Thursday - November 05, 2009

A singular and sad day for Brit military literally stabbed in the back. Is it time to go?

A day or two ago posted an article on the death of a bomb disposal soldier who was on his last days tour.  He was btw, a local fellow from our area, and so naturally there’s a bit more news and background on him.

Well, yesterday a group of Brit soldiers were murdered in an attack by what authorities are saying was a Taliban mole.  They were unarmed at the time having just returned from a patrol and took off their flak jackets and helmets and gathered for cold drinks and tea in what should have been a safe compound.

Not available on line and even if it were, are the photos and description of exactly what and how it happened have had a great impact in hard copy that just can’t be reproduced on line.

No point in my relating the entire story.  It’s all here in these two articles.  The question I have is, are we failing?  Are we, that is America and England and what few allies we may have, spitting into the wind?  Are we trying to seriously nation build and create a democracy in a place that will NEVER be ready or accepting of such notions?  And btw ...  just what sort of ‘democracy’ are we trying to implant?  Are we going to teach them pc as well? 

Look, I am not a military strategist.  I see history and I see results.  I might respect the fighting ability of the foe or at least try not to underestimate their ability to hit back in ways that work for them.  But I don’t understand how we’re making things safer for the west by fighting tribes in some god forsaken shit hole populated by life forms that are barely human.  If we need to destroy them fine. Then why can’t we just nuke the whole area?  We killed an awful lot of innocent people in WW2 without wanting to.  But we damn well won a war we HAD to win.  Them or us, and them lost! Period.

Surely with tighter border controls (the will has to be there) and increased security and a shoot to kill policy by security services, surely we can avoid terrorist attacks on our soil without spending lives in Afghanistan.  ????  I’m not saying I’m correct in that, but I am asking the question.

Of course, safeguarding our homeland would mean killing (literally) off the traitors and 5th columnists among us.  Until that’s seen to people, we’re just spinning our wheels and wasting good young lives.

Those Brit soldiers that were killed were done in by someone trusted by them. He was a policeman, as I understand it.  Brits have been training the police there as have we (USA).  These (from all I have read here) are not the most trustworthy ppl on the planet.  They are easily bribed and loyalty shifts from one paymaster to another with some frequency.  Ppl in that part of the world have something approaching ‘loyalty’ but it’s to the tribe they come from. Not the govt. they currently work for.

On the one hand, pulling out of Afghanistan sends a message to terrorists everywhere.  We’ll go away if you do this sort of thing a lot.
On the other hand, is that place or its life forms worth the price?  Will we gain anything long term to make it worthwhile?  If we did nuke em, who’d oppose us except our own 5th col.? Yeah, the euros would jump up and down and come up with some kind of anti American slogan. Scew em. Challenge them to a war and see how they stand. 

Patrick Cockburn: Deaths bring whole Afghan strategy into question

Analysis

Thursday, 5 November 2009

I was in an office in Kabul this summer being lectured by a mid-ranking official about the successful work of the government. “Completely off the record, what do you really think of this government?” I asked him, not expecting a very interesting reply.

“So long as you promise not to reveal my identity, I can tell you that this government is made up of killers and crooks,” answered the official with scarcely a pause. He gave some examples of government-inspired killings and corruption.

In this tradition of carefully calculated treachery, the shooting dead of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman operating with them is hardly surprising. Afghan leaders have long been notorious for concealing their true loyalties and changing sides. But the potential political consequences are very serious. The US and British strategy to build up the Afghan security forces to as many as 400,000 may prove impossible because the state is too weak and too poor and commands the loyalty of too few Afghans.

The reputation of Afghans for always defeating their enemies is based in part on the speed with which they join the winner. The Taliban advances in the 1990s were notable less for military victories than local warlords defecting to them after receiving a large bribe. In the US war to overthrow the Taliban in 2001, the same process went into reverse as the CIA bought off the same warlords who then sent their men home without a fight.

Nor is this the first time that Western forces have been turned on by their Afghan colleagues. In Kunduz province north of Kabul earlier this summer, a policeman shot eight of his colleagues and turned his police post over to the Taliban. An American military trainer was shot and wounded by one of the men he was training when he drank water in front of them when they were fasting during Ramadan.

The shaky loyalty of the Afghan police and, to a lesser extent, the army to their own government undermines US and British plans to hold the line against the Taliban while a strong local security force is built up. US political leaders speak of a force of 240,000 soldiers and 160,000 police to be trained in the next few years. In reality, though, nobody knows the current size of the Afghan security forces.

The army is supposedly 90,000 strong, but this figure may be grossly over-stated. “My educated guess is that such an army simply does not exist,” writes Ann Jones, an American specialist on Afghanistan. “I knew men who repeatedly went through ANA [Afghan National Army] training to get the promised Kalashnikov and the pay. Then they went home for a while and often returned some weeks later to enlist under a different name.”

Even so, the reputation of the army among ordinary Afghans is much better than that of the police. Some of these are paid a pittance for a very dangerous job. They are often stationed in vulnerable outposts and checkpoints. Their training is frequently almost non-existent. Before the presidential election in August, policemen being trained by a US security firm who had been receiving eight weeks’ training saw this reduced to three weeks, so they could be sent to guard polling stations in southern Afghanistan.

More senior policemen can make money through aiding drug smugglers. General Aminullah Amarkhail, the former head of security at Kabul airport, who was sacked for his success in arresting heroin smugglers, says that the profits are such that jobs are bought and sold for large sums. “You have to pay $10,000 [£6,000] in bribes to get a job as a district police chief,” he says, “and up to $150,000 to get a job as chief of police anywhere on the border – because there you can make a lot of money.”

SOURCE

British soldiers murdered in Afghanistan by Taliban assassin: Killer back with us and safe, say insurgents

By DAVID WILLIAMS, IAN DRURY and LIZ HAZELTON
Last updated at 1:02 PM on 05th November 2009
Five British soldiers killed in Afghan attack named by MoD

UN announces temporary withdrawal of 600 staff due to security concerns
Manhunt continues for killer who fled on motorbike in wake of shooting

Taliban insurgents today claimed that the Afghan policeman who murdered five British soldiers was back with them and ‘safe’.

The assassin, identified as a man called Gulbaddin, had fled the scene of slaughter on a motorbike after the attack on Tuesday.
But despite a desperate search involving British special forces, MI6 officers and surveillance drones there has been no trace of him since.

If true, the Taliban’s claim would confirm suspicions Gulbaddin fled the area using well-trod drugs smuggling routes established by insurgents.
Back in Britain, Gordon Brown is under mounting pressure to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in the wake of the attack.

As government policy on the war-torn region was savaged by all sides, Downing Street announced that the Prime Minister would make a ‘major speech’ on the issue tomorrow.

There was no immediate information about its contents but sources do not believe it signals any change in policy.
Two former Labour ministers and a series of bereaved families have called for an end to the UK’s military involvement after the soldiers were cut down in a hail of machine gun fire.

Six others were seriously injured in the attack by a man they trusted as they relaxed and drank tea in a compound.

Former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle declared ‘enough is enough’, adding: ‘It is time we should bring our troops home from what is an impossible task.’

COMPLETE STORY HERE

Posted by peiper     on 11/05/2009 at 08:16 AM   
Filed Under: • Terrorists • UK • War On Terror • War-Stories •  
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   Monday - November 02, 2009

KILLED ON THE VERY LAST DAY OF HIS TOUR IN AFGHANISTAN ….

Bad enough these brave young kids are dying and being maimed. That’s always a damn sad thing.
But somehow, to die on your last day of the tour .... I don’t know.  Something seems extra sad about that. Especially when you consider the lives this one Battling Brit saved.
I truly am nothing but upset and very depressed reading this.  Wish I hadn’t.  But then, hell.  Every time I see the reports I feel bad. Which means almost every day because there isn’t any way to avoid it.  And I shouldn’t avoid it anyway.  Neither should my fellow Americans.  These are the kids dying along side our guys.  Just as brave, just as young, just as sad.

Bomb expert who saved ‘countless lives’ killed in Afghanistan
One of the Army’s most prolific bomb disposal experts who saved “countless lives” has been killed on the last day of his operational tour, the Ministry of Defence has disclosed.

By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
Published: 2:00PM GMT 02 Nov 2009

Despite “staring death in the face on a daily basis” Staff Sgt Olaf “Oz” Schmid continued to defuse bombs in Sangin, the most lethal town for IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) in Helmand province.

The soldier, described as a man of “extreme courage”, was killed instantly as he attempted to make safe a bomb left in the town.

He is the third IED Disposal soldier to be killed in the last year as the Taliban increase their bombing campaign against the British force.

Among the great skill and courage in the ordnance disposal teams S/Sgt Schmid, 30, was marked as the “best of the best” defusing 64 of the estimated 1,200 IEDs found by British troops this year.

As well as taking part in Operation Panther’s Claw, a major assault on a Taliban stronghold, he found 31 IEDs during a single operation to clear a road near Sangin in August.

Following his death on Saturday his wife Christina said her husband had been “cruelly murdered on his last day of a relentless 5 month tour”.

“The pain of losing him is overwhelming. I take comfort knowing he saved countless lives with his hard work.”

Lt Col Robert Thomson, commanding officer of the 2Bn The Rifles, who recently returned from Afghanistan, described S/Sgt Schmid “simply the bravest and most courageous man I have ever met”.

“Under relentless IED and small arms attacks he stood taller than the tallest.

“He saved lives in 2 RIFLES time after time and for that he will retain a very special place in every heart of every Rifleman in our extraordinary battle group.”

In one 24 hour operation clearing possibly the most dangerous route in Afghanistan known as Pharmacy Road, he found 31 IEDs.

Lieutenant Colonel Gareth Bex, the commanding officer of the counter-IED task force, said many soldiers in Helmand owed their lives to S/Sgt Shmid’s “gallant actions”.

“The tag ‘legend’ is frequently bestowed nowadays but in his case it is rightly justified - SSgt Schmid was a legend. His courage was not displayed in a fleeting moment of time; he stared death in the face on a daily basis. His sacrifice will never be forgotten.”

He added that the soldier “takes his rightful place” alongside other bomb disposal experts who had been killed - Warrant Officer O’Donnell, who was awarded the George Medal and bar and Capt Dan Shepherd, who died during Operation Panther’s Claw.

The soldier, born in Truro Cornwall, also took part in Operation Panther’s Claw this summer which saw a bloody death told as British troops cleared Taliban strongholds ahead of the flawed presidential elections. S/Sgt Schmid, who worked in a High Threat Operator role sometimes alongside special forces, secured 11 finds of bomb making equipment many of them during the operation.

“SSgt Oz Schmid was a man of extreme courage who revelled in this the most challenging and dangerous of environments,” said his colleague Major Tim Gould.

His actions are likely to make him a strong candidate for a gallantry award, defence experts have said.

The total British lives lost in Afghanistan now stands at 224 with 87 lost this year alone.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 11/02/2009 at 11:47 AM   
Filed Under: • Battling Brits • Heroes • UK • War-Stories •  
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   Thursday - October 15, 2009

Italy blamed for deaths of French troops.  Careful, it might not be true. Problem is …

We really don’t know who to believe.  If true it paints a pretty bad picture of how that war is being managed. Or maybe it isn’t being managed among the Italians.  ??  Don’t wanna be too fast on the trigger here.
The fact that this is tomorrows paper is bad enough.

Italy blamed for deaths of French troops after ‘hushing up bribes paid to Taliban’

By Mail Foreign Service
Last updated at 4:27 PM on 15th October 2009

Italy’s secret services have been accused of paying the Taliban thousands of dollars to keep an area in Afghanistan controlled by the Italians safe.

Rome was also accused of hushing up the bribes, keeping them secret from Nato allies - meaning that when France took over the same area, Paris misread the security situation there.

Shortly afterwards, ten French soldiers were killed in a shock ambush that had massive political repercussions in Paris.

Today Italy’s defence minister slammed the report, printed in the Times newspaper, as ‘rubbish’.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s office called the report ‘completely groundless’.

The Times reported that Italy had paid ‘tens of thousands of dollars’ to Taliban commanders and warlords in the Surobi district, east of the capital, Kabul.

The newspaper cites Western military officials, including high-ranking officers at Nato accused Rome of failing to inform its allies, misleading the French, who took over the Surobi district in mid-2008, into thinking the area was quiet and safe.

Then, the French contingent was hit with the ambush. It was one of the single biggest losses of life suffered by Nato forces in Afghanistan.
Nato spokesman James Appathurai and French government officials refused to comment on the report.

‘The Berlusconi government has never authorized nor has it allowed any form of payment toward members of the Taliban insurgence,’ a statement by the premier’s office said.

It says it does not know of any such payment by the previous government.

Berlusconi won elections in April 2008, replacing a centre-left government headed by Romano Prodi.

The statement noted that in the first half of last year the Italian contingent suffered several attacks, including in the Surobi district where one soldier was killed in February 2008.

Defenve Minister Ignazio La Russa fired back at the Times, saying the newspaper ‘collects rubbish’.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera, La Russa said that in the summer of 2008 ‘I had been minister for a short time, I’ve never received news from the secret services of payment to the chiefs of the Taliban.’

La Russa said that a benevolent attitude toward the Italians who serve in Afghanistan is due to ‘the behavior of our military, which is very different compared to that of other contingents’.

‘They have always showed they are close to the people and they get the same in return,’ La Russa said of the Italian soldiers.

‘To connect all of this with the death of the French soldiers ... seems an absurdity to me.’

Italy has about 2,800 soldiers stationed in Herat and in the capital of Kabul.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 10/15/2009 at 12:00 PM   
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   Tuesday - October 13, 2009

More about Sickles

Ok, I stole this video from Theo’s today ...






But isn’t the music lovely? It’s called Ashokan Farewell, by Jay Unger. It was the theme music from the Ken Burns Civil War mini-series.




So I bought a copy of James Hessler’s Sickles At Gettysburg after my post last week, and I’ve been reading it whenever I’ve had a chance. The author looks at tons of information, and winds up with a middle of the road opinion: Sickles, a man with a dark and inglorious past, was NOT the big hero of that battle as he spent 50 years trying to convince everyone. Yet he was also NOT the big screw up that his detractors have painted him as. My take at this point in my reading is this: had Sickles not extended the Union line, Lee and Longstreet’s battle plan would have gone off without a hitch, and the entire Army of the Potomac could have either been a) completely surrounded and wiped out on Cemetery Ridge, or b) encapsulated and held in that position while a major part of the Confederate Army did an end run around them to the south and marched on Washington DC. And won the war. So Sickles’ action prompted the main battle into being, and made everyone change their plans on the fly, which altered everything. He thought that the elevated ground in the Peach Orchard was high enough that Confederate artillery placed their would destroy the Union lines on the Ridge. It really wasn’t, but Lee and Longstreet had the same thought, and that was the move they were going for. Sickles’ “misunderstanding” kept that bit of ground out of their control until quite late in the afternoon of July 2nd, at which point it became worthless. You can’t aim cannons very well in the dark. Not in those days.

You can play a lot of what-ifs with Gettysburg. What if Sickles had actually had some military training? Well, then maybe on his march north east into Gettysburg he would have seen the value of the Round Tops, and positioned his artillery and more of his troops there. [ Only maybe, because nobody else on either side realized it either! Ok, both Meade and Hancock wanted the left flank covered, but occupying those hills was so important that they should have said such explicitly, and they didn’t ] Based from there he could have extended his lines at least partway to the south end of Cemetery Ridge, leaving a hole that VI Corps could have filled. The bloody mayhem in the Peach Orchard, the Devil’s Den, and the Wheat Field would never have occurred; with cannons on those commanding heights, he could have destroyed Longstreet’s troops before they ever got near the battlefield or got their own artillery into range. Not only that, but putting the big guns up there would have provided flanking fire all the way up to the south edge of town, which means Pickett’s Charge would have been reduced to Pickett’s Stumble in a very very short time.

Hessler did a really good job with this book. I recommend it. I’m at the point in the book where the post-battle recriminations and investigations are underway, and Sickles is painting himself as The Hero, playing politics and ghostwriting letters under the pseudonym Historicus. It’s a dirty tale that I never knew about.

Another dirty tale that Hessler pointed out is that Sickles may have been the guy who effectively lost the battle of Chancellorsville a couple months before Gettysburg, since he was the voice of authority that said the rebs were retreating, when in fact they were taking a road that lead away from the front lines and then back around to the Union’s right flank. Oops.

A comment by the author on the purpose of this book:

I want the book to accomplish 5 things:

1) Produce something that Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy reading and referencing.

2) I’m a “Day 2 guy” and to really understand that day, you have to understand Sickles’ actions.

3) I also wanted to understand why he moved forward. What seems like an increasing number of Gettysburg studies ascribe some pretty sinister motives behind his move to the Peach Orchard (he supposedly wanted to be President, or he did it simply because he hated Meade, etc.) I think when you examine the baggage that comes before Gettysburg, and then the chain of events on the morning of July 2, it becomes alot less “sinister” and more explainable. That doesn’t have to mean that Sickles was right, but it can give a little balance to his historical image by giving some more rational reasons for his actions.

4) I basically just wanted to know more about this guy because like Chris said, he sure had an interesting life.

5) Produce something that Civil War enthusiasts will enjoy reading and referencing. (Hey, I already used that one!)

The bottom line is: the book obviously doesn’t support everything he does, but tries to see him as a real (and really interesting) person with alot of flaws but maybe not the monster that some Gettysburg students have been conditioned to expect.

I think Hessler has achieved his goals quite nicely.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/13/2009 at 12:39 PM   
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   Saturday - October 03, 2009

A fallen hero and the story of what befell the rest of his comrades in 1 Platoon.

BATTLING BRITS is not a figure of speech ppl.

I caught this late today, only minutes ago.  I have to say the way the Mail presented this really brings home what these fellows are all about.
And at the same time, it also pisses me off big time to know these heroes are being stabbed in the back.  I just can not add anything to this.
It speaks for itself.

A fallen hero and the story of what befell the rest of his comrades in 1 Platoon

By Richard Pendlebury
Last updated at 8:34 AM on 03rd October 2009

This week, hundreds of people lined the streets of Wootton Bassett to give the town’s traditional salute to a fallen hero as another British serviceman was repatriated from Afghanistan in a Union Jack draped coffin.

Corporal Michael Lockett, 29, was the most highly decorated British soldier to die in the battle against the Taliban. His body had been flown back to Britain to nearby RAF Lyneham, Wiltshire, and a fly-past was staged before a private ceremony for his family.

Corporal Lockett, a father of three, was the first holder of the Military Cross to be killed in the war and had received the honour last year from the Queen for his ‘absolutely exceptional leadership and supreme courage’ in a clash with the Taliban in Helmand.

He had rescued wounded comrades and recovered bodies of fallen pals despite heavy enemy fire in a three-hour firefight.

On the eve of battle he posed for this remarkable photograph. To the regiment, it has always been an emblematic and proud picture; a portrait of young warriors who were supreme heroes under fire.

Yet in the past fortnight the photograph has also - perhaps inevitably - come to reflect war’s growing human cost.

This band of brothers is 1 Platoon of A Company, 2nd Battalion The Mercian Regiment (Worcesters and Foresters).

Shortly after the picture was taken in 2007, in the Afghan province of Helmand, they fought one of the bloodiest engagements of the conflict.

One night, the platoon was ambushed by a strong Taliban force. In the subsequent firefight, two Mercians were killed and seven wounded, two seriously.

Sergeant Craig Brelsford lost his life (and won a posthumous Military Cross) trying to retrieve the body of Private Johan Botha, which the Taliban were attempting to drag away. Others kept trying.

Corporal Lockett directed their efforts on that night in September. He is the soldier standing on the far left of the photograph; one of the most popular of Mercians.

But the war has continued longer and proved bloodier than then expected. Two years after surviving the ambush, ‘Locky’ was killed, on September 21.

He was nearing the end of his third tour and was the 217th British serviceman to die in Afghanistan since 2001.

But what of his comrades-in-arms in the picture? War brought the platoon together. It also tore them apart. Here are their stories…

This is important BMEWS.  Go to the link below since I can’t seem to post the photos cleanly here.  Don’t know why.  There are two photos and one of them explains the following.  In trying to reduce the pix for this post, the photos just didn’t work. When left at original size, they seemed to overwhelm the page.

1 Michael Lockett. Then aged 27, from Angus. Vowed never to leave any of his men behind on the battlefield and did not. The body of colleague Private Botha was recovered from the Taliban and other wounded British soldiers saved. Promoted to sergeant. Received his MC from the Queen at Buckingham Palace. Killed on September 21.

2 Private ‘Ginge’ Jones. Territorial Army soldier from Hastings, East Sussex. Now studying military history at university.

3 Corporal Ben Umney, 25. A section commander from Chesterfield. During an ambush, a bullet pierced his helmet but not his skull, stunning him. Has just left the Army after 11 years service. Now runs his own plumbing business.

4 Corporal Lee ‘Al’ Hodson from Worcester. On active service again in Helmand.

5 Private Matthew Farr from the West Midlands. Promoted to lance corporal. Returned to active service in Helmand.

6 Lance Corporal Jonathan McEwan, 27, from Retford, Nottinghamshire. On active service again in Helmand.

7 Christopher Bell, 20, from Redditch. Left the Army last year.

8 Lance Corporal Lee Weston. Shot and wounded in the shoulder during the night ambush. Has now left the Army and is a qualified mechanic.

9 Lance Corporal Wayne Russen, 24, from Redditch. Avoided the ambush, having been injured in an attack a few days before. Has since left the Army and is looking for work.

10 Private Kyle Drury, 22. Temporarily blinded by phosphorous during ambush and shot in chest, but was saved by his body armour as bullets deflected off his radio. Since promoted to lance corporal and still in the Army.

11 Private ‘Trout’ Stout, 20, from Nottingham. On active service again in Helmand.

12 Private Latham, 20, from Nottingham. Since promoted to lance corporal. Back on the Helmand frontline.

13 Private Luke Cole, 24, from Wolverhampton. Territorial Army reservist. Shot and wounded in initial ambush, but refused morphine treatment and continued to fire at Taliban and tend to even more seriously hurt colleague Private Cooper.

Shot again, through hip and stomach, before being evacuated several hours later. Awarded the Military Cross for his bravery. Permanently disabled by leg wound, he has spent time in a wheelchair and can no longer run. Unable to return to his former job of fork-lift truck engineer.

Currently retraining at specialist college for the disabled.

14 Private Sam Cooper, 18, from Chesterfield. Youngest soldier in regiment. Shot in head and suffered brain damage in the ambush, which affects his speech and one side of his body. Treated at Headley Court rehabilitation centre.

15 Private Daniel Hammer, 19, from the West Midlands. On active service again in Helmand.

16 Lieutenant Simon Cupples, 25, from Chesterfield. Officer in command of the platoon during ambush. At times, was less than 20 metres from Taliban lines as he fought to remove his men from the ‘killing zone’.

Awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross, second only to the Victoria Cross. Now promoted to Captain and second in command of A (Grenadier) Company, 2 Mercians.

17 Privater Ben Johnson, 23. Temporarily blinded by phosphorus during the night ambush. Still serving. Has been on active service again in Helmand.

18 Private Matthew Carling, 21, from Derby. Left the Army last year.

19 Private ‘Dunc’ Dunkley, from Nottingham. No longer in the Army.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1217810/Pictured-A-fallen-hero-story-befell-rest-comrades-1-Platoon.html#ixzz0St7JbIJC

Posted by peiper     on 10/03/2009 at 10:28 AM   
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   Thursday - October 01, 2009

New Sickles Biography

• corrupt politician, part of the NY Democrat Machine


• free spending party boy who wasted a fortune


• misappropriating funds early in his political career


• knocked up an underage girl


• murderer who entered the first “temporary insanity” plea and got away with it


• war hero most famous for his screw up, which nearly lost the most important battle of the war


• lied about his military record for the next 50 years


• multiple affairs while married


• two term Congressman most famous for creating a national park that honors him


• misappropriating funds late in his political career


• moved out on his wife and son and had a long term affair with his housekeeper late in life


• died penniless


• remembered mainly as a hero, mourned by tens of thousands

That morning, Meade ordered Sickles to anchor the left end of Cemetery Ridge which included Little Round Top. Meade and the Union high command were centering their line on Cemetery Hill (the hook in the fish hook), but were concerned that their flanks were vulnerable. For that reason, it was Hancock on the evening of July 1 who had ordered part of Henry Slocum’s 12th Corps to occupy Little Round Top. The morning of July 2, Meade wanted the 12th Corps reunited on the Federal right at Culp’s Hill. So he ordered Sickles to take the position occupied by the 12th Corps and hold down the left end of Cemetery Ridge, including Little Round Top. Meade sent his son and aide, Captain George Meade, out to ensure that Sickles was in position. But Sickles would not come out of his tent to talk to George Jr. and instead had the Third Corps artillery chief tell Captain Meade that Sickles was confused over his position. Trouble was brewing on the Federal left.

Sickles made several efforts to communicate his uncertainty.  At 11:00, Sickles went to Meade’s headquarters and requests assistance in posting his troops. Meade declined to go, but gave Henry Hunt permission to accompany Sickles on a review of the terrain. Meade later claimed that he had absolutely no idea that Sickles harbored doubts about his position. Sickles then informed Hunt that he wanted to move his corps forward to a line that is, at its peak, was nearly ½ mile in front of Cemetery Ridge, running from Devils Den to the Peach Orchard and Emmitsburg Road.

The primary disadvantage of Sickles’ position was that the Third Corps was too far in advance of Meade’s army to receive support. Meade’s reinforcements had to cover ½ mile of open ground and Sickles negated Meade’s interior lines. The essentially straight line along Cemetery Ridge, which Meade intended Sickles to occupy, was approximately 1,600 yards in length. Sickles’s Third Corps had roughly 10,675 effectives and he would later claim that he lacked sufficient strength to man Meade’s front. Yet the new position covered a front that was nearly twice as long; approximately 3,500 yards. Despite his efforts to refuse them, his flanks were in the air.

One of the biggest criticisms directed at Sickles was that by moving forward he abandoned Little Round Top--- viewed by many as the key to the Union left because it was the highest defensible point in the immediate vicinity. Not a problem for Sickles because over the next 50 years he would repeatedly lie and say that he did occupy Little Round Top and supervised the placement of reinforcements up there!

Historian James Hessler has a new book out, the first new biography on Dan Sickles in over 50 years. Love the title too; it’s so 19th century:

Sickles at Gettysburg: The Controversial Civil War General Who Committed Murder, Abandoned Little Round Top, and Declared Himself the Hero of Gettysburg, by licensed battlefield guide James Hessler, is the most deeply-researched, full-length biography to appear on this remarkable American icon. And it is long overdue.

No individual who fought at Gettysburg was more controversial, both personally and professionally, than Major General Daniel E. Sickles. By 1863, Sickles was notorious as a disgraced former Congressman who murdered his wife’s lover on the streets of Washington and used America’s first temporary insanity defense to escape justice. With his political career in ruins, Sickles used his connections with President Lincoln to obtain a prominent command in the Army of the Potomac’s Third Corps-despite having no military experience. At Gettysburg, he openly disobeyed orders in one of the most controversial decisions in military history.

No single action dictated the battlefield strategies of George Meade and Robert E. Lee more than Sickles’ unauthorized advance to the Peach Orchard, and the mythic defense of Little Round Top might have occurred quite differently were it not for General Sickles. Fighting heroically, Sickles lost his leg on the field and thereafter worked to remove General Meade from command of the army. Sickles spent the remainder of his checkered life declaring himself the true hero of Gettysburg.

Although he nearly lost the battle, Sickles was one of the earliest guardians of the battlefield when he returned to Congress, created Gettysburg National Military Park, and helped preserve the field for future generations. But Dan Sickles was never far from scandal. He was eventually removed from the New York Monument Commission and nearly went to jail for misappropriation of funds.

Hessler’s book is a balanced and entertaining account of Sickles’ colorful life. Civil War enthusiasts who want to understand General Sickles’ scandalous life, Gettysburg’s battlefield strategies, the in-fighting within the Army of the Potomac, and the development of today’s National Park will find Sickles at Gettysburg a must-read.

This looks like a great read. And an excellent gift for anyone interested in military history.

Posted by Drew458     on 10/01/2009 at 11:30 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • War-Stories •  
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EU SAYS GEORGIA STARTED WAR WITH RUSSIA BUT, AND JAPAN HAS MEIN KAMPF COMIC BOOK

A couple of interesting News Briefs caught my eye.  One I understand, Mein Kampf.  One I don’t.

I suppose using a comic book to teach history isn’t new. For some, it might be the only way or at least the easiest way, to learn a subject.
So ok. Mein Kampf the comic book could be seen as instructional.

Sales of a comic version of Adolf Hitler’s notorious political tract Mein Kampf have become a hit in Japan.
By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo

The manga book describes both Hitler’s autobiography and his infamous Nazi manifesto in the unlikely form of easy-to-read comic pictures and captions.
Since it was published in Japan last November, its popularity has soared, with sales of more than 45,000.

The book, which forms part of a series on world classics turned into manga, covers a range of aspects of Hitler’s life, from his childhood to the formation of his political party.

Its success in Japan has reportedly ignited a debate in Germany about whether the ban on the work imposed since 1945 should be overturned.
The current copyright of the book within Germany lies in the hands of the finance ministry of the state of Bavaria which will not reproduce it out of respect to the relatives of those who suffered during Hitler’s regime.

Japanese publishers East Press are no strangers to tapping into the trend of bringing political tracts into the 21st century: the current series also includes a popular manga version of Karl Marx’s seminal anti-capitalist tome Das Kapital.

Manga enjoys a soaring popularity in Japan, with its most high-profile fans including the former prime minister Taro Aso.

Along with Nazism and anti-capitalism, there are few topics that are regarded as sacred from being transformed into manga. Previous issues tackled range from delicate Japanese-Chinese relations to the spread of bird flu.|

SOURCE

H/T Inventorspot.com for the photo used. More on the subject here as well : INVENTORSPOT.COM

Here’s just a brief overview. See the link for all of it.  One of the reasons I even bothered about it to begin with, was because the EU seems to be giving with one hand and taking with another.

If as the EU says, and they do say, that Georgia started the war with Russia, then how can they be critical of the Russians who the EU says were attacked, for invading Georgia?  Well that’s what they’re saying.  In other words, do not in any circumstances defend yourself.  ?? Oh wait. I just got it. Silly me.

Maybe what the EU was waiting for, was for the Russians to issue an Anti Social Behavior Order (ASBO) on the Georgians. Of course. That’s it.

EU blames Georgia for starting war with Russia

Georgia “illegally” started last year’s war with Russia but Moscow then “violated” international law by invading its neighbour in response to the attack, a European Union report has found.

By Bruno Waterfield
Published: 4:17PM BST 30 Sep 2009

An EU investigation into the roots of last August’s conflict has reserved its harshest criticism for Georgia’s military assault on the breakaway region of South Ossetia and its capital Tskhinvali.

“Open hostilities began with a large-scale Georgian military operation against the town of Tskhinvali and the surrounding areas, launched in the night of 7 to 8 August 2008, the report concluded.

“There is the question of whether the use of force by Georgia in South Ossetia was justifiable under international law. It was not.”

SOURCE FOR THE REST CLICK HERE

Posted by peiper     on 10/01/2009 at 09:15 AM   
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   Friday - September 25, 2009

BATTLE SCARRED AND PROUD …. JUST ONE BRIT SOLDIER. ONE OF VERY MANY.

This was in the morning paper and I’m glad in a way that I could find it on line and share it with my American countrymen and women.

Americans see quite a number of our own I’m sure.  I very much doubt we see and hear anything at all about this brave young people who are bleeding alongside us. 
We MUST NOT ignore or forget them.  Sure, we have problems of our own and there are an awful lot of unhappy, grieving American families as well.
I hate the idea of so many young lives lost forever in all the countries losing their young who are fighting the malignancy that is militant islam.
But from time to time, especially since I’m living here among them, I have a need to share these folks I call Battling Brits.  Americans need to see them so we understand and appreciate that although their numbers are smaller then ours, their blood runs just as free.

Why this picture fills me with awe, pride… and fury
By Bel Mooney
25th September 2009

Fusilier Tom James, who was injured by the same blast that killed Fusilier Shaun Bush, arrives at his funeral.

Just the sight of yesterday’s Daily Mail lying on my doormat was enough to start the tears.

There was the picture of Fusilier Tom James so terribly injured, his right arm lost in a savage Taliban bomb blast.

He had struggled from his hospital bed, donning uniform to attend the funeral of the comrade who was fatally wounded beside him. No pain, nor fear, would stop him honouring his mate.

The night before, like many, I had watched the almost-unbearably moving BBC documentary, Wounded, which told the stories of 19-year-old Andy Allen and 24-year-old Tom Neathway, also horrifically injured in Afghanistan.

No one who witnessed the agony of these once superbly-fit young men learning how to walk on ‘stubbies’ (short artificial limbs) could ever forget the sight.

When Andy was first allowed the longed-for visit home to Belfast, we saw one or two people in his enthusiastic welcoming committee look away in sudden, emotional horror at the first glimpse of the young man who had lost both legs and had feared he would never regain his sight.

It struck me as a powerful metaphor that he should so long to see, whereas so many of us have turned away from the unbearable reality of war.

That is why yesterday’s Mail front page was so important, and why Wounded was compulsory viewing.

It may well be that the Ministry of Defence might prefer the British public not to be made so acutely aware of the horrors of the war in Afghanistan.

We’ve all read the statistics - the numbers of those who have given their lives in the brutal conflict in a pitiless faraway land. Yet none of us really knows the numbers of wounded, or the extent of their injuries. It’s been kept hidden.

READ MORE HERE

Sometimes I do wonder if the media and even our blog sites, are correct in recognizing so publicly the heroes as we do. Does it play into the hands of the enemy?  Are they happy to see photos such as this?  Are we giving aid and comfort, or at least comfort anyway, by telling their stories and showing the pix?  On one hand I want to say thank you and I appreciate your bravery. I can’t do what you have done. And then I wonder if the enemy is also watching and surfing and enjoying the pain.

Posted by peiper     on 09/25/2009 at 11:13 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes • Military • UK • War On Terror • War-Stories •  
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   Tuesday - September 15, 2009

US forces kill al-Qaeda mastermind in Somalia. GOOD! Scratch one Rat Bastard

I sure do hope he saw it coming and hurt like hell before the end. Only sorry our side couldn’t have found the rat sooner. But you know the saying, better late .............

I am ALWAYS PROUD of our guys and Brits as well, when they carry off something like this.  OK, often times mistakes are made but these are OUR folks and I’ll never join the ‘crucify’ when things go wrong crowd.  That’s death and life.  And it is WAR damn it. Just a different kind and fought a different way.  Pitty the poor Brits who turned on one of theirs over the torture thing, just for being aware of what Americans “might” have been doing.  Hope no civilian law suits result over this violation of the rat-bastard’s uman rights.

American special forces killed a key suspect linked to the 2002 bombing of an Israeli-owned hotel on Kenya’s coast, reports said.

At least two helicopters strafed the car said to be carrying Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and then landed to collect his body and that of another man in the car who died.

There were reports that two wounded men were also picked up by the helicopter teams.

All were linked to the hardline al-Shabaab movement, which is said to have links to al-Qaeda and which now controls most of southern Somalia.

Forces from the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command were involved in Monday’s raid in Barawe district, 150 miles south of Mogadishu, two US military sources anonymously told The Associated Press.

One source told Reuters that Nabhan’s body had been taken into police custody, but US officials in Washington refused to comment on “any alleged operation in Somalia”.

But if it is confirmed that US troops were in the helicopters, it would be the first time American boots have been on Somali soil since the infamous “Black Hawk Down” debacle of 1993.

Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan, 28, has featured on the FBI’s most wanted list since he was linked to a truck bombing of an Israeli hotel on Kenya’s coast in 2002. Ten Kenyans and three Israelis died.

Nabhan is also believed to have been involved in the failed attempt to use a rocket-propelled grenade to down a holiday jet as it took off from Kenya’s Mombasa airport carrying mostly Israeli tourists later the same day.

The authorities in Kenya also regard him as a suspect in two attacks on US embassies in the region in 1998.

“There is a lot of conflicting information coming from the area,” a Western diplomat familiar with Somalia said in Nairobi, capital of neighbouring Kenya.

“But it does seem that at least two choppers, were involved in an incident earlier today.” The US has in recent years carried out a series of missile raids aimed at killing senior members of al-Shabaab.

In May last year, US warplanes killed the then-leader of al-Shabaab and al-Qaeda’s top man in the country, Afghan-trained Aden Hashi Ayro, in an attack on the central town of Dusamareb.

Under Ayro, al Shabaab had adopted Iraq-style tactics, including assassinations, roadside bombs and suicide bombings.

TELEGRAPH

Posted by peiper     on 09/15/2009 at 06:26 AM   
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   Thursday - September 10, 2009

Hero who saved 30 lives by tackling suicide bomber. Routine stuff for battling Brits.

Well, maybe not so routine.  This is one one brave act and the guy is surely a genuine hero in a world of few. Certainly none among the political class.
Anyway, this soldier has carried on the long tradition of his service.
Well done sir.

Hero squaddie who saved 30 lives by rugby-tackling suicide bomber to get military cross

By Daily Mail Reporter

A Royal Marine is to be awarded a Military Cross after saving up to 30 lives by ‘rugby-tackling’ a suicide bomber.

Sergeant Noel Connolly was serving in Afghanistan last November when a bomber rode towards his troop on a motorbike packed with 150lb of explosives.

Sgt Connolly dived on the bomber, grabbed him by the shirt and hauled him from the bike before he was able to detonate the explosives.

But the modest 41-year-old from Manchester insisted he ‘wasn’t brave’ and even tried to keep the feat a secret from his family.

He said:  ‘I was near the school when I caught a fleeting glimpse of a motorbike. I told all my lads to expect a bomber.

‘The motorcyclist looked lost. He turned the bike around up the track and came back.

‘I grabbed two lads and went to intercept him. I had no idea if he was the bomber. The only way of finding out was to challenge him.’

The sergeant then stepped into the road and ordered the man to stop.

‘He stalled the bike and started pushing it away from us. He stopped, straddled it and turned to face us,’ he said. ‘As I got to within 10 metres, there was a loud crack from halfway down the bike.

‘That’s when I saw a small toggle switch had been fitted to his handlebars. As soon as he went for the toggle again I rushed him. I grabbed him by the front of his shirt and hauled him off.’

The motorbike’s frame was found to contain 154lb of explosive. The bomber was handed to police and later jailed for 18 years.

But Sgt Connolly, who serves with 3 Commando Brigade, insisted: ‘’I’m not brave. Someone had to stop him.’
mary connolly

He played down his heroics so much that he did not even tell his family. Then, when the story emerged, he begged his sister not to tell their 81-year-old mother, Mary.

The award is expected to be announced tomorrow with other recipients of honours for gallantry and meritorious service.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman said most of the Operational Honours and Awards list are predominantly from the 3 Commando Brigade Task Force that deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, but it also includes others involved in operations in Iraq and in the UK.

SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 09/10/2009 at 07:30 AM   
Filed Under: • Heroes • UK • War-Stories •  
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One ass-wipe reporter with an ego from the N.Y.Times ignores warning and one Brit soldier dies.

If the newspaper can be believed, this reporter was not only a hostage once before, on this occasion he was warned before hand NOT to go into a particular area as it was controlled by the Taliban.  But go he did anyway because he thought he was guided by a higher authority. His own damn ego.
So now his interpreter is dead along with a Brit paratrooper and a couple of civilians.
Maybe I have it all wrong and need to be re-educated here.
Is it a military priority or even their job, to try and rescue a newspaper reporter in a combat zone?  Isn’t that somehow blurring their function somewhat?

A lot more to read and tons to see at the link below. It explains it all.

One dead para, one dead translator, two dead civilians: Why DID Brown authorise raid to save reporter who ignored warnings?

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 12:17 PM on 10th September 2009

Hostage negotiators and military officials today expressed shock and anger over Gordon Brown’s decision to approve a high risk special forces raid to free a British journalist when talks for his release had already begun.

The operation in Afghanistan also provoked fury among Army chiefs who told of their dismay that a British soldier had died saving a hostage who they said had repeatedly ignored danger warnings.

A group of Afghan journalists also slammed Nato forces for rescuing the reporter while leaving their colleague to die.

Reporter Stephen Farrell, 46, was freed unharmed, but his translator Sultan Munadi was killed along with a paratrooper, two civilians and a Taliban commander.

Mr Farrell, left, with his interpreter Sultan Munadi, right, interview and film a wounded man in a hospital in Kunduz on the day before they were captured, Friday, September 4

Military chiefs said Mr Farrell apparently ignored warnings from Afghan police and village elders not to venture into the Taliban-controlled area where he was taken hostage.

One senior military source said: ‘When you look at the number of warnings this person had it makes you wonder whether he was really worth rescuing, whether it was worth the cost of another soldier’s life. In the future special forces might think twice in a similar situation.’

Scroll down for Stephen Farrell’s account of the decision to go in

Another military source added: ‘This reporter went into this area against the advice of the Afghan police. So thanks very much Stephen Farrell, your irresponsible act has led to the death of one of our boys.’

Robin Horsfall, a former SAS officer, told Channel 4 News: ‘Some questions will be asked if a journalist has behaved in a reckless fashion and put them in this position. There’s going to be some resentment.’

There was also frustration at military planners of the operation. Hostage negotiators believe they were ‘close’ to freeing Mr Farrell and Munadi.
Enlarge Stephen Farrell

‘I am comfortable with my decision’: Stephen Farrell wrote in the New York Times today of his ordeal

A diplomatic source in Kabul said there was no indication the kidnappers wanted anything more than money. ‘The plan was to keep negotiations local. But then MI6 charged in and, with next to zero knowledge of the local situation decided to launch an operation.’

SEE ALL THE REST HERE AND LOADS OF PIX AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Posted by peiper     on 09/10/2009 at 06:23 AM   
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   Wednesday - September 02, 2009

It so seriously bothers me that there are pin heads tearing down this country while at the same time

Jeez. I read something like this and am honestly awed by the bravery and respect and admire the ppl who do these things.
Meanwhile ... there are these total jerks running around gluing themselves to buildings to protest things and making life difficult for people who just do not agree with their pov.  Oh, that’s enough to earn one derision and insults from the freedom loving left wing pin heads who are usually so quick to point out this countries failings.  Bet ya not one of em has what it takes to do what this young lady has done under fire and wounded herself.

This country is still very capable of producing folks like this. Sadly, the damn politically correct left has a choke hold on the country. And that dooms it. Bothers me coz this country, this England, was one hell of a great place once upon a time.  There are still so many things I love about it, and the people I meet or know could not be better friends or nicer folks. But the damn left. 

OK I didn’t mean to go off the rails and off topic.  I just feel sad for this place and worry that my own country could just as easily go this way as well.

Pictured: Heroic female medic who ignored shrapnel embedded in her shoulder to save SEVEN soldiers during Taliban attack
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:32 PM on 02nd September 2009

Hero: Lance Corporal Clarke stayed behind to treat wounded soldiers including Corporal Mather despite being injured herself after a Taliban attack
An heroic army medic treated seven injured comrades after a Taliban attack in Afghanistan despite being wounded with shrapnel herself, it emerged today.
Lance Corporal Sally Clarke, of 2 Rifles, ignored the searing pain caused by the shards embedded in her shoulder and back and set about treating the rest of her patrol.

The worst hit was Corporal Paul Mather who incredibly managed to radio instructions for jets circling above to open fire on Taliban insurgents despite bleeding heavily from wounds the size of his fist.
Corporal Mather, 28, and Lance Corporal Clarke, 22, from Cheltenham, were on patrol south of Sangin when insurgents fired rocket propelled grenades over a wall as soldiers dealt with an anti-tank mine.

Hot flying shrapnel sliced open Corporal Mather’s body, leaving gaping holes across his arms, legs and buttocks.
He said: ‘It hurt like hell, but once the explosions stopped and my hearing came back, I managed to climb through a ditch towards a group of soldiers treating other casualties.

‘I had a hole in my left bicep, so the medics applied a field dressing and tourniquet to stem the blood flow.’
Despite being entitled to get out as soon as she was hit Lance Corporal Clarke refused, insisting she would not leave the patrol without a medic.

She said: ‘I didn’t feel like my injuries were bad enough to go back to the hospital, particularly as I was the only medic on the ground at the time.

‘I couldn’t leave them on their own - I came out here to support the troops on the ground and give them medical care when they needed it the most.’
Realising the jets and Apache attack helicopters above the patrol had seen the explosions and needed to know what had happened, Corporal Mather told one of the soldiers to take a smoke grenade and throw it into the compound where the grenades had come from.

‘The pilot immediately picked up the smoke signal and I gave directions for a strike on to the compound,’ said Mather.
He continued to radio instructions until he was on the helicopter where he finally took some morphine to ease the pain.
Corporal Mather is now recovering at home with his parents, Phil and Rose.

He said they were looking after him well and feeding him ‘pizza and ice cream’.
Lance Corporal Clarke, who stayed on the ground and accompanied the rest of the patrol back to base, was later treated by a doctor in a medical aid post. She is due home within weeks to visit her parents Chris and Rosemary Clarke.

SOURCE

Meanwhile, two more brave Tommies paid the untimate price raising the number of Brit dead in that damned awful country. And I feel very bad about that too.

Posted by peiper     on 09/02/2009 at 08:54 AM   
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   Monday - August 24, 2009

How Churchill was bullied into D-Day - Excerpt, one of several chapters.

I haven’t been posting all the other chapters but thought it interesting to post this and let you all know that at the link, you will find all the other chapters that have been published so far.  For those interested in history, this is all quite fascinating.

I’ve long had a problem btw, with the Brit thinking that was so prevalent at the time, that the US should have entered the war sooner.
Why?  America had some problems of its own at the time.  If we were inward thinking, there was damn good reason for it.  Most Americans really just wanted to get on with their own lives and leave Europe alone to fight its own wars.  The general population I much doubt could see the threat Nazi Germany presented. We knew they were the bad guys but things were so remote in those days, you can’t blame them. Well, you can but I don’t.
There seemed to be a greater threat from Communism, if anything.  Many ppl didn’t even have electricity or a phone in their home in some parts of the country.  It may be hard for some to imagine, but I have one dear friend in TN. who is old enough to remember no indoor plumbing or telephone and only a battery operated radio and no electric.  That may not have been typical of most of America but it sure as heck was the norm for many.
We had no reason to join in a European war in ‘39 or ‘40.

If I have a problem with the attitude on that subject, I also have a serious problem with FDRs attitude with regard to the Empire.
I don’t see why it should have concerned him nor do I think it was any of his business.  Whatever the perceived evils of empire there are, not to say there were none, without the influence and civil service and education, the justice system (such as it was, not perfect but ...) bridges, water systems etc.  The Brits raised the standard of living for many millions and even if it was in their own best interest, the fact still remains that in the end, people were better off with the Brits then they were before. And many millions were surely better off under Brit rule then French, Belgium or German.

I didn’t mean to launch a defense of 19th century empire. Only saying that I understand it and that it wasn’t any of FDRs business.  Especially in light of the fact that in a sense, we (America) had one too.  And when it came to minorities, our outlook was none too kind either.

Next month sees the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in 1939. It was a conflict that Britain could not have won without one man - Winston Churchill.
To mark the occasion the Mail is publishing a major two-week series by Max Hastings.
Last week Britain’s greatest war historian daily revealed and illuminated the extraordinary man behind the myth - his strengths ... and his weaknesses.
Today, in part seven, he reveals that Churchill was left humiliated by the behind-the-scenes political manoeuvrings that led to D-Day ...

MAX HASTINGS: How Churchill was bullied into D-Day - his most triumphant achievement - by the Americans

By Max Hastings
Last updated at 2:20 PM on 24th August 2009

The spring of 1944 found Churchill, in public at least, in typically rousing mood. ‘The Germans will suffer very heavy casualties when our band of brothers gets among them,’ he wrote to United States President Franklin Roosevelt, quoting Shakespeare’s Henry V.

He was referring to their quickly advancing plans for Operation Overlord, the long-awaited Allied assault on the beaches of enemy-occupied France.

But, privately, he was deeply unhappy about the entire project and not best pleased that, as he saw it, he was being railroaded into it by the Americans.

Ever since the U.S. entered the war, he had been under pressure to invade France, to launch the much-vaunted Second Front and ease the pressure on the Soviet forces fighting Hitler on the other side of Europe.

The Americans seemed oblivious to the scale of the task, and, to the man in the street there, it looked as if the British and their ‘fat-headed PM’ - as one New Yorker put it - were plain yellow, ducking the fight.

It was galling but he was no longer vital to victory

One of Churchill’s great achievements was to resist for two years the demands for what he rightly considered would be a premature - and catastrophic - assault on the continental mainland, fiercely contested and possibly ending in a humiliating bloodbath.

His task was made harder by the clamour from the British public for him to act. Even his friends turned on him.

Despite being one of Churchill’s closest cronies and a former minister in his government, the maverick press baron Lord Beaverbrook launched a ‘Second Front now!’ campaign in his newspapers.

Churchill deflected U.S. pressure by persuading Roosevelt - over the heads of the U.S. generals - that the best way to start the fight-back against the Nazis was with U.S. landings in North Africa.

Then, after throwing the Germans out of North Africa, the joint Allied armies would make their way across the Mediterranean to Sicily and Italy, entering Europe through the back door, as Churchill had always intended.

In this, his strategic judgment proved superior to the Americans. France in 1943 would have been a much harder nut to crack. The British Prime Minister had been proved right - so far.

But the suspicious American generals, while committing their troops to the Mediterranean theatre, had never given up on their preferred strategy of a landing in northern France.

In summit meetings with Roosevelt, Churchill found himself signing up to the idea while believing that in the end he could make sure it never happened.

But the uncomfortable reality was that he was no longer in charge of events. He had been Britain’s deliverer back in 1940 and 1941 - but by the end of 1943 he was not vital to victory. Much as it galled many Britons, it was America who was now in the driving seat.

For all Churchill’s vaunting of the special relationship between Britain and America, it was a partnership beset by disagreements that were as much philosophical as military.

The key to understanding it is to strip aside the rhetoric of the two leaders and acknowledge that it rested, as relations between states always do, upon perceptions of national interest.

As for the individual personalities involved, there was some genuine sentiment on Churchill’s side, but none on Roosevelt’s.

The U.S. President had always viewed himself as the senior partner. He paid scant attention to British claims that for years before the U.S. joined the war Britain had played the nobler part, pouring forth blood and enduring bombardment in a lone struggle for freedom.

He paid only lip service to the collective gratitude owed by the democracies to Britain for single-handedly standing up to Hitler.

Churchill liked to assert that, far from owing a huge cash debt to the U.S. when the war was over, Britain should be recognised as a creditor for its lone defence of freedom in 1940-41. This was never plausible.

Polls showed that most Americans - 70 per cent - were implacable in their belief that at the end of the war the British should repay the billions they had received from the U.S. in Lend-Lease supplies. They stuck to the notion that Britain was a wealthy nation. They failed to grasp the extent of her financial exhaustion.

In fact, Roosevelt felt scant sympathy for his transatlantic ally. He had visited Britain several times as a young man, but never revealed much liking for the country.

He perceived hypocrisy in its pretensions as a bastion of democracy and freedom while it sustained a huge empire of subject peoples in Africa and Asia and denied them democratic representation.

Americans were overwhelmingly hostile to Britain for refusing to countenance self-government for India.

‘You’re the top/You’re Mahatma Gandhi!’ wrote Cole Porter euphorically, reflecting the huge enthusiasm of his countrymen for the guru of the Indian independence movement.

Such sentiment was wormwood to Churchill. At the best of times he had little patience with the Indian people, his view unchanged since he served among them as a cavalry subaltern in the 1890s.

He opposed, for instance, granting Indian officers disciplinary powers over British other ranks. He expostulated against ‘the humiliation of being ordered about by a brown man’.

He was disgusted by the holier-than-thou attitude of Americans on the matter. He
deemed it rank cant for a nation that had itself colonised a continent, dispossessing and largely exterminating its indigenous population, and which still practised racial segregation, to harangue others about the treatment of native peoples.

But Roosevelt’s belief was that the day of empire was done. He co-operated with Churchill’s nation in order to defeat Hitler. Thereafter, he proposed to reshape the world in accordance with American concepts of morality.

Despite his acquaintance with foreign parts having been confined to gilded European holidays with his millionaire father, he had a boundless appetite to alter the world. He regarded the future without fear.

Churchill, by contrast, was full of apprehension about the threats a new world posed to Britain’s greatness. It was from these two very different perspectives that the Allies continued uneasily to conduct their joint affairs.

For his part, Churchill continued to duck and weave, sustaining the fiction that an Overlord operation in the spring of 1944 was an option rather than an absolute commitment. He pressed for the thrust up through Italy to remain as the Allies’ immediate priority

They should seize the moment in the Mediterranean, he argued to Roosevelt, rather than stake everything on a highly dangerous and speculative cross-Channel attack.

But Churchill was wrong about this. Italy was a difficult battlefield, easy to defend, difficult to advance in. If efforts had been concentrated there, D-Day would have been delayed until 1945.

It was American resolution alone that ensured the operational timetable for D-Day was maintained, while the Prime Minister expended political capital in a struggle with Washington that he was not only bound to lose, but which he deserved to lose.

HERE FOR THE REST OF THIS CHAPTER

The link above will also give you all the other chapters in the book published on line so far. They will continue all week.

More from Max Hastings…

* MAX HASTINGS: Churchill’s hunger to take the fight to Hitler made him send thousands of heroes to needless death 21/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: After a series of military defeats even Churchill started to fear that our Army was simply too yellow to fight 21/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: Privately Churchill called them ‘bloody Yankees’ - but with a lover’s ardour he fawned, flattered and flirted to woo the U.S. 19/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: Only one man instinctively knew what battered Britain needed to lift spirits 19/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: Churchill was brutally rude, capricious and petulant. Even his wife feared he was being corrupted by power 18/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: A gloriously flawed hero: How Winston Churchill saved this nation from the brink of extinction 16/08/09
* MAX HASTINGS: Churchill, the flawed giant who saved our nation - and our world 14/08/09

Posted by peiper     on 08/24/2009 at 08:24 AM   
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   Sunday - August 16, 2009

A bit of history discovered.  Fighting Vichy 1940-42 .

Every weekend we get three papers which takes all day to get through. I especially like the book reviews, and the books I mark as must haves must also number a thousand. I’ll never get near all the book I crave. This is one such.

The book reviewer is historian Max Hastings who I have read.  He writes a column in the Daily Mail, and I was much surprised to read here, that there was a bit of history from WWII that he didn’t know about.

Anyway, here’s his review of a book by Colin Smith.

From The Sunday Times
August 16, 2009

England’s Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-42 by Colin Smith

The Sunday Times review by Max Hastings

Most of the second world war’s combatant nations have published official histories — even the Germans have got around to a semi-official one, and impressively scholarly it is. France, however, never has and probably never will. Resistance or no resistance, the French story is intractably complex and inescapably ugly.

How would an official history address, for instance, the episode at Dakar, French West Africa, in July 1940, when Churchill enraged the French by insisting on the award of the DSO to Commander Bobby Bristowe, who led a volunteer naval party in a launch alongside the brand-new French battleship Richelieu, laying four depth charges below its hull? Or the heroics of Pierre Le Gloan of the French air force, an ace who shot down seven British aircraft over Syria in 1941?

Marshal Philippe Pétain established his government at Vichy in July 1940, following Hitler’s triumphant blitzkrieg and occupation of much of France. He ruled the unoccupied rump of his own country and most of France’s overseas colonies in awkward collaboration with the Nazis. Until at least the winter of 1942, Vichy forces abroad fought the allies with a vigour that caused Britain’s prime minister to remark crossly that he wished they had tried as hard against the Germans in 1940.

The French had administered Syria since 1918. In June 1941, Churchill reluctantly committed forces to occupy the country when Germans arrived there, and Vichy aircraft began escorting Luftwaffe operations that threatened British control of Iraq. The Germans seemed likely to seize the Levant with French acquiescence.

The ensuing campaign was bitterly contested. Commando Geoffrey Keyes described in his journal a landing at the Litani river mouth in Lebanon: “Ex-tremely unpleasant…snipers in wired post…Very accurate fire. Padbury, Jones, Woodnutt killed. Several 3 Troop killed and wounded. George and Eric…take most of 3 Troop over about 60 yards to right flank…Four gallant Aussies…succeed in carrying up one boat…One killed.” The commando lost 45 dead including their CO, and 75 wounded. At the end of the Syrian struggle, 5,668 French troops agreed to join de Gaulle, but 32,000 insisted upon being sent home.

There was malice, too. Even as General Henri Dentz reluctantly negotiated Syria’s surrender, he shipped 63 British prisoners to Greece, en route to German POW camps. Only draconian threats got them back. Vichy handled captured allied servicemen and civilian internees with callousness, indeed brutality. “The French were rotten,” said Ena Stoneman, a survivor from the sunken liner Laconia held in Morocco. “We ended up thinking of them as our enemies, and not the Germans. They treated us like animals most of the time.”

Australian, British and Indian soldiers died under Vichy guns in Syria, even as the allies were struggling to hold off Rommel in the desert. The novelist Roald Dahl, who flew Hurricanes in the campaign, wrote later: “I for one have never forgiven the Vichy French for the unnecessary slaughter they caused.”

Colin Smith, a veteran war correspondent, has built an impressive reputation as a military historian, chronicling the fall of Singapore, the desert campaign, the life of Orde Wingate and now France’s minor-key war with Britain — England, as the French called it, usually adding the adjective “perfidious”. It is a fascinating story, which began one morning in July 1940.

Armed Royal Navy parties boarded French warships in British harbours to demand their surrender. At Devonport, officers of the submarine Surcouf resisted, starting a gun battle in the control room during which one French and three British sailors were killed. It was a source of deep bitterness to the British, defying Hitler, that 75% of French servicemen in Britain, including most of those rescued from Dunkirk, insisted on repatriation after Pétain surrendered.

Bitterness mounted after a British ultimatum at Mers-El-Kébir, Oran’s naval base, was rejected. The Royal Navy wrecked the French fleet by bombarding the Algerian port, killing 1,300 sailors. Churchill feared this might cause the Vichy regime actively to ally itself with the Nazis, though this did not dissuade him from giving the fire order.

Vichy did not become a formal belligerent. A few remote African colonies “rallied” to General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the tiny “Free French” contingent that had opted for exile in Britain. But most French forces abroad vigorously resisted the British. Smith de-scribes bloody naval actions in which French destroyers and submarines were sunk, in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. The fighting was at its roughest in Madagascar in 1942, a campaign unknown to most students of the war, including me, and here vividly described. Even after the British established themselves ashore, with the aim of forestalling possible Japanese occupation of the French colony, its governor-general signalled to Vichy: “Our available troops are preparing to resist every enemy advance”. Each stage of the island’s defence, he said, “became a page of heroism written by ‘La France’.” It took five months to secure the island.

Even in November 1942, when it was becoming plain the allies would win the war, French troops gave an unpleasant shock to Americans landing in ­Algeria and Morocco, treating them as invaders rather than liberators. Vichy forces inflicted 1,500 US casualties before quitting.

Why did the French fight so vigorously against us? One answer is that many of their soldiers were mercenaries, Senegalese and suchlike, happy to shoot anybody they were paid to. French colonial troops in Italy later acquired an appalling reputation for rape and murder, albeit by then enlisted in the allied cause.

Many French professional soldiers, sailors and airmen considered it their duty to serve their country as its government demanded, and accepted the legitimacy of Vichy. Finally, a good many viscerally disliked the British, partly for fighting on in 1940, partly for sinking their fleet at Oran, and partly for traditional reasons: Crécy, Agincourt, Blenheim, Trafalgar. British troops advancing into Syria found a graffito: “Wait, dirty English bastards, until the Germans come. We run away now, and so will you soon.”

Smith describes unfamiliar battles with notable fluency and skill. The French deserve some sympathy for their behaviour, amid misery and confusion after suffering humiliation in 1940. But it is impossible to make the story seem pretty. The heroics of de Gaulle’s followers and of the maquis in occupied France could not mask the reality that a lot of Frenchmen tried hard for the other side, killing thousands of allied personnel, even if they convinced themselves that by doing so they were contributing to “la gloire de la France”.

England’s Last War Against France by Colin Smith
Weidenfeld £25 pp512

SUNDAY TIMES BOOK REVIEW

Posted by peiper     on 08/16/2009 at 11:17 AM   
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