the victory.
A.D. 993. This year came Anlaf with three and ninety ships ... and so to Maidon, where Alderman Britnoth came against him with his force, and fought with him; and there they slew the alderman, and gained the field of battle; ... Afterwards came the army to the mouth of the Humber; and there did much evil both in Lindsey and in Northumbria. Then was collected a great force; but when the armies were to engage, then the generals first commenced a flight; namely, Frene and Godwin and Frithgist.
350-390 ships. Now that's a nice number, maybe 10 000 warrior? Or much more?
Tomorrow will be a day too, we need to leave something for that occasion.
Bernd 01/17/2018 (Wed) 19:55:32 [Preview] No.13127 del
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Of course our question is does the narration in the contemporary sources gives away anything about the slaughter happened during the chasing phase of the battles.
I don't know much about annals but I do know that despite their seemingly matter-of-fact tone they are very biased. They were written from a specific point of view, influenced by (for example) the expectations of those who ordered their creation, cultural and religious prejudices, and written by people who were committed to their side and many times didn't have the experience about the events they wrote (monks living in monasteries). They got their information from already biased second-hand sources they heard about somebody who met someone who had a relative who seen somebody who had an acquaintance actually participating in the event.
The tales of the battles ... Fighting people are usually boastful and proud as fuck meanwhile insecure about their bravery. You know about the Law of the Ever Growing Numbers, Bernd? It's about the size of the two armies. "We are the good guys, badass as fuck. Of course our numbers are great." - so they overestimate of the amount of their own troops. It also helps with confidence issues, strength in numbers. But, they overestimate the number of the enemy as well. They have two reasons. If they win of course the enemy were numerous: "we are tough as fuck we can defeat large quantities of enemies". But if they lose: "we only lost because they were so many, it wasn't fair fight".
Grossman in his book mentions the tendency of soldiers of all ranks to beautify the truth when they give a report of their doings. Ofc this is generally true to everyone.
No, the soldiers are not apt to write of their failures or the failures of their men; with few exceptions, it is only the heroes and the glory that make their way into print.
In A History of Militarism, Alfred Vagts accuses military history, as an institution, of having played a large part in the process of militarizing minds. Vagts complains that military history is consistently written "with polemic purpose for the justification of individuals or armies and with small regard for socially relevant facts." He states, "A very large part of military history is written, if not for the express purpose of supporting an army's authority, at least with the intention of not hurting it, not revealing its secrets, avoiding the betrayal of weakness, vacillation, or distemper."
Vagts paints an image of military and historical institutions that for thousands of years have reinforced and supported each other in a process of mutual glorification and aggrandizement. To a certain extent, this is probably because those who are good at killing in war are quite often those who throughout history have hacked their way to power. The military and the politicians have been the same people for all but the most recent part of human history, and we know that the victor writes the history books.
It's a conspiracy, dude.
All right. I rambled a lot, let's finish this Chronicle.
A.D. 835. ... Egbert, the West-Saxon king. ... he proceeded with his army against them and fought with them at Hengeston, where he put to flight both the Welsh and the Danes.
A.D. 860. ... Alderman Osric, with the command of Hampshire, and Alderman Ethelwulf, with the command of Berkshire, fought against the enemy, and putting them to flight, made themselves masters of the field of battle.
A.D. 871. This year came the army to Reading in Wessex; and in the course of three nights after rode two earls up, who were met by Alderman Ethelwulf at Englefield; where he fought with them, and obtained the victory ... King Ethered and Alfred his brother led their main army to Reading, where they fought with the enemy; and there was much slaughter on either hand, Alderman Ethelwulf being among the skain; but the Danes kept possession of the field. ... King Ethered and Alfred his brother fought with all the army on Ashdown, and the Danes were overcome. ... They put both the troops to flight; there were many thousands of the slain, and they continued fighting till night. ... King Ethered and Alfred his brother fought with the army at Marden. They were in two divisions; and they put them both to flight, enjoying the victory for some time during the day; and there was much slaughter on either hand; but the Danes became masters of the field; ... And within a month of this, King Alfred fought against all the Army with a small force at Wilton, and long pursued them during the day; but the Danes got possession of the field.
A.D. 878. ... Then within one night he went from this retreat to Hey; and within one night after he proceeded to Heddington; and there fought with all the army, and put them to flight, riding after them as far as the fortress
A.D. 890. ... The same year also went the army from the Seine to Saint Lo, which is between the Bretons and the Franks; where the Bretons fought with them, obtained the victory, and drove them out into a river, in which many of them were drowned. (The classic drowning topos.)
A.D. 891. This year went the army eastward; and King Arnulf fought with the land-force, ere the ships arrived, in conjunction with the eastern Franks, and Saxons, and Bavarians, and put them to flight
A.D. 894. ... But the army rode before them, fought with them at Farnham, routed their forces, and there arrested the booty. ... Then went they out to the men that sat on the eastern side of the river, and fought with them; but the Christians had the victory. And there Ordhelm, the king's thane, was slain; and also many other king's thanes; and of the Danes there were many slain, and that part of them that came away escaped only by flight.
A.D. 911. ... When the king learned on enquiry that they were gone out on plunder, he sent his army both from Wessex and Mercia; and they came up with the rear of the enemy as he was on his way homeward, and there fought with him and put him to flight, and slew many thousands of his men.
A.D. 917. ... they found other troops that were riding out against Leighton. But the inhabitants were aware of it; and having fought with them they put them into full flight; and arrested all that they had taken, and also of their horses and of their weapons a good deal
A.D. 918. This year came a great naval armament over hither south from the Lidwiccians; and two earls with it, Ohter and Rhoald. ... but the men of Hertford met them, and of Glocester, and of the nighest towns; and fought with them, and put them to flight; and they slew the Earl Rhoald, and the brother of Ohter the other earl, and many of the army.
A.D. 921. ... Thence they advanced till they came to Bedford; where the men who were within came out against them, and fought with them, and put them to flight, and slew a good number of them.
A.D. 938. ... With chosen troops, throughout the day, the West-Saxons fierce press'd on the loathed bands; hew'd down the fugitives, and scatter'd the rear, with strong mill-sharpen'd blades ...
A.D. 999. ... where the Kentish army came against them, and encountered them in a close engagement; but, alas! they too soon yielded and fled; because they had not the aid that they should have had. The Danes therefore occupied the field of battle, ...
''A.D. 1001. This year there was great commotion in England in consequence of an invasion by the Danes, ... they advanced in one march as far as the town of Alton; where the people of Hampshire came against them, and fought with them. ... and of all the men who were engaged with them eighty-one. Of the Danes there was slain a much greater number, though they remained in possession of the field of battle. ... And they proceeded thence towards Exmouth, so that they marched at once till they came to Pin-hoo; where Cole, high-steward of the king, and Edsy, reve of the king, came against them with the army that they could collect. But they were there put to flight, and there were many slain, and the Danes had possession of the field of battle.
v2. ... And so soon as they joined battle, then the people gave way: and there they made great slaughter, ...''
A.D. 1006. ... They then turned along Ashdown to Cuckamsley-hill, and there awaited better cheer; for it was often said, that if they sought Cuckamsley, they would never get to the sea. But they went another way homeward. Then was their army collected at Kennet; and they came to battle there, and soon put the English force to flight; and afterwards carried their spoil to the sea. ...
A.D. 1016. ... A second battle he fought, after midsummer, at Sherston; where much slaughter was made on either side, and the leaders themselves came together in the fight. ... It was within two nights after that the king went over at Brentford; where he fought with the enemy, and put them to flight: but there many of the English were drowned, from their own carelessness; who went before the main army with a design to plunder. ... When the king understood that the army was up, then collected he the fifth time all the English nation, and went behind them, and overtook them in Essex, on the down called Assingdon; where they fiercely came together. Then did Alderman Edric as he often did before—he first began the flight with the Maisevethians, and so betrayed his natural lord and all the people of England. There had Knute the victory, though all England fought against him! ...
A.D. 1054. This year went Siward the earl with a great army into Scotland, both with a ship-force and with a landforce, and fought against the Scots, and put to flight King Macbeth, and slew all who were the chief men in the land
A.D. 1068. ... After this came Harold's sons from Ireland, about midsummer, with sixty-four ships into the mouth of the Taft, where they unwarily landed: and Earl Breon came unawares against them with a large army, and fought with them, and slew there all the best men that were in the fleet; and the others, being small forces, escaped to the ships: and Harold's sons went back to Ireland again.
A.D. 1094. ... the Welshmen gathered themselves together, and with the French that were in Wales, or in the neighbourhood, ... With some part of them fought Hugh, Earl of Shropshire, (120) and put them to flight.
A.D. 1124. ... Then came against them the king's knights from all the castles that were thereabout, and fought with them, and put them to flight, and took the Earl Waleram, and Hugh, the son of Gervase, and Hugh of Montfort, and five and twenty other knights, and brought them to the king.
A.D. 1138. In this year came David, King of Scotland, with an immense army to this land. He was ambitious to win this land; but against him came William, Earl of Albemarle, to whom the king had committed York, and other borderers, with few men, and fought against them, and routed the king at the Standard, and slew very many of his gang.
A.D. 1140. ... And the earl stole out, and went after Robert, Earl of Glocester, and brought him thither with a large army. And they fought strenuously on Candlemas day against their lord, and took him; for his men forsook him and fled.
From all this, we are the most interested in those lines where the flight took place before the
slaughter and don't sound too much like it's just a way they wrote things.
where the Bretons fought with them, obtained the victory, and drove them out into a river, in which many of them were drowned.
and there fought with him and put him to flight, and slew many thousands of his men.
and fought with them, and put them to flight; and they slew the Earl Rhoald, and the brother of Ohter the other earl, and many of the army.
and fought with them, and put them to flight, and slew a good number of them.
the West-Saxons fierce press'd on the loathed bands; hew'd down the fugitives, and scatter'd the rear, with strong mill-sharpen'd blades ... - My favourite.
And so soon as they joined battle, then the people gave way: and there they made great slaughter, ...
and fought against them, and routed the king at the Standard, and slew very many of his gang.
Not much but still.
We need more picturesque descriptions. Like sagas or what he suggested: >>12624
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071160827;view=2up;seq=2;skin=mobile
The Strayan with the Civil War threda over on EC showed me this, one of the Brown Books that recorded the histories of the units of the Civil War by state. I'll start picking through it for information we can use tomorrow, should have some good detail from what I've skimmed so far. If the link doesn't work for you, let me know. I'm a mobileposter pleb and may have to tinker with the URL I cuntpasted.
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Yeah that link is for mobiles but it's working. Tried to save a copy but it needs login. I found another with the help of web archive.
let me guess, archive.org?
because now my link is not working at all for me. Sigh, that was the only site that had the volume with the 11th Michigan Cavalry, they fought Morgan's guerillas in Kentucky
and Cavalry vs. guerilla tactics would be quite unlike anything we've dug into so far. I am curious to see how the psychological fatigue guerillas induce would be complicated by the animal husbandry present in a fully mounted force
Yeah, archive.org. And yeah it's about the 8. Infantry.
For me that link still works. So the problem is somewhere in your appliance.
Horses are a morale strengthening factor.
alright, let me fuck with it a bit and see what I can do
Do that, mein Freiwilliger.
Hehh, archive.org has 4 volumes, all about infantry units: 3., 8., 17. and 22.
I bump this so I could reply "read the fucking thread" when Bernd tries to debate the question.
I give this thread a bump. Maybe in the future can be used as reference, because typing the same thing over and over is tiring.
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How about we talk about the early Muslim conquests? It's astonishing how a religion can be militarized to the point that in only 100 years, your empire stretches from Iberia to India, from the Pyrenees to the Atlas to the Caucasus, to even winning battles against Tang China.
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Vid related
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A small part of it was just luck: both the Byzantine and Persian Empires were exhausted from decades of fighting each other.
vid unrelated
That's something that'll piss off the Salafists and ISIS jihadis. They literally label the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires as "superpowers", and how they were "defeated by, Khalid ibn Al-Walid who was the best general of all time, it's not like he just took advantage of a power vacuum between two weakening empires that just fought a 30 years war fighting enemies on literally all sides, nope, they were SUERPOWERS!". They'll say that "Tours was just a raiding party, if we sent our entire army there, there would be a Grand Mosque in Paris!".
>How about we talk about the early Muslim conquests?
So just to be clear we're talking about the years between 622-788? Or 632-711 or other dates? Not that it matters much.
I believe multiple reasons stand behind their success, in this post I want to put forward one: their ability to winning people over. Starting with Muhammad who got the Bedouins - the main fighting force of Arabia - to do his bid during the initial conquests. Then later they get over the people of Mesopotamia, the first force which added the capability of employing real sieges. Then later they get the Berbers to conquer most of Iberia for them, etc.
Persuasion has three ways: threat of violence, buying them, con them through their beliefs or customs. The Islamic conquerors used all three successfully.
I think even the rise of the Caliphate (both the state and the position) was a necessity which was pressured by the need of the conquered people and their customs, usual way of life. They got used to living under emperors both in the west (Byzantium) and east (Persia), they gave the idea to the Muslim leadership and it became the means for controlling the newly acquired regions with it's familiarity to the folks living there. Not everyone converted to Islam but these understood and accepted the concept of emperor so they could be controlled by lay authority even if religious authority did nothing for them.
Little bit different but related aspect: foreign leaders understood the concept of an emperor as well, it was better than some inherited prophetic title or whatever. Especially if their foreign leaders gave crap about his prophetic nature.
From the end of the Ridda wars to the halt of Abbasid expansion, around 800, although I do want to get into some later battles from the 10th century onwards. One of the things I find odd about the early Muslim expansion is that Eastern Arabia was actually part of the Sassanid Empire, but after the governor converted to Islam, it was basically treated as part of Muhammad's Caliphate, and while all of central Arabia was under Muslim control after the Ridda wars, it basically fell into anarchy for around a thousand years, up until the Diriyah Emirate. Other odd scenarios are for example, the Arab-Khazar wars, since Marwan ibn Muhammad technically won against the Khazars, but never really annexed it, and just went back to Damascus.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab%E2%80%93Khazar_wars
>They'll say that "Tours was just a raiding party, if we sent our entire army there, there would be a Grand Mosque in Paris!".
I've never read such statement. I disagree with it ofc, that campaign was more than a raiding party. But it's true the importance of the battle of Poitiers is/was overplayed. The Caliphate had already reached the furthest extent of effectiveness and couldn't attack in such force what would have been enough to make the Franks bow even if they wanted to.
Given the circumstances the Andalusians and Franks were in, they just couldn't win that battle. They were able to raid Frankish Aquitane and capture a few important cities like Toulouse, and Bordeaux, on the way, but they just couldn't win at Tours. If (for some reason) they were able to win, I'd wonder how they'd do against Wessex or the Saxons.
What baffling is that the Great Conquering Muslim Empire couldn't really do anything against Byznatium. They stripped the Romans from the provinces on their perifery - I guess imperial grip was weak there - but couldn't crack the real nut. Meanwhile the Sasanians fell like wheat by a scythe. All right they couldn't puncture a hole on the Frankish defense on the very far side of their territories, but Byzantium was in their mouth, a literal neigbour of the core of the Caliphate.
>If (for some reason) they were able to win, I'd wonder how they'd do against Wessex or the Saxons.
I think they would have did fine. On the British isles they were too little kingdoms with too little manpower. Not Northumbria, not Mercia, not Wessex in their peak could have stood a chance. Continent Saxons were beaten by the Franks for 200 years by the 8th century, if they could beat the Franks, Saxons wouldn't be a problem.
Really, it was impossible for them to conquer the Franks because of the circumstance they were in compared to their previous enemies. The reason why the Visigoths fell was because it was basically split in two after Roderic got into power, and rebels like the Sephardic Jews and anti-Roderic factions basically assisted the Umayyads in conquering the Visigoths, they likely wouldn't do as well against Wittiza, who far more Visigoths supported and were loyal to, aside from the Sephardic Jews really. The reason why the Byzantines fell in Syria was because they just fought a 30 year war with the Sassanians, and lost basically all of the Middle East Asia until recovering it after the 30 year war, this also applies to North Africa. When you think about it, the Byzantines only really got more powerful because of the Arab invasions, they fought enemies on literally every single front, they fought both the Ostrogoths and Visigoths, the Vandals, the Lombards, the Varangians, the Arabs, the Khazars, the Bulgars, the Slavs, the Turks, basically every Eastern European and Middle Eastern medieval power you could think of tried to take down the Byzantines at one point, and they still managed to not only repel attacks, but regain much of its former territory, for example, they reconquered Crete from the Arabs, the modern day Hatay Province in Turkey also from the Arabs, the Balkans from the Bulgars, and Crimea from the Khazars. The reason for its downfall were the Crusaders, the Mongols, and the Turks.
There are several things to address in your post.
Hmm. Let's write briefly on Visigothic Spain. The whole conquest there seems like an act of opportunism. A very successful one at that.
The thing with Visigothic Spain is that they always had the same chaos after the death of almost all their kings. In contrast to Merovingian Franca where that particular family reached a status of a Sacred Cow and their removal was a taboo for a very long time (even if one of the countries lost it's Merovingian ruling branch they sought a new ruler from the others, noone from the aristocracy thought any one of them could step in into their shoes), in Visigothic Spain there were always contenders from the high nobility for the throne and dynasties changed rapidly. They had attempts to sanctify ruling families through legislation and religious anathema (I think) but it was unsuccessful.
It just that at Roderic's time there was a neighbour with a mind set on conquest and who was ready to step in then divide et impera. Islam was a new thing back then, very new. I'm not sure they understood it's not just another strain of Christianity, a heresy or Judaism (and I think Islam itself wasn't what it become later, how we know it today, religions need time to gain their more or less final shape) so the nobles might not thought much about it. For some reason they found it more acceptable to not back Roderic against the Muslims in the hope they can keep their own little realm in the kingdom.
The Jews. Sephardic Jews are the product of Muslim Spain. Yes there were Jews previously in Iberia but they weren't Sephardi yet. It really doesn't matter, the point is it's hard to seize up their actual contribution to the conquest. It is sure that the Visigoths legislated laws very hard on them and they gained enormously lot with the new masters. I'm not sure however how many of them left in the Gothic state and how many chose to rather emigrate to North Africa (for example). They were (are) a mobile folk. The written sources left on us are not always trustworthy as sometimes the image of the Jew (for example committing something vile and the good bishop overcame him) was used to make a religious point in a story (hence it is made up). Each should be judged individually and take some of them with a hint of salt. I know it's easy to believe something bad about someone who is already hated. It's another justification of the hatred itself.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Stilo
I never even heard of this battle before, what?
>A.D. 982. ... The same year went Otho, emperor of the Romans, into Greece; and there met he a great army of the Saracens, who came up from the sea, and would have proceeded forthwith to plunder the Christian folk; but the emperor fought with them. And there was much slaughter made on either side, but the emperor gained the field of battle. ...''
Huh, Wikipedia says the Kalbids "won", but the Anglo-Saxon chronicle says the krauts won.
Seems like it was a decisive Holy Roman victory despite the many losses, but that Otto left for Greece after the battle.
>I never even heard of this battle before
There were great number of battles throughout history, it's impossible to know them all.
By the Wiki article and the Chronicle's report I would judge it as a German Pyrrhic victory.
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I looked into this >>18561 battle some more in these books (I think all available via libgen):
- Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire - Peter H. Wilson, 2016
- The History of the Western Empire Vol 1. - Robert Comyn, 1841
- Germany in the Middle Ages c.800-1056 - Timothy Reuter 1991
- The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol 3. 900-1024 - Byzantium and the west - Jonathan Shepard, 2008
They all say Otto lost that battle.
He married Theophanu, a second rate Byzantine princess of not too clear ancestry, and as he was very much interested in polishing his nimbus of Roman emperor so he launched a campaign into southern Italy. Comyn claims he led the campaign against the Byzantines on basis of his wife's claim on that region - and the Byzantines used/payed the Saracens to cool his ambitions -, contemporary writers however see it as an effort to clear the Saracens out from there. All claim his army was destroyed, Shepard adds he escaped by swimming to a Byzantine ship. Reuter says the Saracen emir was killed as well and they have to leave Italy. However the battle itself put an end to Otto's campaing for sure.
Not one of these books line up primary sources clearly, not in foot- or endnotes at least. Reuter begins his book with the introduction to the sources in general to his topic, and The New Cambridge Medieval History usually does similarly in it's volumes.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle line that the:
>emperor gained the field of battle
is based on a formula used for many entries, so it would be wise not to take it too seriously.
It would be nice to find and look into other primary sources but I've no time or energy for that, maybe if another Bernd could look into it... at least gather some... who knows.
>contemporary writers
I mean our contemporaries.
>claims he led the campaign against the Byzantines on basis of his wife's claim on that region - and the Byzantines used/payed the Saracens to cool his ambitions
So, the Arabs were supported by the Byzantines?
The other way around. Kinda.
Southern Italy was in the possession of Byzantium, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle calls it Greece despite it's Italy because of this reason. Comyn claims Otto went there to conquer it and the Byzantines hired the Saracens who owned Sicily at that time.
The question is what Otto's intentions were, what the fuck did he do with an army on lands which wasn't under his suzerainty? He married a Byzantine princess and Comyn adds 1 and 1 and concludes he wanted to take over the place on the right of his wife. He did started to pursue imperial ambitions. His Italian chancery just adopted the title of imperator Romanorum augustus in 982 which also could be used as a basis for claiming the whole peninsula.
Modern authors say he went there to drive away the Arabs - on the same basis (he was the Roman emperor that was his land). Comyn wrote his book in the middle of the 19th century modern authors can have far more sources to evaluate than he had, it would be nice to read those but that's not a short work.
Without further research the topic I'm not sure who owned what in Southern Italy at that time. I know Arabs raided the region many times, Byzantines - who really owned places there - had problems with them all the time.
I can also make sense liek this: Byzantium had the claim of the land and normally it was theirs but Arabs overrun places then Otto came and tried to make these places - but not those which were still under Byzantine control - his own by chasing away the Saracens and occupy them with his own men, legitimizing the whole move with his imperial title and maybe with his wife's rights.
>Comyn claims Otto went there to conquer it and the Byzantines hired the Saracens who owned Sicily at that time to stop his advance
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Byzantines ruled southern Italy, and the Arabs ruled Sicily. I think this is a good map of Sicily during Otto's expedition, but it's set in 1000, 18 years after the battle.
Yes, seems like an all right map.
I meant the exact "temporary" ownerships, like what was occupied/ruled by the Arabs and such.
I don't know if they ever actually controlled much of the southern Italian mainland for long, I do know the Ottomans had possessions in Italy once, but they're not Arabs, they're Turks.
Yes, they did control many cities in the mainland. Reggio Calabria I know was dominated by the Arabs, Miseno which they used as a port to raid coastal cities, they even established a settlement called Saracinesco near Rome, which was mostly by Arabs who attempted to raid Rome, but later converted to Christianity, not really part of any Muslim caliphate, but still intriguing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saracinesco
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Bumping the thread with a dank book related.
What's the Turks' greatest victory, and greatest defeat?
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it depends what you understand form greatest and worst.
By worst I would understand changing the tide of history in a bad way for the particular state.
If this is the case for you I would say battle of zenta or generally ww1.
By greatest I hope you mean solely anatolian Turks because otherwise there are too many. Anyway my bets are on mankizert then miryokefalon. Thanks to the latter anatolia finally became 'Turcia' the named given to our geography by venetians, even today our name Türkiye comes from it.
Besides these Turkish war of independence deserves honoary mention, as we were the last independent Turkish country on earth, we were so close to vanish and become a footnote in history books we had a comeback despite the odds were greatly against us.
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In terms of importance their greatest victory is the capture of Constantinople, their biggest defeat is the failure at Wien. If under Turks you mean Ottomans and their legal predecessor today's Turks. If Turks as in all the Turkic people... who knows, but Ottos are still one of the most prominent group.
Thanks for that. You might interested in book rel.
Didn't read in whole but skimmed through a good third of it. Found that part about the organization of the first artillery interesting.
> Ottos are still one of the most prominent group.
do you know what were Turks doing in central asia and eurasian stepped when they fail? They were migrating the west. Which means by history we are the most failure type of Turks xDD And we failures caused so much trouble :DD
>capture of Constantinople
We were destined to win though. We had crusaders, İlkhanate invasion, Timurid invasion yet we still hold on. Those pretty much showed us we'll eventually win, so conquering gonstantin city was a result of our victories, it wasnt our greatest victory neither amongst greates ones.
I check the book a little. It seems fundamental parts are skimmed, ignored or oversimplified. Meanwhile some kc tire details are well written. It wouldnt be total waste to read but I wouldnt rely on it too much. Maybe it's just my kc tire prejudice since I didnt read too much.
>do you know what were Turks doing in central asia and eurasian stepped when they fail? They were migrating the west.
Frankly this domino idea is a weak theory based on the view of western sources whose authors had very little knowledge on the people of the steppes.
Not necessarily domino as it didn't really create another great migration. Many Turks from other regions migrated to anatolia to fight and gain lands, that's why the boom happened after mankizert as Alp Arlsan allowed the commanders hold the land they conquer, it become stagnant after over centralization.
Also in the west both political and military entities were disrupted, so there was always a chance to fight against them or be mercenary for them. More or less 'Turcia' wasnt solely entity of Oghuz Turks, it get Turkish immigrants from many other places.
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May want to respond to this later but now I'll jump back to the Turkish War of Independence, you mentioned here >>21166
As a Hungarian I quite see the parallel in the intention of dismemberment of Ottoman Turkey and Hungary after WWI. But I also see the differences which prevented the implementation of the plan - at least most of it - in case of Turkey.
This came to my mind as you mentioned that in WWI Germany wasn't punished that much, and I replied Hungary was. But then Turkey was in similar situation however history played out alternatively.
Yeah our core regions given to weak minorities just like you, they even created yugoslavia to counter ex austria-hungary in central europe.
The difference is we had direct western occupation zones.
Besides those I dont know much about trianon compared to you, what was the reason to not create a resistance? Out of simplication, I assume your people had still too much to lose?
Saving for further battles.
One more blatant bump.
Speaking of the Ottomans, I find the transition in Ottoman Turk military strategy fairly interesting. When they were still fairly small, there was an emphasis on using superior tactics to outmaneuver their enemies but as they got stronger and more powerful, it seemed like their strategy gradually shifted to just fielding huge amounts of troops and throwing them into the fray in hopes of overwhelming the enemy. Most of the time it worked but you can also see how it worked against them as they also began suffering massive casualties in the process. I wonder what prompted this change? Did they just stop giving a fuck? You can see the old ways of tactical superiority occasionally come back when the Turks were engaged in battles against uneven odds but it seemed like from Suleiman onwards, wars of attrition became the standard. Did the Ottomans really have that many people to spare as cannon fodder?
That's just how larger armies worked in that era.
On small scale they still used cunning, tricks and maneuvers. On our borders (and later when the border went through Hungary, post-Suleiman times) there was a line of fortresses where fights were constant, quick, small horse units always broke into each others' territory to make mischief. They clashed little million times and they always tried to use everything to their own advantage, terrain, weather, vegetation, distractions, maneuverability etc.
Granted most of the time these were only skirmishes, but larger units with several thousand men did it too. Chiefly akinjis. A notable action of theirs was the plunder of Nagyvárad in 1474 (ok it's little earlier than what you specified, but I wouldn't call the Ottomans small timers at that time), when Miháloglu Ali bey led 6000+ (mainly) akinjis through the border (which at that time was quite secure) into the heart of the country barely with any notice(!) and surprised the prosperous town. Only the castle could hold out. Then they left just as suddenly as they appeared. It was a nice action from their part.
Also. Even before Suleiman during the conquering campaigns they had to be the same "blunt". There was a certain time period every year suitable for campaigning they had to stand up and fight face to face, couldn't play hide and seek or they would have never done the job. And the composition and tactics of the enemy had to be countered with something which could stand and fight, like the janissaries. And infantry isn't the most maneuverable force of the time.
And then masses of bodies (light infantry, liek azaps) were needed for sieges.
And there was the fact that what troops they could get.
numbers are a "bit" exaggarated though you're right. ottoman empire grew decadent and eventually being soldier was so profitable military poisitions such as even being ordinary janissary was being sold upon people who ready to provide the bribe. not to mention akıncı ocağı has disolved too early.
>Ottomans really have that many people to spare as cannon fodder?
Know that Ottomans mainly consisted only balkan part of the empire when they making campaign against european states. And only anatolian ones when they campaign against Iran and Egypt. Not to mention anatolian part had low population density and pretty low authority in most cases. It's highly debatable that we manage to get so many troops.
We're good at small unit tactics even during the 1st and 2nd balkan wars era. Because important positions usually given to quite retards some even illiterate, meanwhile heads of small brigades were graduated from the academy during the balkan wars.
No, he's a real person. Other Hungarians sometimes pretend to be him though.
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True, but when you stick a metal rod into somebody it can easily get stuck, thrusting weapons are much easier to defend against as they can only attack in one way and swords can deal some substantial punishment as well, yes internal wounds were much harder to treat but swords can easily chop of limbs or cleave heads.
>This was even learned by the Japanese although they had a curved Katana. The curve, like the Cossack sabers, was to enable a cut on horseback.
The katana was not actually a calvary weapon, in fact it would be uncommon to find somebody who could afford a horse and still would use a katana. The Tachi was the sword Samurai used. It's actually a common misconception and the Japanese themselves often make it in period dramas and such. The Katana was shorter and worn in a sash, it was much handier for ashigaru to wear than a tachi would be, it's actually a foot soldiers sword not a cavalry sword. If you look at contemporary artwork you will see that the important folk always wear a tachi and the ashigaru a katana. It's a misconception that developed due to the edo period, Hideyoshi started to implement laws that would restrict the ways class worked so by the edo period all ashigaru and ji samurai were deemed samurai and on top of that the katana was easier to wear so samurai would wear them when out in public and doing other non battle field things rather than a tachi.
>, thrusting weapons are much easier to defend against
only if you have a shield. otherwise spears are much harder to defend. not to mention battle formations make it even harder.
And by the time it gets stuck, you're already shot by an arrow and dead.
<le spears are better than swords bcuz Lindybeige said so :DDD
is something I actually see on the internet nowadays.
I never watched cringybeige fully.
>s they can only attack in one way
this is not mount&blade.
Spears are better in many ways. They are longer, directed by two hands, can be pointed quickly against different body parts, can wield sharp edge too not just a point, less time to master it, cheaper. Probably has more advantages I cannot think of. But beside the usage of the individual, battles are rarely solitary occupations, and a bunch of spears in formation is a very dangerous enemy.
But in essence they complement each other. Greek hoplites, Roman legionnaires, knights, they are all opted with the lance/spear/pike etc. as a first choice, and sword was the second (or last, knights used a wider selection of weapons).
Legionnaires were using short sword though. Which allowed their formations more flexible compared to hoplite formations.
Though most of the time they werent dealing with cavalry charge and stirrup wasnt much used, so for infantry sword was equally good option during that time. One of the exceptions was when they were dealing with parthians.
What I said above was for spears vs swords (both without shields)
>short sword
True. They know spata too, but I think that was the sword of the cavalry.
>Which allowed their formations more flexible
I'm not sure that was the reason.
>stirrup wasnt much used
Yeah, first rigid (metal) stirrups were brought into Europe by the Avars. Textile/rope stirrups were used by steppe people for who knows how long, but I dunno their usefulness. In other cultures, I dunno.
No, without one as well. Because they only have one angle of attack, directly forwards. There isn't actually as much involved in defecting a thrust and a thrust doesn't change much no matter where it is directed.
It's true they actually are in general, but usually spearmen will have a backup so if it gets stuck they can draw a sword.
*usually
I meant usually if they could afford one.
>directly forwards
you can get spear in your feet, in your shoulder, in your torso.. since it's not swinging it's even harder to block. blocking spear without a shield is a nightmare.
True, I was referring to two similar swords or even the same sword(as the post I originally replied to was referring to Napoleon telling dragoons to thrust with their sword).
Spears have much longer reach and more weight behind them, so yes, you can easily change the direction of the thrust from the foot to the head quite quickly. But with a sword if you thrust to the legs you end up exposing yourself in the process.
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So archery and Lars Andersen.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=i4mqt69VZ28 [Embed]
I'm an hour in. It's kinda hard to listen to him. He should talk slower.
For me the best part is about 30 mins when he demonstrates what happens if an archer shoots at a melee fighter (in his example two), and then how an archer can control their behaviour, movement, how he can provoke them opening possibilities to shoot them. Basically feinting with one shot to make them cover and hid behind the shield so he could target the leg. It's like fighting with sword or a spear, only on a farther distance.
Could Tamerlane have invaded Ming China?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur#Attempts_to_attack_the_Ming_dynasty
Could invade? Most likely.
Could win? No.
I know very little of Temur's empire, but I know in China a new dynasty was on the rise, that's always dangerous. Also they could field similar steppe cavalry, that's always a good counter.
Timur was able to do everything the Mongols didn't do. He conquered Anatolia, Damascus, India, even invaded Russia. He actually teamed up with the Northern Yuan dynasty in Mongolia itself and converted them to Islam, and since the Ming were just recently established, he had a good chance of conquering China.
Previous invasions of China by such groups usually involved invading a China that was fragmented in some way, such as the Civil war that it was in when the Mongols invaded or the Rebellion that was occurring when the Manchu invaded. Ming was fairly stable and didn't really have a problem with Civil wars so this would be much harder. But it did have rebellions so if the Timurids managed to time it well then maybe but the Ming were a stronger China than what the Mongols faced previously.
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>that accent
It is pretty hard to watch. Maybe native speakers understand him easier though.
I still don't understand where is the controversy of his videos. Only one thing that may be used against him is that he did most of his tricks after dozens of tries, i.e. video is somewhat staged.
But arguing that he is completely wrong and people can't shoot like him is pointless - he clearly proved that you may shoot with other hand, shoot while moving etc - it is shown in the video. Do historian community actually that narrow minded, or he just exaggerating it?
I could not really watch it all but it seems like he is just exaggerating it for attention.
The only partially controversial issue is the one on what side of the bow to shoot from. In an eastern context it's always the right but in a western context there are merits to both. Even the matter of shooting speed isn't controversial, not even amongst longbow historians. It's the opinion of Mike Loades for example that they would have held fire until a certain range and then fired as fast as they could for the duration of the window they had.
>t's the opinion of Mike Loades for example that they would have held fire until a certain range and then fired as fast as they could for the duration of the window they had.
Wasn't it more like massed volley fires? They didnt really aim but more got it up and hoped for the best
Ilkhanates conquered anatolia just like timur and neither stayed here.
If Bayezid I didn't provoke him, he would go to china and most likely conquer them because he is a military genius. But instead he screwed us and kys'd while going for china.
How was the psychological make up 2000 years ago? Did the roman legionaries had this resistance to kill too?
Yes. They had. From ancient times we have very little sources, but about the Romans we have, and Grossman uses their accounts to support his case.
Romans observed the tendency to slash instead of stab both in their own soldiers and the barbarians, they also recognized the superior effectiveness of stabbing. The one thing they didn't know what makes people rather slash than stab, what is the psychological reason that works behind, so that they didn't write about. But their recruits went through rigorous training to come over the preventing block, and enable them to stab, and to make that into habit.
Beside in OP, I also mentioned Romans here: >>8961 At both places I note the role of officers who encouraged, pressured their subordinates to kill.
Besides the uniformity of their soldiers (everyone had the same equipment, arms, responsibilities, rights, compensations, etc) and the "job" done together alleviated the individual guilt over killing, made it more bearable by sharing it with each other. Doing the job well was also rewarded, and instilled a contempt against their adversaries, deny their humanity by labeling them inferior ("barbarian").
So to sum up, training, "psychology", teamwork, and the pressure of an authority was used by the Romans to be better killers on the battlefields than their enemies. They met problems with enemies (eg. Persians) who had a technical filter between the killer and the victim (eg. horse archers) and had superior posturing techniques (eg. cataphracts), but as long as they could keep the quality of the legions, they were a match. When Romans started to rely on troops which didn't have the training, the mindset, didn't have officer corps, then started the real problems.
Human nature is the same.
Fascinating. I've read somewhere that in the ancient battlefields, after a battle it was the women who were sent out to kill the remaining foes who still barely alive.
Does the willingness to kill differ from the sexes?
>Romans observed the tendency to slash instead of stab both in their own soldiers and the barbarians, they also recognized the superior effectiveness of stabbing.
Ewart Oakeshott mentions this too. He writes that many bronze age swords were thin, long and had a hilt that was simply riveted to the blade. He also mentions that even though they have these thrust orientated designs, many finds show the hilt connection to the blade being damaged by lateral force in a way that suggests people were slashing with them.
I dunno about that. Maybe it was the basis which give birth to the idea of Valkyries. Can you remember where did you read that?
I think how they treated the wounded enemy could been wildly different from battle to battle, even by the same army.
>Ewart Oakeshott
Can you give me more info? I'm chiefly interested in the book or the article. But this is very interesting tidbit.
He mentions it in his book The Archaeology of Weapons, probably one of the best books on swords ever published. It's where the Oakeshott Typology comes from as well, which is what people generally refer to when they say 'this is a type IV sword' or something like that.
I've never heard that, I think the only thing of the sort I have heard is that villages from nearby would loot corpses but that it was often seen as a very lowly thing to do. Certain armies even had severe punishments for it but I can't recall what army or what punishment and it might have refereed to looting other people's kills.
Thanks. It's on liben I see.
*libgen
Found something relevant on the Oral History of the Army, volume 10, pages 173-4. Not about the coup d'etat but of the Sergeants' Revolt in Brasília, September 1963, when Navy and Air Force personnel briefly occupied the city before being crushed by the Army, including paratroopers.
It is necessary to remember that there'd been an Army Police platoon's action in the previous day. That night, the Liutenant was Uchoa. But what happened to him? In the moment of the rebels' attack on the Air Ministry, he was with the platoon garrisoning and resisted the attack. Many shots were fired against his platoon. (...) He ordered fire because he had to stop the attack - it was really an attack. No soldier fired, no soldier fired. He took a soldier's rifle and behind a column spent the ammunition, rolled to another column - all soldiers were behind the Ministry's columns. He went soldier to soldier and resisted the attack himself, shooting, because the soldiers didn't.
The Army Library has a book, from 1958, "Men or Fire". I read this book a lot and if I'm not wrong it's General Omar Bradley's who did an inquiry on the Second World War on why man doesn't shoot, when in combat. After an operation in one of the Pacific isles, he put two or three regiments in "quarantine", so to speak, in a Pacific isle and heard from the commander to the last soldier. Where were you during the attack? What happened? Why didn't you shoot? Etc... And concluded, saying as follows: "The psychological factor". He has an interesting reference: the young man, mainly - it's our case that we incorporate recruits - he's raised to not mistreat even animals. It's that thing, don't tie a can to the cat's tail, don't mistreat the animal and from one hour to another, from seventeen to eighteen years he presents at quarters and we'll teach him to shoot to kill.
In face of this, when I was at the Agulhas Negras Military Academy: "We're here to teach you to kill, but to kill in the Fatherland's defense". Liutenant Uchoa was astonished. How is it that his soldier didn't shoot - there was no way to shoot! In the book, Omar Bradley says: "The best employment rate of troops in the Second World War was with paratroopers and commandos". Russian paratroopers had as much as 18% firing, at most 20%. In other words: of every infantry combat group only two men shoot when facing the enemy, even when he's running ten meters away. A combat group has a a sergeant and a corporal. If, of the ten members, two shoot, only the sergeant and the corporal fired. Not the soldiers. Recruits don't shoot, a lot of training is needed. A proof is what happened with Liutenant Uchoa.
With paratroopers, efficiency is greater, but we got to the last level of the four ministerial buildings and did seven hundred prisoners. How many shots we fired? None. We arrested them all, after storming the place.
That really goes hand in hand with what Grossman gathered. Nice to see relatively random finds that supports the theory.
What does Bernd think? In WWII did Americans, the ordinary man know, what they were fighting for? Could they? Obviously propaganda existed, but were journalism more honest? Or the era more simple in definitions that one could differentiate easier? Could one say, yes I found this or that right and I think it is worth fighting for?
Have Bernd read Catch 22? Does Bernd think it compares well to the reality? How about other WWII novels, how about Vonnegut's works for example? I'm mentioning fiction, because they might grasp more the thought process and the emotional involvement of those who lived through the events.
All the sides of the participants in the war have some caveats I guess worth to take a look, but at the moment I specifically interested in the Americans.
I think ideology is much less important than it may be assumed to be. Just look at a situation like Korea or Vietnam, the split between ideology is solely based on location, almost like the ideology itself is unimportant and it just happens to be the flavour of the government they are under. If that was not the case you would see each army being a complete mix of various regions who had crossed either north or south to fight for the ideology they believe in but that doesn't generally happen, they usually stay and fight for the area they come from and in the cases they don't it's usually more to do with a group being poor and oppressed and thus willing to fight for whoever promises salvation rather than purely idealogical I would say. And taking that a step further you have the post WW2 Germans who on either side of the wall served the ideology of their former enemy. I'm not saying ideology does not matter just that it's not the sole factor or even the most important factor. In fact even before then, their were Germans ethnics who fought against the Germans in Poland and France and then joined the German army afterwards and there were Poles fighting for communists and democracies.
I think the average American would see the threat to Britain as being a good enough motivation as they are quite culturally close and then added to that in 1941-2 having both themselves attacked(although they were never in any real threat) and then seeing Australia become isolated and vulnerable would give them even more motivation. I don't think any US soldier would think that the war was wrong and not worth it.
>We arrested them all
you were in the parastroopers?
You weren't? I thought everyone here was.
I assume that's a line from the Oral History of the Army.
I guess everyone goes along with the crowd without putting too much thought into it.
never underestimate peer pressure paprika man. just look at the plandemic today. most who say they will not take the vaccine will take it once their job requires it or their family/friends push them towards it. perhaps only the truest of bernd will stand firm in the face of mob mentality.
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I'm interested in what nations see as the legendary battles of their country if they have them.
In Australia we have this ANZAC Legend. This idea of the Australian Soldier being a rough and sturdy farmer from the outback used to living in the bush, a larrakin, stoic and for whom mateship is one of if not the most important thing to him. We have two(possibly three) famous battles that have become part of the fabric of Australian legend. Gallipoli and Kokoda, with the possible addition of Tobruk although it's not really as legendary or famous as the first two.
Gallipoli was one of our first battles and we have this idea that it was a bloodbath. The popular narrative is that it was almost entirely if not entirely an ANZAC affair and that it was instigated by the British who did not care about us and saw us as cannon fodder and therefore they sent us to this massacre to die for little to no purpose. There is even an odd kind of kinship with the Turk over this, where Australians feel that we should not have been there and that the Turks suffered too so were were both victims of the British. Of course looking into this you will find that actually it was not an ANZAC operation, the British and French were a party to it as well and in fact suffered greater than we did, some of the toughest beaches were those stormed by the British. Turkish coastal Artillery actually could not reach Anzac cove and the beach itself was not seen as being all that likely for a major landing so was not too well defended comparatively.
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Part 2(Post was too long apparently)
The Second battle, that of the Kokoda trail is seen as a small ragtag force of reserves outnumbered and fighting their way back to safety against a Japanese foe that hugely out numbered them until finally reinforcements from the regular army(the 6th and 7th Divisions that had been send back from North Africa for this purpose) arrived and saved the day. There is a feeling that the British were using us and did not care about the defence of Australia at all, hence why there were reserves defending Australia in the first place and not the 6th and 7th Divisions. But again, once you look into this, in the initial stages the numbers were fairly even, sometimes we were slightly outnumbered but sometimes we outnumbered them, we were also fighting a retreat through dense jungle and hilly terrain, the perfect environment for that and fighting against a poorly equipped enemy with a terrible logistics system while we had support from the US and a better system of supply and equipment to begun with, some estimates say that over 90% of Japanese forces that died in the Papua New Guinea theatre died of sickness and disease, they suffered horribly from their terrible logistics. Once the 6th and 7th Divisions arrived we then quite significantly outnumbered them. As for weather the British really cared so little and were willing to see us invaded, it was unlikely ever to happen even had we lost Papua and New Guinea and as Chief of the Imperial General staff Field Marshall Sir Alanbrooke told his Australian colleague and noted in his war diary when we kept pestering about having our forces returned, the war was not going to be won or lost in Australia anyway yet if Britain fell Australia would fall with her.
As for the Anzac Spirit, I think all enlisted men fit that description, they are all going to be poor working class type lads and you ALWAYS here about this notion of fighting for the man beside you and keeping a sense of humour in every army. Also interestingly only 13.1% actually came from Agricultural backgrounds according to information on the Australian War Museum website and most of them would not be from the 'outback'. This makes sense as farmers played a vital function.
Is this more of an Australian thing or do other nations have certain near mythological battles like this too or a certain legendary Soldier ethos as well? I'm particularly interested in seeing whether tiny and unimportant nations have them, like Hungary for example, they lost both world wars and nobody hears much about them in either war, yet they most have some internal views on certain battles that they took part in.
Opps, I meant Australian War memorial website not war Museum.
It mentions some other interesting things too like the average height.
>{10} A recruit might conceal his age, but not his height. In 1939 the AIF minimum was 5 feet 6 inches (167.6 cm); a year later 5 feet (152 cm) was enough.[24] The patchy figures available suggest an average of about 5 feet 7.7 inches (172 cm), slightly shorter than the American average of 5ft 8.4in (173.7 cm).
And that recruits were dumb.
Table 3: Psychological assessments of intellectual capacity of recruits: Proportion above median for the army standard recruit population (%)
Civil adult male population 72
Recruits (standard recruit population) 51
Recruits allocated to arms 72
Signals 91
Armoured and cavalry 75
Machine guns 72
Artillery 71
Infantry 65
>15} Australian army recruits were generally not highly educated: men assessed as requiring attention because they were 'educationally backward' were probably more common than those who had completed a full secondary course, and illiterates were two to three times more prevalent than the university educated.[37] The 1942-3 census found that approximately half the men in the Army had left school at age 14, two-thirds at or before that age.[38] Only 7 per cent had completed a full secondary course, and 1.4 per cent a degree or diploma.[39]
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/journal/j29/civils
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