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Forums10
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Apr 29th, 2024
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Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 2,308 Likes: 44
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 2,308 Likes: 44 |
Dead is dead. Doesnt make much difference where or when. Great song.
Great sense of humour those Gurkhas! Lagopus..
Had a Gurkha and Royal Marine instructor for hand to hand combat training at The Basic School. Both were wickedly funny. Id see them shooting glances at each other as they watched us train and imagined them thinking howd these dumbarses ever win a war. __________________________ Driving trucks on the moon. LCpl Lonny Rhodes (Route Red to Shir Ghazy)
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Joined: Mar 2015
Posts: 352 Likes: 33
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Mar 2015
Posts: 352 Likes: 33 |
For those who are interested in the Sicily and Italy campaigns, I'll recommend Rick Atkinson's "The Day of Battle" which is the 2nd book, of three, that chronicles the US Army in North Africa, Italy & Europe during WWII.
And yes Mark Clark was a pompous ass and poor general, he probably would have been sent back to the US if he hadn't been very good friends with Eisenhower.
I have become addicted to English hammered shotguns to the detriment of my wallet.
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350 |
Atkinson peerless in my opinion. No flies on Douglas Porch's The Path to Victory.
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350 |
The Gurkhas seemed funny in a different way, a sort of Sunday School mores softening the raw stuff of soldier banter. I was with a Gurkha unit in action during the 1971 India-Pakistan War. I admired their discipline and loyalty to their officers.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 13,160 Likes: 1154
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 13,160 Likes: 1154 |
a sort of Sunday School mores What exactly do you mean by "Sunday School mores"? SRH
May God bless America and those who defend her.
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Joined: Jul 2017
Posts: 32
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jul 2017
Posts: 32 |
Thanks for mentioning the Italian Campaign. Not to take anything away from the troops in Northern Europe, but the guys who fought in Italy had a tough time too.
My father was drafted six days after D-Day and ended up with the 91st Infantry Division in the Apennine mountains shortly after Christmas 1944. He missed a lot of the action, but he still saw enough to last him a lifetime.
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Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,379 Likes: 105
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 11,379 Likes: 105 |
gjw, I speak Italian. I lived in Rome for 5 years and know very well that campaign. Anzio was a horror (and I once played a golf tournament down there). I will offer an opinion about Marc Clark though. He was an egotistical A$$. He had the chance to cut off the Germans after the French mountain troops finally breached the Gustav Line West of Monte Casino. But for the first time ever he acted on the Eureka code break information that the Germans were evacuating Rome and decided he'd be the "liberator." He never paid much attention to the signals intelligence before.
Argo, not sure how I missed your reference to "the Eureka code break". I never had anything to do with SIGINT (other than reading the reports when I had the "need to know"), but I've never heard of Eureka relative to WWII SIGINT. Are you referring to the Ultra information derived from breaking the codes the Germans used on their Enigma machines?
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350 |
At the platoon level, in action and during rest, they were a cut above in general deportment from any soldiers I had seen. There's something we've lost in their mountain culture of tradition, education and common verities.
Here were elite infantry doing their job with quiet assurance, knowing their world reputation as top of their craft, without any of the hubristic, bad language and dirty talk that seems part of our culture at all ranks.
They spoke or understood English. They were like you and I as Baptist country boys at age 10 before pollution crept in. 1971 was at worst of the other war where soldiers fragged their leaders by the hundreds in Vietnam.
With the Gurkhas, I felt humble in the company of better men.
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Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 2,308 Likes: 44
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Feb 2012
Posts: 2,308 Likes: 44 |
At the platoon level, in action and during rest, they were a cut above in general deportment from any soldiers I had seen. There's something we've lost in their mountain culture of tradition, education and common verities.
Here were elite infantry doing their job with quiet assurance, knowing their world reputation as top of their craft, without any of the hubristic, bad language and dirty talk that seems part of our culture at all ranks.
They spoke or understood English. They were like you and I as Baptist country boys at age 10 before pollution crept in. 1971 was at worst of the other war where soldiers fragged their leaders by the hundreds in Vietnam.
With the Gurkhas, I felt humble in the company of better men.
Real choir boys when they arent lopping off heads and laughing about it. ___________________________ Last Date (with your head) https://youtu.be/GuniPtPWmCs
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Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350
Sidelock
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Sidelock
Joined: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,350 |
As our military, their job is to kill. I haven't heard a word from the thousands I've interviewed that they took any pleasure from it.
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