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greatworldwar2 · 2 years

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• 369th Croatian Infantry Regiment

The 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment was a regiment of the German Army raised to fight on the Eastern Front during World War II. The regiment was formed in July 1941 from Croatian volunteers from the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) . The troops swore a joint oath of allegiance to the Führer, the Poglavnik, the German Reich and the NDH.

On April 10th, 1941, the Independent State of Croatia (NDH, Croatian: Nezavisna Država Hrvatska) was created as a puppet state aligned to the occupying Germans. The Ustaše fascist government of the NDH asked Germany for military assistance as they feared Italian territorial ambitions after ceding much of the coastal area of Dalmatia to Italy in treaties signed on May 18th, 1941. By June 25th, 1941, Poglavnik Ante Pavelić, the leader of the NDH, had sent an envoy to Berlin to offer volunteers to serve on the Eastern Front. By July 2nd, Hitler accepted the offer, and military units were formed under the supervision of two German army officers. The NDH viewed this as a means of strengthening its ties with Germany, potentially an ally in resisting further territorial losses to Italy. Although the NDH considered the unit to be a part of the Croatian Home Guard and the NDH authorities retained responsibility for providing replacements, the regiment's members swore an oath to Adolf Hitler. Whilst not officially part of the Wehrmacht, the regiment was under German military jurisdiction and direct German command throughout its existence, serving as part of the 100th Jäger Division.

All soldiers wore Wehrmacht uniforms with a Croatian checkerboard patch incorporating the word Hrvatska (Croatia) on the upper right sleeve and right side of the helmet. Initially, two battalions were raised and formed into a regiment at Varaždin. This was followed by the raising of a third battalion at Sarajevo. Only Croats, Ukrainians or White Russians were accepted as volunteers, and about one third of those accepted were Bosnian Muslims, who were mostly admitted into the 1st battalion. As the volunteers were promised high salaries and financial assistance to their families, the enrollment figures were relatively good. A training battalion was formed for the regiment in Stockerau, Austria. The regiment was then transported to Döllersheim, Austria for training. With an effective strength of 5,000, the regiment consisted of three infantry battalions, a machine-gun company, an anti-tank company, three field artillery batteries, headquarters staff and a supply company. In August 1941, the regiment was transported to Romania. From there, it spent several weeks marching on foot to the front line. On October 10th, the regiment linked up on the line of the Dnieper River with the 100th Jäger Division, which was then part of Army Group South.

To accustom the regiment to the conditions and divisional procedures and further progress their training, the regiment's units were initially divided up among other regiments of the division immediately after their arrival on the front line near Kharkov. The divisional diary recorded that the main goal for units of the regiment during this period was to improve discipline across various areas. To improve poor discipline, in September 1941, Colonel Ivan Markulj sent 43 officers and NCOs as well as 144 soldiers back to the NDH due to illness and/or for disciplinary reasons. After the Red Army counterattacked and re-took Rostov in November 1941, the 100th Jäger Division marched south to the front line on the Mius River on November 22nd. Temperatures dropped as low as -18C, and the regiment had no winter clothing. The regiment's units, still divided among the other regiments of the division, dug in alongside the Slovak Mobile Brigade and SS-Division Wiking. In mid-January 1942, the 100th Light Infantry Division was deployed to the Stalino area to assist in fighting off a Soviet cavalry corps that had broken through the front line. Through some heavy fighting along the line of the Samara River, the division held on through the winter. Starting in early 1942, soldiers were able to send messages back to the Independent State of Croatia. Troops wrote letters for family members and friends on any paper they could find, such as cigarette papers or pages torn from notebooks. Generalleutnant Werner Sanne, the 100th Jäger Division's commander, commended the regiment's successes over the winter, especially the actions of Lieutenant Colonel Marko Mesić's artillery battalion. From mid-May 1942, the regiment was reunited under Colonel Markulj, after which the 100th Jäger Division joined in the final phases of the pincer attack on the Red Army bridgehead at Kharkov. In June, the division supported the 1st Panzer Army's drive along the Don River, through Voronezh to Kalach where the regiment incurred heavy casualties trying to cross the river in the face of serious resistance. After the Second Battle of Kharkov, Colonel Markulj, Lieutenant Eduard Bakarec and six other regiment officers were awarded the Iron Cross First Class.

After participating in mopping-up operations in along the Don, the division rested briefly in September, and the regiment was re-organised after receiving some reinforcements. Markulj was transferred back to Croatia and was temporarily replaced by Colonel Marko Mesić on July 7th, 1942. At 'Proljet Kultura,' the regiment suffered 53 dead and 186 wounded in desperate hand-to-hand combat during the German attack on July 27th and subsequent overwhelming Soviet counterattack on July 28th. The worst recorded casualties before Stalingrad were 171 dead suffered in combat in various villages along the Samara River. In September 1942, during a visit to the 6th Army headquarters, Pavelić decorated and promoted some soldiers of the regiment. Two days later, the 100th Light Infantry Division was committed to the Battle of Stalingrad. From that date, the number of legionnaires was fast reducing to a reported total of 1,403 altogether by 21 October 1942. New fresh forces from Croatia were not added except for returns of sick and wounded and a few officers and staff. A total of 22 (15%) officers were killed, 38 (26%) wounded, and 66 (45%) returned to Croatia from the original 147 Legion officers in total before fall. Only 20 officers, including Mesic, remained in Stalingrad.

The 100th Jäger Division, including the 369th Croatian Reinforced Infantry Regiment, was involved in the heavy fighting for the "Red October" factory and for Mamayev Hill during the Battle of Stalingrad. By November 1942, the fighting in their sector had become a locked stalemate with little progress. By December 1942, the regiment had seen such intense combat that it was at 1/3 strength. Despite the harsh conditions, the German high command credited the regiment with maintaining 'proper and military bearing'. Several distinctions and citations are noted in war diaries and official military documents. There are several citations for bravery, valour, and leadership under fire for men of all ranks, including Lieutenant Rudolf Baričević. In addition, the regimental doctors received distinctions for their actions and success in saving lives. One notable citation is that of Captain Madraš, who was wounded and was to be flown out of Stalingrad, but refused and instead stayed and fought with his men. There were also acts of insubordination, dereliction of duty, and cowardly behaviour cited in reports. This was common for the demoralized and surrounded German and German-allied troops at Stalingrad, as the conditions were extremely harsh on the soldiers. Major Tomislav Brajkovic is noted to have desperately attempted to keep morale and discipline high. However, due to major disagreements with other officers, including his commanding officer, he was transferred out of the regiment. By January, the regiment's section of the front line had reduced to 200 m held by some 90 remaining troops, all suffering from extreme cold, hunger, fatigue and lack of ammunition. Colonel Viktor Pavicic reportedly left a resignation letter and disappeared from the theatre for good. During its last days at Stalingrad, the Legion desperately retrained about 700 inexperienced artillery and support soldiers to infantry combat duty. The last official report from January 21st, 1943 counted 443 infantry and 444 artillery soldiers in Stalingrad. Just before the surrender of the 6th Army at the end of January, about 1,000 wounded were flown out, and of the remaining men in the regiment, nearly 900 became prisoners of war. Among the last Wehrmacht soldiers to leave Stalingrad by air were a group of 18 wounded and sick Croat legionnaires. The evacuation also saved the regiment's war diary and other documents. Elements of the regiment fought as long as they could but ultimately surrendered to the Soviet General Vasiljev on January 29th, 1943. In the three months between 21 October 1942 and 21 January 1943, they had lost 540 of 983 troops fighting for the Red October factory.

The Legion assembled at Beketovka on river Volga where they were joined by some 80,000 mainly German as well as Italian, Romanian and Hungarian POWs. They were sent on a forced march to Moscow, where they were joined by Croatian legionnaires from the Light Transport Brigade who had been attached to Italian forces on the Eastern Front. From there, they were sent to work camps in Siberia. Many died on the march due to starvation, hypothermia or disease. More than 1,000 legionnaires were evacuated from the Soviet Union and later Stalingrad by various means and for various reasons. They were awarded the Croatian Legion 1941 Linden Leaf for their service and formed the core of a new unit, the 369th (Croatian) Infantry Division. In late October 1944, the Yugoslav Legion numbering about 3,000 operated as part of the Red Army around Čačak during the Belgrade Offensive. This unit was formed in early 1944 partly from former members of the 369th (Croatian) Reinforced Infantry Regiment. It was commanded by the former Ustaše Lieutenant Colonel Marko Mesić. Col. Mesić was given command by the Soviets of this newly formed 1st Yugoslav Volunteer Brigade, assembled from Yugoslav prisoners of war and volunteers living in Russia at the time. It is quite likely that most former Croatian soldiers of the 369. Regiment chose Communist Partisan service to avoid almost certain death in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. During the first few months in captivity, Legionnaire numbers were reduced from some 700 to around 400 odd survivors or a 40% loss of life in under twelve months. The new Yugoslav partisan brigade, now wearing old Royal Yugoslav Army uniforms, was commanded by experienced former 369th Regiment Croat Legion officers. They were transported to Yugoslavia in late 1944 under direct orders from Tito, where they were sacrificed in combat against superior German forces, suffering very high casualties. The few remaining survivors were suspected, and most were later convicted of being Soviet infiltrators by the partisans as well as Croat NDH authorities.

This post was requested by @historyofcroatia go view their blog for extensive history of the Croatian people and country.

#second world war #world war ii #world war 2 #wwii #military history #history #german history #Croatian history #croatian #stalingrad #yugoslavia history #untold history

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theacademicgatsby · 3 years

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A few (maybe a little more than that) of my favourite passages from Allen Ginsberg's Howl:

"....who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago..."

"...backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcans rantings and kind king light of mind..."

"...who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,//who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,//who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpischords in their lofts,//who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,//who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,//who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,//who plunged themselves under a meat truck looking for an egg,//who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads everyday for the next decade,//who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,//who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality..."

"...who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,..."

"I'm with you in Rockland//where we are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter"

#academia #dark academia #dark acadamia aesthetic #allen ginsberg #howl

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caydencarinopablo · 2 years

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The Nalchik-Ordzhonikidze Defensive Operation

It was October 25, 1942. Army Group A (Allegiance: Germany) was racing towards the major cities of Grozny, Baku, and Tbilisi, to capture the oil fields of the Caucasus. The Germans planned an attack to gain control of the vital city of Ordzhonikidze (now called Vladikavkaz), which was the gateway through the rough mountains of the Caucasus. The Soviets had not been expecting an attack in this area and had instead been preparing to launch an offensive operation against the area of Mozdok and Malgobek , so the Germans had complete tank superiority in the area around Ordzhonikidze, as well as three times the men of the Soviets, eleven times the artillery and ten times the mortars [1].

Early in the morning, several dozens of German aircraft deliver a heavy attack on the headquarters of the 37th Army, which was defending the area of Ordzhonikidze. Resulting from this heavy attack was the severance of communications between the headquarters and the main forces [1 and 2]. On the 26th, German forces continued the attack near Granichnyy, and tanks were able to breach a weak Soviet defense line and were able to advance 12.5 miles to the southwest [1], capturing the city of Argudan.

On the 28th, the Germans attacked once more and were able to take Nalchik. On the night of October 30th, the Soviets responded by moving a tank brigade reinforced with anti-tank artillery to Digora, while also positioning elements of the 58th Army to defend the mouth of the Ardon river. The Germans meanwhile were able to penetrate enemy lines and attacked in the Chikola area, destroying the headquarters of the 10th Corps at the Soviets’ rear. They then launched their attack on the Ardon river, breaking through Soviet resistance and crossing the river on the 1st of November. They were able to capture the city of Alagir during this assault [1].

Meanwhile, the Germans were able to eliminate the defenses in Digora and continued to advance towards Ardon. After waiting for the rest of the attack group to catch up, they launched an attack on the Darg Kokh railway line, however this attack was stopped after advancing a couple hundred meters in the face of heavy enemy fire [2]. German reconnaissance efforts were able to determine that there were at least 10 tanks and 3 armored trains defending the rail line, along with a powerful defense of infantry units. The Germans attacked again with this information, with the 4th Panzer Regiment destroying 6 enemy tanks and 2 armored trains and were able to reach the western part of Ardon. However, by this time it was already nightfall, and the Germans could advance no further [2].

The 13th Panzer Division attacked the city of Ardon; however, the city had been evacuated the night before! They were immediately attacked by heavy enemy artillery, but were able to carry on the attack, outmaneuvering Soviet defenses. However, the German attack reached the Fiagdon river, and were forced to find a suitable position to attempt to ford it. The Germans had found an available position to cross the Fiagdon, however it was heavily defended by Soviet personnel. However, a very brave Hauptmann (Hauptmann = Captain) led his troops across the river and was able to cross safely. The next formation that followed, however, was attacked by strongly camouflaged Soviet defenses [2], and had the German self-propelled guns not intervened, the Germans would have had a not very fun day.

But the Soviets were not going to just stand there and not do anything about it! They launched multiple counterattacks around the Darg Kokh railroad and were able to blow it up with explosives [2].

On the 2nd of November, German armor supported by infantry attacked the outer defense line of Ordzhonikidze, destroying the outer flank and capturing the city of Gizel, however, could advance no further as the Soviet reserves were committed to defend the area. Bad weather did not stop the Soviets from committing their 4th Air Army’s planes, as they flew 2,200 sorties and shot down 60 enemy aircraft in a 12-day period. The Germans continued to attempt to attack Ordzhonikidze, concentrating 150 tanks for a big attack, however this attack was thrown back, and the Germans suffered heavy losses. The Germans were forced to halt their attack until the south side of the Terek had been cleared of Soviet forces, due to concerns that the Soviets could launch a counterattack into the German flanks [2].

Suddenly, on November 6th, Soviet forces launched a massive attack on Gizel, cutting off elements of the 23rd Panzer Division almost completely, with only a small gap of 1.85 miles that the Germans could retreat through. German units made ferocious attempts to break out of encirclement, with fierce fighting in the Suar river continuing. Finally, Soviet units captured Gizel and reached Fiagdon once more, although tough German resistance stopped them from advancing further yet [1].

The Nalchik-Ordzhonikidze Defensive Operation ended with around 16,000 casualties for the Soviets, and 5000 casualties for the Germans [1 and 2], turning what would have been a German decisive victory into a Soviet victory, despite the Soviets being outnumbered. German forces were unable to launch any offensives on the Soviet oilfields, denying them valuable oil that the Germans needed desperately. In addition, the Nalchik-Ordzhonikidze Defensive Operation held up troops that the Germans could have used to reinforce their rapidly devolving situation at Stalingrad.

Your name is unknown, your deed is immortal.

-Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Moscow.

Sources:

[1] codenames.info

[2] feldgrau.net

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kvetchlandia · 4 years

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Dave Heath New York City c.1957

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room, who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

--Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″ 1956

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newloverofbeauty · 4 years

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Richard Avedon: Peter Orlovsky & AllenGinsberg (1963)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural

darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz,

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated,

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war,

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull,

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall,

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls,

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson,

illuminating all the motionless world of Time between,

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over

the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun

and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings

and kind king light of mind,

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx

on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-

wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo,

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale

beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon,

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and

eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes,

meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement,

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall,

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts,

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night,

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,

who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels,

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain,

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and

followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa,

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and

the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago,

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big

pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing

while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed

down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed,

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons,

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime

but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts,

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love,

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may,

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath

when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword,

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb

and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom,

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of

cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall

and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed

in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake,

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems,

cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable

lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops

in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings &

especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden

Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay

and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a

door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium,

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the

wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion,

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery,

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music,

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts,

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology,

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish,

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom,

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg,

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade,

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to

open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried,

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine

shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown

and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the

filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses

barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz

finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles,

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision

or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain,

who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out

the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads

and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz,

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers

to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave,

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury,

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented

themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and

who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia,

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the

visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East,

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes

of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M.

and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture,

a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination—

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time—

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the

alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane,

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and

trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs

and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater

Omnipotens Aeterna Deus

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you

speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death,

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and

blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma

sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat

a thousand years.

–Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″ 1956

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 4 years

Photo

“Name Col. F. F. Worthington To Head Armored Brigade,” Toronto Star. August 22, 1940. Page 10. ---- Colonel Ralston Announces That Suggestion Made by McNaughton Followed ---- HOPE TO BUILD HERE --- Ottawa, Aug. 21 - (CP) - A Canadian division of tanks was forecast today as Hon. J. L. Ralston, minister of national defence, announced the authorization of an armored brigade.

This brigade will consist of four battalions of the Canada Active Service Force to be equipped with 200 tanks in addition to other armored vehicles. It will be commanded by Lieut.-Col. F. F. Worthington, until now commanding officer of the Canadian armored fighting vehicles training centre at Camp Borden, who is promoted to colonel. The new brigade will be assembled there.

‘This is not by any means a routine proceeding,’ the minister said. ‘The step was taken as a result of the recommendation of the chief of staff and communications with Lt.-Gen. A. G. L. McNaughton. General McNaughton was very keen about having it done.’

C.A.S.F. units designated for the brigade are: Ontario Regiment (tanks), Oshawa; the Three Rivers Regiment (tanks), Three Rivers; 1st Canadian Cavalry, London, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary (now at Borden); Fort Garry Horse, Winnipeg, and other western centres.

Four battalions of non-permanent active militia are designated to do special training and be available in case the armored brigade should be increase.

These are: Essex Regiment (tanks), Windsor; Calgary Regiment (Tanks), Calgary; Argyle Light Infantry (Tanks), Belleville; The New Brunswick Regiment (Tanks)

The minister explained that an armored brigade ordinarily consisted of three battalions, with artillery troops. Four units were designated in the possibility of change in the establishment, so there would be one supernumerary battalion.

Training equipment, he said, was not complete. It would train with such tranks and wheeled transports as are being used at Camp Borden, using for gunnery practie machine-guns and anti-tank guns.

Plans are under way, he said, for production of tanks adapted both to training and operations. Deigns and models are in the hands of British and French experts and Col. Worthington has been in consultation with these men.

#canadian army #tanks #tank brigade #armoured warfare #camp borden #canada during world war 2 #military training #military recruitment

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born2battle · 4 years

Text

Baptism by Fire ---- 1971 War

On 01 Nov, I reported to Maj P V Mithran, the Battery Commander of Romeo Battery. He extended a hearty welcome & introduced me to all the Jawans, specifically mentioning about my outstanding performance as winner of the Silver Gun at Deolali. He expressed the hope that I will prove to be a competent GPO and a long term asset in the Jat Balwan family. He advised me to get conversant with all drills on the 75 mm Howitzer and the technical work in the Command Post, within next one week. He nominated the Instructors who would conduct this on the job training. Then, we had the “ Take Post “ ceremony at the Gun, which signalled the start of my Induction training. It was so encouraging to begin this journey, in a scenario, where the entire Regiment was deployed for the operational role.

All training was conducted within the perimeter of the Gun Position, covering an area of 2 square km. Individual training was conducted for the first two hours & was followed by Collective training for the next two hours. It covered Gun Drill, Command Post work, Survey schemes & Driving and maintenance. Soon after lunch, all Officers & JCOs had classes on special subjects such as Fire Planning, Radio communication procedures, basic battle procedures of an Infantry Battalion & Terrain analysis of the likely area of operations. Soon after dinner, we practised deployment drills, both at the OP end & the Gun end. This methodology of training would contribute as a battle winning factor shortly. Despite this hectic schedule, I managed to find time to write letters to my parents & friends.Interestingly, letters had to be written on Red / Green coloured Forces letters & dispatched via FPO --- set up by Army Postal Service !!

During my Induction training, I got an opportunity to observe the customs of my Jawans & understand their behaviour at the grassroots level. I had some difficulty in comprehending their JAT dialect initially but was able to forge a relationship gradually. I found the JATs to be robust and competent while executing any task. They were voracious foodies & loved to prepare’ Halwa’, even in small groups. Meanwhile, my BC monitored the progress about my training and allowed me to fire the Gun for the first time.I felt thrilled when I pressed the firing lever of the Ranging Gun, while all the Gun detachments cheered in unison ---” Bol Kishan Bhagwan ki Jay.” I was permitted to continue firing throughout the Shoot, which was controlled by the OP officer, engaging the target which was 8 km away. At the end of this maiden experience, I distributed sweets to all the Jawans , as per the regimental custom.

Meanwhile, a special Force named Mukti Bahini, was created out of the Bengali population of erstwhile East Pakistan. This special force comprised of 25,000 conventional forces and 80,000 freedom fighters. It operated as a part of the operations conducted by Indian Armed Forces. In our sector of operations Mukti Bahini was utilized for guerilla operations for the Battle of Pachagarh. It was the first time when I performed the duties of GPO giving fire orders from the Command Post. This was also the first occasion when we were under shelling from enemy artillery guns. However, we had to continue firing our guns in retaliation after moving to alternate positions.

In the last week of November, the situation became critical. As we advanced the enemy retreated to occupy defensive positions after blowing up the bridges on the rivers/ canals. 98 Mountain Regiment was part of the thrust from north to south while there were similar thrusts into East Pakistan from easterly and westerly directions. On 03 December 1971, Pakistan launched a surprise air strike on our air bases right from Srinagar to Barmer. In immediate response, our Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi announced on All India Radio “War has been forced on us”. Thus began the 1971 war.

Lt Col Chaturvedi, our CO held an urgent Sainik Sammelan and briefed us about the latest development. He also briefed us about the future plans for suitable response. All of us resolved that we will deliver the results to the best of our abilities and utmost of our capacities especially in this war situation. The very next day, we heard the news about the success achieved by Indian Navy who had sunk the Pakistani Submarine - PNS Ghazi of the coast of Vizag.

In our sector, our next objective was Thakurgaon which was very heavily defended. The planning for its capture was in progress by the higher commanders. At the gun position ,we were busy digging gun pits, weapon pits, command post and alternate positions which would prove their utility in the event of shelling. Our CO, BCs and OP officers evolved a detailed fire plan for the capture of Thakurgaon. These plans were sent to the Adjutant command post for further dissemination to each of the GPOs. We had to calculate the technical data and keep it ready for application on the guns. The capture of Thakurgaon was completed after two nights of intense battle. Major Virinder Kumar, who was our BC in this action, was later awarded the Sena Medal for his gallantry.

Our next objective was Dinajpur, which was another hard nut to crack. Similar preparations were carried out after we moved forward and deployed in a new gun position. It was equally essential to replenish the ammunition keeping in pace with the expenditure. This was done only during night. The attack was launched on Dinajpur which was captured after three nights. It was again another OP officer of our Regiment who proved his worth - Capt Prakash Chand who was later awarded the ‘Mention in Despatches’. However, two Jawans (L/NK Ran Singh and OPR Ram Chander) of his OP party were martyred. We were then ordered to move quickly towards Rangpur. This was achieved after crossing the rivers / tributaries en-route using pontoon bridges. Eventually, Rangpur garrison was surrounded by 14 Dec.

We learnt about the progress of operations along all the three thrusts which had converged very close to Dhaka. All India Radio announced about our successful amphibious landings at Cox’s Bazaar as well as a magnificent air drop at Tangail. These two surprise actions were a clear indication that the noose was tightening on Dhaka. Finally, on 16 Dec, the cease fire was declared bringing an end to the war in both Eastern and Western theatres. The main surrender ceremony was held in Dhaka where Lt Gen AAK Niazi, GOC in C, Pakistan Eastern Theatre surrendered along with 93,000 troops to Lt Gen JS Aurora, GOC in C, Eastern Command. It was indeed a decisive victory for India which resulted in the birth of Bangladesh.

Similar surrender ceremony was held at Rangpur, where we were directly involved. It was a historic achievement for our Regiment, remembered forever, in our regimental history. Personally, I felt privileged to be baptised in the Jat Balwan family in this memorable manner. Hereafter, my course (38 NDA) earned the title “Born To Battle” Course.

In the midst of all this jubilation, there was a sombre feeling when I heard the news that Second Lieutenant Arun Khetarpal, my Coursemate ( 38th / Foxtrot ) had been martyred in the Battle of Basantar on the night of 15/16 December. He was the Troop Commander in 17 Poona Horse and displayed extreme gallantry in a skirmish with enemy tanks, even after his tank was hit by enemy tanks. His act of supreme sacrifice, was honoured with the highest gallantry award --- the Param Vir Chakra !! The Drill Square in NDA has since been renamed as Khetarpal Parade Ground , as a mark of respect to the Bravest of the Braves !!!

#1971 war #indian army #fauji

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hermanwatts · 4 years

Text

“I Wish to the Devil the Country was Prepared”

In early January 1932, Robert E. Howard in a letter to H. P. Lovecraft had this to say:

“I love peace, yet I wouldnt [sic] mind a war right now such a hell of a lot, if the country was prepared; but it isnt [sic]. Japan knows it; that’s why she thinks she can kick the flag around, beat up American officials, and get away with it. I wish to the devil the country was prepared.”

This comment was in relation to Japan’s recent seizure of Manchuria in late 1931. Historians often view this as the first shot that would lead to World War 2.

I recently read Cry Havoc: The Arms Race and the Second World War 1931-1941 by Joe Maiolo. It fits in with After the Trenches by William O. Odom, Linn’s Guardians of Empire, and Geoffrey Perrett’s There’s a War to be Won.

Maiolo makes the case that Stalin’s First Five Year Plan set off the 1930s arms race that led to WW2. The Japanese made a gamble to grab Manchuria before the Red Army was modernized and too powerful.

Robert E. Howard was correct. The U.S was not in a good condition to fight a war. But then again, that is the condition it generally goes into war. In 1932, the U.S. Army had 133, 200 men. The National Defense Act of 1920 called for 17,000 officers and 280,000 enlisted men. The National Guard was to be at 435,000 men.

The U.S Army had received no new equipment after WW1. In the 1930s, it was still using the British Mark VIII “Liberty” tank and had 950 French Renault FT-17 made under license. The Renault FT-17 was used up through the 1930s so in terms of quality, not at a disadvantage.

Renault FT-17 Tank

There were designs on the books for new artillery such as the 105 mm howitzer but in 1932, the Army was still using 75 mm and 155 mm cannons of WW1 vintage. Mortars were 3 inch trench mortars with often faulty ammunition due improper storage.

What the U.S. Army had plenty of were around 2 million M1917 Enfield rifles in Cosmoline. During WW1, Winchester, Remington, and Eddystone could produce Enfields in far greater numbers than Springfield Armory with the Springfield ’03 rifle. Corporal (later Sergeant) Alvin York used the M1917 Enfield on that October day in 1918 where he picked off one German after another. Most U.S. Army units in WW1 carried Enfields.

The Enfield was accurate but long (46.25 inches). It does have that short and smooth action the Enfield series of rifles is known for. Some had been sold to the civilian market, but the supply seemed inexhaustible. They were used in basic training during WW2. In the late 1930s, the Army sold around 40,000 a year to the Philippine Commonwealth for the army that Gen. Douglas MacArthur was supposed to create. Enfields were also sold to the Free French, Nationalist Chinese, Irish Free State, and the Royal Netherlands Indies Army. I have seen pictures of stacks of Enfields handed out to Philippine guerrillas in WW2. Some were sent to Britain after Dunkirk. Rear echelon troops such as Signal Corps in the Pacific had Enfields late in WW2. All the M-1 carbines were being sent to Europe. The M1917 is still in use by the Sirius Dog Sled Patrol in Greenland. The Patrol is an elite unit of the Danish Navy. The M1917 works in extreme cold conditions.

M1917 Enfield

The official rifle of the U.S. Army in 1932 was the Springfield ’03. The Army had somewhere around 800,000 of those left over from WW1. It is an accurate rifle owing its action to the Mauser.

The U.S. Army had 102,174 Browning Automatic Rifles from WW1. Ever talk to WW2 vets, they liked the BAR. It was heavy, weighing around 19 lbs. It was originally designed for suppressing fire crossing no-man’s land. Bonnie and Clyde used BARs and did Frank Hamer who took out Bonnie and Clyde. Foreign especially British writers hate the BAR calling it a poor light machine gun. It was used sort of as an LMG but gave a rifle squad a little more fire power. The Marines had two BARS per rifles squad in WW2.

Browning Automatic Rifle

The M1919 Browning machine gun began service right after WW1 and used up through Vietnam. John Moses Browning was a firearms genius.

Browning M1919 Machine Gun

The Thompson submachine gun was not adopted until 1938 by the U.S. Army but in use by the Navy and Marines. So, overall, the U.S. was in similar condition to all other great powers following WW1 with small arms.

The biggest problem is the U.S. Army had no large-scale training exercises during most of the 1930s due to lack of funding. Gen. Douglas MacArthur fought tooth and nail to keep the Army from being further by Roosevelt but money was not present for training.

A bright spot is the Army Air Corps. The Air Corps took 20% of expenditures in 1933. The U.S. at least kept up with new designs of aircraft and some purchases. The Curtis P6-E Hawk would have been the standard “pursuit” plane in those last years of bi-wing airplanes.

Out of 133,200 men, 25% of the U.S. Army was overseas. The old thinking of garrisons strewn across colonial empires ready to deal with any local emergencies. U. S. Army strength overseas:

Philippines: 11,744 (5207 Army, 6537 Philippine Scouts). Three infantry regiments, four coast artillery, one cavalry regiments, two field artillery regiments.

Hawaii: 14,223. The Hawaiian Division (“The Pineapple Army”) and coast artillery.

Alaska: two understrength companies at Juneau.

Panama: 2 infantry regiments, 2 coast artillery regiments, 1 battalion field artillery

Tientsin, China: 15th Infantry Regiment at 2 battalions

Puerto Rico: 65th Infantry Regiment.

Another 20% of the U.S. Army was on the Mexican border. The 2nd Infantry Division was kept at full strength at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. The 1st Cavalry Division at Ft. Bliss, Texas at 9,595 men; the 24th Infantry Regiment, one of the Army’s two black infantry regiments was at Ft. Huachuca in Arizona on the border.

The Washington Treaty of 1922 restricted the U.S. Navy. The Navy had 11 battleships, 3 fleet carriers, 19 cruisers, 102 destroyers, 55 submarines for two oceans. The Navy had 93,384 personnel.

The U.S. Marines stood at 16,561. The Marines were scattered from Shanghai in China to Cuba in small detachments. The 4th Marine Regiment had been in Shanghai with two battalions. The North China Marines fluctuated between 200-300 men at this time.

North China Marines

REH to HPL, 1932: “Along the Border there is a definite undercurrent of expectation, or at least apprehension, of Mexican invasion in case of war. There has been a persistent rumor, every [sic] since the last war, of the mysterious presence and vaguely sinister activities of a hundred thousand Japanese in the interior of Mexico.”

The Mexican Revolution from 1910-1920 gets most historical press. Mexico continued to have turmoil through the 1920s and 30s. Some were regional military commander led revolts against downsizing. The Yaqui Indians in northern Mexico fought the Mexican government 1926-27. There was the Cristero Rebellion 1927-29 and Cedillo Rebellion 1938-39.

Closer to home for Robert E. Howard was the San Diego Plan of 1915. Named after the small town of San Diego in southern Texas, the manifesto stated:

“On the 20th day of February, 1915, at two o’clock in the morning, we will arise in arms against the Government and Country of the United States of North America, ONE AS ALL AND AS ONE, proclaiming the liberty of individuals of the black race and its independence of Yankee tyranny which has held us in iniquitous slavery since remote times.”

In the summer of 1915, Mexican rebels and bandits (Sedicionistas) launched 30 raids against targets carried from across the Rio Grande River. The Seditionistas killed almost two-dozen U.S. citizens including kidnapping, torturing, and decapitating a U.S. soldier displaying his head on a pole in the border. The Anglo-Texan response was with extreme prejudice including extra-judicial executions in retaliation. Robert E. Howard would have been nine years old during these events.

The 2nd Infantry Division and 1st Cavalry were kept at full strength through the 1920s and 30s ready to deal with Mexico.

Could war have happened in 1932? The U.S. was so weak militarily that Japan contemptuously went about its aggression with little fear. The U.S. simply could not intimidate Japan. There was a chance of a clash with the North China Marines at Peking and the 15th Infantry Regiment at Tientsin sparking a wider war. The Japanese could have taken out scattered, isolated U.S. detachments in China, Philippines, and even Hawaii.

The plan was for the U.S. Navy to rush to relieve the Philippines in War Plan Orange while the Philippine garrison retreated to the Bataan peninsula and Corregidor island. It was thought it would take the Japanese six months just to cut through the jungle to get to American lines.

A daring attack by the Japanese on Panama could have put the canal out of use. Opportunistic politicians or generals in Mexico under Japanese encouragement could have attacked along the U.S.–Mexico border in the hope of regaining the South West. The Japanese could have trainers and advisors with the Mexican Army. They even could have a regiment of infantry to stiffen up their allies.

The U.S. could find itself with almost 25% of its army gone and another 20% desperately holding the border with no new tanks, no new artillery. It would take around eight months before you get the skeletal army and National Guard divisions filled out and trained. The Army at least had lots of rifles in storage. There were over 2 million WW1 veterans. A fair number would have been still young enough and in acceptable physical shape to provide a trained reserve to draw upon.

American industry would be able to supply plenty of trucks and other vehicles but things like tanks and cannons would take time.

Curtis P-6 Hawk

The Army Air Corps first monoplane P-26 fighter was a year away from first deliveries and the B-10 bomber two years. The Curtis P-6 Hawk, the last biplane used by the Army Air Corp would have been the plane used along the Mexican border and patrolling the West Coast.

Perhaps some sort of new tank would have been produced. An imaginary tank linking the WW1 leftovers and the M-2 tank of the late 1930s could have been produced.

The Japanese Navy could sail at will along the California coast shelling Los Angeles and San Francisco. There would not be much the U.S. could do about it for a while. In the long run, the U.S. would pummel Mexico into submission. A young Robert E. Howard joins up in the Texas National Guard (36th Infantry Division) or the Army to give the Mexicans and Japanese hell.

If there were an opportune time for the Japanese to attack, it would have been around 1936-1937. The U.S. Army would have another four years of deteriorating equipment and financial starvation. Franklin Roosevelt had taken officers out of active duty for one of his New Deal programs. They ran Civilian Conservation Corps camps. The U.S. was lucky in that a generation of young men were in a quasi-military environment providing pre-basic training. Roosevelt admired Mussolini and Stalin’s central controlled economies and emulated them. Hitler had very similar camps for German youth at the same time.

The U.S. was lucky in that when war came, a new generation of planes, tanks, rifles, vehicles were coming off the assembly lines. The Japanese and Italians were off by 10 years. Both had up modern armies for the early 1930s. Involvement in wars during the 30s delayed modernization giving the Allies the upper hand.

A war in 1932 would have looked a lot like something at the end of WW1 with bolt action rifles, bi-planes, primitive tanks. The 1st Cavalry Division would have been on horseback on the border with some old armored cars confined to the probably few functioning roads in northern Mexico. The Marines might have made a landing at Veracruz with a thrust to Mexico City to put an end of that part of the war. The expanding army would have made its mistakes and growing pains in Mexico. The .30-06 cartridge used in the ’03 Springfield, M1917 Enfield, and Browning Automatic Rifle was perfect for fighting in the open territory of the border. If Mexico did not join with Japan, there would have been a period of just some naval clashes for up to two years. The Japanese might have invaded Alaska making for a scenario of warfare in polar conditions.

The fleet would begin the hard fight across the Pacific as laid out in various versions of War Plan Orange would get underway ending with a blockade of Japan. By the 1930s, Navy admirals had a realistic view of a Pacific War with an island-hopping campaign through the Japanese Mandate islands including the Marshall and Caroline Islands. The Army said it could hold out in the Philippines for 6 months, the Navy estimated a two-year campaign across the Pacific to get the Philippines. So, the Army commander of the Philippine Department would be surrendering before help arrived. It was a command that few relished.

The U.S. could have trained Chinese troops to tie down the Japanese Army. Who knows, the Soviets might have joined in taking Manchuria from Japan once the war turned.

A war in 1932 with Japan and Mexico is an interesting topic. Gen. Douglas MacArthur was Chief of Staff of the U.S Army so there would be drama to the conflict. Who knows, maybe Grandpa Theobald would have volunteered as an ambulance driver like he tried to do in WW1.

“I Wish to the Devil the Country was Prepared” published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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alexsmitposts · 4 years

Photo

June 21, 1941 ✔ On June 21, 1941, the red Army adopted the BM-13 multi-shot rocket launcher, which later received the popular name "Katyusha". BM-13, created at the research Institute-3 under the leadership of A. G. Kostikov, became one of the world's first modern multiple launch systems. It was intended to destroy massed volleys of enemy manpower and equipment in a large area. Eight days later, the first separate experimental battery of rocket artillery was formed in Moscow under the command of captain I. A. Flerov, which on July 14, 1941, fired volleys at the enemy for the first time in the area of the Orsha railway junction and at the crossing of the Orshitsa river. In the log of combat operations of the battery it is written: "14.7.1941 g. 15 hours 15 minutes. They struck at the fascist echelons at the Orsha railway junction. The results are excellent. A solid sea of fire". "14.7.1941 G. 16 hours and 45 minutes. Salvo on the crossing of the fascist troops through Orshitsa. Large losses of the enemy in manpower and military equipment, panic. All the Hitlerites who survived on the Eastern Bank were captured by our units... "This first strike was so effective and crushing that the Hitlerites, according to reports of Marshal Timoshenko to Stalin, "... took out the wounded and killed all day, stopping the offensive for a day". In August 1941 The headquarters of the Main Command decided to form eight regiments of jet artillery, armed with BM-8 and BM-13. Jet artillery was used massively in the most important areas of the Soviet-German front and had a significant impact on the course of hostilities. At the request of the army during the war, various versions of rockets and launchers were created (BM13-SN, BM8-48, BM31-12, etc.). in July 1941 — December 1944, the Soviet industry produced more than 10 thousand Katyusha combat vehicles and more than 12 million missiles to them. In August 1941, the BM-13 installation received the popular nickname "Katyusha". The most plausible three versions of the origin of this name. 1. The first installations were made at the Voronezh plant. Comintern and the Moscow "compressor" - the initial letter inspired a lyrical image. 2. The tank was inspired by a beloved song Blanter. 3. an Unknown soldier wrote the name of his favorite girl on the installation. In any case, Katyusha and the weapon of Victory became inseparable.

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shiftyskip · 5 years

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Edward James “Babe” Heffron

The real Babe Heffron:

Edward James Heffron was born on May 16, 1923 to Joseph and Anne Heffron in South Philadelphia. He was the third of five children in his Irish-rooted family. He had three brothers: James, Joseph Jr., John (called Jake or Jack). He also had one sister named Anna Margaret. He attended a Catholic elementary school, but his parents could no longer afford it after a while and in high school, Babe attended public school Southern Philadelphia High (which he called Southern). He dropped out in his third year, to help with finances. Babe took up betting on horses. Every penny he got off of a horse race, he gave to his mother.

Babe used to rough house and play football when he was younger, but one day he hurt his hand playing. He says that “my hand and fingers contracted to the wrist and curled under, and I was in excruciating pain from my wrist all the way up the arm.” The pain would come back whenever he used his hands too much. The pain would stay with him for decades, even after the war.

His friends decided to rent a room, fix it up, and make a dance hall called the Shindig. He and his friends were at the dance hall on December 7, 1941.The brothers decided to tell their parents before enlisting. His father had a talk with them the next day, without their mom. Babe states that, “He told us that we had to fight for our country and for the freedom of those less fortunate than ourselves. He made it clear he wouldn’t accept a slacker for a son and that he was expecting us to do our part.” His father had previously served in World War I, so Babe knew what was expected of him.

Babe enlisted in August of 1942. His brother Joe was drafted into the Army while Jake and Jimmy were in the Navy. His call to service was on November 7, 1942. Which his official date of when he went on Active Duty. Babe was working at a shipyard in New Jersey at the the time. His job was to help fix up ships to become aircraft carriers and he hadn’t told them about his enlistment. His boss handed him a 2B slip, stating that he did not have to serve because his work served the war effort. Babe ripped it up in front of him. In Babe’s words: “I wasn’t going to shrink from my duty to my country. If my brothers, neighbors, and friends were all going, I wasn’t about to stay behind.

Babe went through Basic at Fort Eustis in Virginia, he was not a Toccoa boy. Meaning, Babe didn’t have the absolute joy of training under Sobel.He was assigned to B Battery, an anti-aircraft unit. He was promoted to a tech corporal and helped prepare future officers for officer candidate school. When he had arrived, he instantly put in the paperwork to become a paratrooper, but was told to finish Basic Training first. Six to Seven months later, he was given the okay and was on his way to Fort Benning, Georgia. Babe was not in Jump School until January of 1943. In Fort Benning, he was put with 1st Parachute Infantry Regiment, K company.

Night life was limited. The boys spent most of their time by reading, listening to one man’s radio, or talking about home. Lights out was at 10:00 PM and they were up by 5:00 AM. When they did get to have some more time, Babe and others went to the Bama Club nearby. One day, a wife of an officer hosted a competition. Her best jitterbug partner got a bottle of champagne. Babe went up and danced with her. He ended up winning the competition.

In jump school, Babe made a new best friend, Johnny Julian. Johnny was from Alabama and both men thought the other talked weird since Julian had a strong southern drawl and Babe did not. Babe said, “He was clean-cut, believed in God, believed in everything I believed in, believed his was coming home. We could talk to each other real easy.” Babe and Julian also became friends with J.D Henderson. Together, the three made a pact, that if one died the survivors would have to tell the parents. The trio stuck together through Jump School.

Babe loved jumps, even though his hands provided extra difficulty. He enjoyed the beauty of the day jumps, but disliked the night jumps. Night jumps were dangerous and one night, a plane crashed, killing all the men inside the plane. The night jumps were cancelled at the camp and the men were transferred to Camp Mackall for their final jump. Babe got his Jump Wings in March.

He was transferred to Camp Shanks, preparing to go home one last time before heading out overseas. In May of 1944, Babe was headed out overseas. When they reached, Liverpool, England, they had learned that the 101st and 82nd had jumped into Normandy. Babe was not part of the D-Day jump, instead he was a replacement for the troops who didn’t return from that jump. Babe, Henderson, and Julian were all transferred to Easy Company once they returned.

Easy Company’s barracks were in the middle of Aldbourne, England. Babe was told to visit Bill Guarnere. Guarnere, also from South Philadelphia, noticed that when Babe walked in, he walked like a penguin. This walk was like a duck, side to side, which Guarnere recognized as the South Philly shuffle. Guarnere and Babe only lived a short distance from each other in South Philly.

Babe learned that replacements were not easily accepted. Toccoa Men wanted little to do with the replacements. They had trained together, jumped together, fought together, and mourned together. They didn’t want much to do with a replacement, didn’t talk to them and sure as hell didn’t want to fight with one. Babe was assigned to a Toccoa vet’s gun squad, Joe Toye’s. Joe Toye, unlike the others, didn’t give a damn if Babe was a replacement and accepted him. Chuck Grant was another Toccoa man that accepted Babe easily, even gave him a new nickname: Jigger. Guarnere was also often with Babe, going out to pubs and dances. Even so, Babe stuck with his fellow replacement friends, Julian and J.D.

Babe and his friends enjoyed their time in England. Babe was often jitterbugging with girls and dancing away. They went to several different dance halls and other places. Even when they were supposed to be watching over the shed that held their chutes, Chuck Grant and Babe never made it to the shed. They never did. They were always off somewhere, enjoying a pub or two.

During his time at Aldbourne, Babe’s girl back home, Doris broke up with him. She dumped him in a letter because she’d found another man. Babe didn’t much care about it. He hadn’t even visited her before he had left for England on his last weekend pass, saying that a previous weekend with her had been, “the most boring few hours [he] could’ve spent.” The world had a funny sense of humor, because the plane Babe boarded to jump into Holland, was named Doris.

Babe was eager to jump. Babe made the jump into Holland on September 17. The jump in Holland went easy. Babe helped one mad who’d broken his leg during the jump off the field, but other than that there was not much, if any, combat. The Dutch greeted the paratroopers in celebration. They loved the paratroopers and called them angels from the sky. In Son, they received word to take Eidenhoven. On the route there, a Dutch woman gave Babe a baby carriage for him to carry his supplies in. He did so until Popeye threw his weapons in, then Babe made him push the carriage.

His platoon was the first to enter the city, and he instantly set up his machine gun by a footbridge, facing an entry way into the towns. Dutch underground members asked to attack the Germans instead, and Babe allowed them to. When the Germans appeared, the Dutch attacked them and killed all but one. The injured German was taken as a prisoner, but first a woman asked where he was hurt and when he pointed to his shoulder, she beat him with a hidden brick in her pocketbook and screamed something along the lines of evil at him. Babe said that it made his day.

Babe had many close calls in Holland. In Nuenen, a tank caught on fire and all of the men inside had died, leading it to be driven into the ditch next to Babe. How he escaped, he doesn’t remember. Later on, he thought he was hit but Buck Compton has been hit in his butt, tripped over a wheelbarrow, and hit Babe’s leg on his way down. Guarnere and others eventually rescued Compton.

To escape the Germans, Babe had to get over a 6 foot hedge. To get over, Babe had to back into German fire and get a running start. As he jumped, his rosary came off of him. Sheehy grabbed his jump jacket and pulled him over the hedge. Babe, reluctantly, was about to leave his rosary behind, but found it inside his helmet. His mother had given him the rosary before he left and he was determined to carry it through the war.

Then he had another close call as the Germans shelled a cemetery he was standing in. One last one was when he was stuck in a ditch, with Germans firing at them. He went to return fire when Guarnere kicked him backwards and back into the ditch, saving him from getting shot while Guarnere himself still stood in the fire. Another close call was in October. Babe witnessed Joe Toye and Jim Campbell go into enemy territory. Toye had called for Babe, but Campbell stepped up instead, telling Babe to stay back. Campbell was hit in the back with a shell and died instantly. Toye was wounded pretty badly. But Campbell stuck out in Babe’s mind, for he had taken the hit for Babe. Babe never forgot him.

One time, when stopped by a river, Babe fell asleep by his machine gun. When he woke up, another paratrooper was peeing on his gun, since it was too dark to see. Babe started screaming and yelling, ready to kill the man. He never did shut up.

Babe was on the front lines for 73 days in Holland. When they reached Mourmelon for their rest. All the boys who were left after Holland got dysentery. Bill, as Babe envies, missed this because he had been hit and taken to a hospital. Even with dysentery, the men continued to train and work. In December, they had all received weekend passes to various towns when Bill ran in with the news that they were leaving, the Germans had broken through the Ardennes. Their weekend passes were off and they were headed into one of the worst winters Belgium had without winter gear. They had no combat gear, no ammo, no supplies. They were headed, unprepared, into the winter.

They arrived outside of Bastogne in the early morning. Their greeting was disgraceful to Babe. They encountered American soldiers fleeing. These soldiers tried to convince them to turn back. It was a disgraceful sight for the men to see. Medical supplies were extremely limited after this. On the way up, the 101st medical company was captured, but Babe offered to go get more supplies with another soldier. On the way back, when dark gave them cover to move around, Babe suggested they take a shortcut through the woods. Babe fell into a hole he didn’t see in the dark, snowy forest. Below him, a voice asked, “Hinkle, Hinkle, ist das du?”

Babe scrambled out of the foxhole and yelled, “Hinkle your ass, Kraut!” And then he ran.

Babe attended Mass in the snow one day when Father Maloney came up. They took communion in the snow and used the Father’s jeep as an altar. Skip Muck was in front of Babe once, after the communion, Babe said: “At least if we die, we’re going to die in a state of grace.” Skip agreed with him.

They lost track of days out in Bastogne. It was a despairing, never ending situation. But the boys were determined. Babe states that, “If our general would have said, “Drop your weapons,” I don’t think a man in the 101st would have surrendered. Wouldn’t have happened. I think they would have gone against his orders. As bad off as we were. as cold as we were, as hungry as we were, I don’t think an American Airborne soldier could throw down his gun.” The armored division, according to Babe, likes to believe they saved the Airborne at Bastogne. But Babe says all they did was end the siege. The paratroopers were there before, during the fighting, and after the fighting.

Joe Toye and Babe had another close call on New Year’s Eve. At exactly midnight, the artillery started shelling the Germans. But the shells started falling short and were landing right in front of Toye and Babe’s foxhole untl Toye called the men in charge and told them to aim better. Turns out, Joe Toye has shit luck, because he was hit in a German air raid by shrapnel the next day. He came back the next morning.

Eisenhower, much to the dislike of the paratroopers, decided to launch an offensive on Foy and Noville. This extended their stay in the bitter cold, when they thought they were going to be relieved soon. Needless to say, not many were happy.

The same day, January 1, Babe received word Julian had been hit. Babe ran to where Julian was. The Germans had shot him through the throat and whenever someone tried to move towards Julian, they fired at them. Babe couldn’t get Julian away from the Germans. Julian had wanted his class ring, wallet, and watch to be returned home if he died, but Babe couldn’t reach him. Julian died in the snow and Babe couldn’t reach him. When the Germans were finally pushed back away from Julian, his patrol members told Babe he could visit Julian’s body if he wanted. Babe couldn’t do it. He refused because he couldn’t stand to see Julian that way. His only relief was that Julian hadn’t suffered long.

Times were tough for Easy. Although Toye came back January 2, the day after Julian died, the same day Hoobler accidentally shot himself and died. Babe says he was gone before they got him out of the forest. January 3, it started snowing and the boys went back into their foxholes in the Bois Jacques forest. They had just reached the foxholes when the Germans started shelling them. Toye lost his leg in the shelling and Guarnere lost his leg trying to help Toye. Babe tried to light a cigarette for Guarnere, not sure how to help the men. He thought they were both going to die. But a kid in a Jeep pulled by with ammo, Jackson pulled a gun on him and told him to take Guarnere and Toye back, probably saving their lives.

January 10, the Germans shelled them again. When the shelling started, Babe was talking to Penkala and Muck in their foxhole, which was a short distance away from his. As the shelling began, Luz ran by. Penkala and Muck yelled for Luz to join them in theirs. But Luz dove into his own. Shortly after that, a shell exploded directly in Penkala and Muck’s foxhole. When Luz and Babe went over to their foxhole, Babe says that it wasn’t normally like how they went, they just evaporated. There was little left, if anything. “They has just vanished into thin air.” Babe, even while mourning the loss of his friends, couldn’t help thinking that it could’ve been him. Babe believes that Muck, much like he said in the communion together, died in a state of grace and he thought of Muck with every communion afterwards.

By Mid January, they advanced on Foy. The well-known story of Speirs saving the day in Foy. They dug in outside of Foy. When they were preparing to advance on Noville, Babe found he could no longer use his hands without splitting pain. He couldn’t hold a gun anymore due to the pain. He had even tried rubbing ice onto his hands to loosen them up, but the pain was too severe. He was in the hospital for 5 days and 4 nights because his calcium was too low. During his hospital stay, he encountered a nurse from South Philly. She said that he looked like an old man. “That’s what war will do, turn a nineteen-year-old kid into a man.” Due to the fact Babe’s hands were so bad, there was nothing the doctors could do. Babe had to go AWOL to get back to Easy, much like his friend Guarnere had earlier in the war.

He hitchhiked his way back to the company. When he got back, Easy was sent to Hagenau to hold the line up there, but they stayed in houses this time. They spent a few weeks there, crossing the river nearby and capturing German prisoners (Jackson died on one of these trips). They had been fighting for two and a half months by the time they were finally relieved and taken back to Mourmelon.

By the end of March, Easy Company was heading out again. They were headed to Germany, the Ruhr pocket near the bank of the Rhine River. The men were going from house to house to search out Germans. Babe had nightmares about for years about an incident that happened on patrol. His orders were to clean out one side of town, when he stumbled upon a bomb shelter. The procedure was supposed to be throwing a grenade in the bomb shelter and then kicking the door open. Babe felt he shouldn’t throw the grenades, and he told the others not to and kicked the door open. He stumbled upon a girl about 20 years old, with toddlers and an old couple was behind her. Babe had nightmares about what would’ve happened if he had thrown the grenade first and accidentally killed them. He says he wouldn’t have been able to live if he had killed them.

On another patrol, Spina and Babe stumbled upon several men in the house. They had a small jar of money with them. Babe and Spina took the money, which the other men claimed was a payroll, and the next day gave it out to displaced persons (recently liberated from camps) after church. They’d earned it.

They stayed on duty till the end of April. After that, Babe and Easy Company were on their way to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest. They stopped in Landsberg for a few days, where they learned a Concentration Camp was located. When Easy arrived, the sight was devastating. In his words, “If any of the guys didn’t know why we were fighting, they knew then.” He continues later, “If anyone tells you the Holocaust didn’t happen, or that it wasn’t as bad as they say, no it was worse than they say...It wasn’t fair.”

Easy Company soon continued after helping liberate the camp and made their way up to the Eagle’s Nest. As they went. they passed many German soldiers surrendering and many dead SS officers. Some took their lives, other times the French killed them, and Easy let them have that. On May 5, Easy took Berchtesgaden and were the first ones in the Eagle’s Nest. There, with little resistance, they looted and drank to their hearts content. Babe didn’t like the drink choices very much, so he didn’t drink much. But he says he did have a glass of Hitler’s champagne.

On May 7, Babe was directing POW traffic when a car pulled up to him. A German general and colonel sat in it. The general was driving the colonel. The colonel told Babe that the general, General Tolsdorf, wanted to surrender to someone of equal rank and asked Babe to find someone. Babe told him to get out of the car. The general got out of the car and saluted to Babe. Babe didn’t salute back and sent the general on his way to Colonel Sink with another lieutenant. Babe then searched his car and took anything of value with him. Babe later learned that this specific general had been in command of the German troops in the Bois Jacques woods.

May 8, 1945 the war was over. Easy Company left the Eagle’s Nest and went to Saalfelden, where Babe looted and got a gold sword with a swastika engraved on it, encrusted with stones. He took it with him. They were transferred to Kaprun, where they stayed for several months. There Babe met a small, Polish girl, Annie, from a DP camp. (This was common among the troopers and some even married the women in the camps) Sadly, at the end of July, Babe had to leave. Easy Company boarded a train for France, but somehow Annie had found his train. Annie chased after him, with a small suitcase, and the boys hung Babe out the boxcar by his ankles. Annie gave up chasing him after a while.

In France, Babe did his last jump, this was a qualification to receive jump pay. The man before him hesitated and when Babe got him out of the plane, Babe had jumped wrong. He was facing the wrong way (towards the motor, not the tail) and his ropes were tangled. Babe panicked and started saying his Hail Marys. He eventually got his legs untangled, his chute opened, and he landed safely.

Babe was discharged in December of 1945. He arrived back home and meet his brothers, Jimmy and Joe, and his father at a local bar. His mother had suffered a heart attack while he was gone, but she had recovered. Babe went to work when he got home. He only worked 2 jobs, and both of them were with Guarnere. He worked at the waterfront as a cargo checker and clerk. He worked there for 27 years until his retirement.

Babe returned to playing football every weekend. He played on a team with other veterans from the war. He played with that team until he was 32. He also went back to betting on horses. There’s even one named after him in Ireland. The horse is Babe Heffron, and it jumps hurdles. Babe was pretty amazed by the fact he had a horse named after him.

A year after the war, Babe went to go find Bill Guarnere. Babe found him shooting dice in the street. Babe immediately jumped on him, forgetting that Bill was wearing a prosthetic leg. Bill told him that he had thought he was the cops at first. Babe and Bill went out for a drink, Babe met Bill’s wife. Babe and Bill were inseparable after that. They attended Easy Company reunions (which Bill started and ran for 60 years) together, went to Europe many times together, worked together. They worked on construction projects and each others houses together. Bill copied Babe’s phrases, to the annoyance of Babe. They even got arrested together. They went to an Holocaust memorial dinner together, where they met survivors of the Concentration Camp Babe helped liberate. Bill was Babe’s best man at his wedding.

Babe married Dolores Kessler when he was 37. She had three kids from a previous marriage, Dolly, Harry, and Bobby. Two years later, Babe and Dolores had a daughter named Patricia, who they called Trisha. Trish called her godfather, Bill Guarnere, Uncle Bill.

Babe’s hands healed 23 years after he first got home. His hands never bothered him again. He figures his body was lacking something, and after drinking a lot of milk, he got it. He was never told what was wrong with him.

Babe couldn’t face Julian’s mother for 12 years. He finally contacted her and he visited her at her daughter’s house nearby. Babe gave her the regimental scrapbook, the only one he owned. Babe broke down, while Julian’s mom remained tough. “She was a better soldier than I was,” Babe said. “I knew Julian was looking down on me saying, “Good job, well done.””

Band of Brothers was published and soon the HBO series was in production. Babe and Guarnere were brought out to meet their actors, who they had only had phone conversations with. Robin Laing, a Scottish actor, was playing Babe. Babe had some concerns on how Robin would play him, especially with the South Philly accent, but they vanished when he met Robin. He even teased Robin about the Philly Accent, but told Robin that he did fine. According to Babe, Robin sounded just like him. Robin even had rosary beads and scapular, just like Babe in the war, which touched Babe dearly.

Bill and Babe stayed at a fine hotel, with HBO providing an open tab, and invited the actors back for drinks. They drank those poor kids under the table and by the end of the stay, they had a $5,000 liquor bill. in the hotel, Bill and Babe gave away any momentos they could to others. One time, Babe put three shirts on, saying, “I know they ain’t gonna get me this time...”, but by the end of the night both men were in their underwear in the hotel. They had given nearly everything away. Babe even gave Robin his scapular, the very one he’d carried through the war.

Babe had told Richard Speight Jr., who played Skip Muck, about his last communion with Skip. After the communion scene, Speight turned to Robin and said, “Well, Heffron, if we die, we’ll die in a state of grace.” Babe was forever touched by Speight’s actions.

Babe, although he did not watch most of the series because it was too hard to handle, did have a guest appearance in one of the episodes. He’s seen as a cameo in Holland, when Talbert is kissing a Dutch girl.

After Band of Brothers, Babe and Bill had a book published together about their story. Brothers in Battle, Best of Friends was published in 2007.

Babe died on December 1, 2013. His ashes, along with his wife’s, were later put in bronze heart and put it a statue dedicated to him in his hometown of Philadelphia. Guarnere also has a statue in Philadelphia, so even in death the two are never far apart.

#edward heffron #profiles #band of brothers #babe heffron #Real Life Band of Brothers #real band of brothers

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greatworldwar2 · 4 years

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• Bofors 40 mm gun

The Bofors 40 mm gun, often referred to simply as the Bofors gun, is an anti-aircraft autocannon designed in the 1930s by the Swedish arms manufacturer AB Bofors. It was one of the most popular medium-weight anti-aircraft systems during World War II, used by most of the western Allies.

The Swedish Navy purchased a number of 2-pounder Pom-Poms from Vickers as anti-aircraft guns in 1922. The Navy approached Bofors about the development of a more capable replacement. Bofors signed a contract in late 1928. Bofors produced a gun that was a smaller version of a 57 mm (6-pounder) semi-automatic gun developed as an anti-torpedo boat weapon in the late 19th century by Finspång. Their first test gun was a re-barreled Nordenfelt version of the Finspång gun, to which was added a semi-automatic loading mechanism. Testing of this gun in 1929 demonstrated that a problem existed feeding the weapon in order to maintain a reasonable rate of fire. A mechanism that was strong enough to handle the stresses of moving the large round was too heavy to move quickly enough to fire rapidly. One attempt to solve this problem used zinc shell cases that burned up when fired. This proved to leave heavy zinc deposits in the barrel, and had to be abandoned. In the summer of 1930 experiments were made with a new test gun that did away with controlled feed and instead flicked the spent casing out the rear whereafter a second mechanism reloaded the gun by "throwing" a fresh round from the magazine into the open breech. This seemed to be the solution they needed, improving firing rates to an acceptable level, and the work on a prototype commenced soon after.

During this period Krupp purchased a one-third share of Bofors. Krupp engineers started the process of updating the Bofors factories to use modern equipment and metallurgy, but the 40 mm project was kept secret. The prototype was completed and fired in November 1931, and by the middle of the month it was firing strings of two and three rounds. Changes to the feed mechanism were all that remained, and by the end of the year it was operating at 130 rounds per minute. Continued development was needed to turn it into a weapon suitable for production, which was completed in October 1933. Since acceptance trials had been passed the year before, this became known as the "40 mm akan M/32". Most forces referred to it as the "Bofors 40 mm L/60", although the barrel was actually 56.25 calibres in length, not the 60 calibres. The gun fired a 900 g (2.0 lb) high explosive 40 × 311R (rimmed) shell at 2,960 ft/s (900 m/s). The rate of fire was normally about 120 rounds per minute (2.0 rounds per second), which improved slightly when the barrels were closer to the horizon as gravity assisted the feeding from the top-mounted magazine. In practice firing rates were closer to 80–100 rpm (1.3–1.7 rounds per second), as the rounds were fed into the breech from four round clips which had to be replaced by hand. The maximum attainable ceiling was 7,200 m (23,600 ft), but the practical maximum was about 3,800 m (12,500 ft).

The gun was provided with an advanced sighting system. The trainer and layer were both provided with reflector sights for aiming, while a third crew-member standing behind them "adjusted" for lead using a simple mechanical computer. Power for the sights was supplied from a 6V battery. The first version of the 40 mm the Navy ordered was intended for use on submarines, where the larger calibre allowed the gun to be used for both AA and against smaller ships. The barrel was shorter at 42 calibers long, with the effect of reducing the muzzle velocity to about 700 m/s (2,300 ft/s). When not in use, the gun was pointed directly up and retracted into a watertight cylinder. The only known submarines that used this arrangement was the Sjölejonet-class boats. The guns were later removed. The first order for the "real" L/60 was made by the Dutch Navy, who ordered five twin-gun mounts for the cruiser De Ruyter in August 1934. These guns were stabilized using the Hazemeyer mount, in which one set of layers aimed the gun, while a second manually stabilized the platform the gun sat on. Bofors also developed a towable carriage which they displayed in April 1935 at a show in Belgium. This mount allowed the gun to be fired from the carriage with no setup required, although with limited accuracy. Orders for the land based versions were immediate, starting with an order for eight weapons from Belgium in August 1935, and followed by a flood of orders from other forces including Poland, Norway, and Finland. The Swedish Navy adopted the weapon as the m/36 in hand-worked single air-cooled, and power operated twin water-cooled version. A twin air-cooled mounting, probably hand-worked was also used by the navies of Sweden and Argentina and a twin air-cooled wet mounting was developed for Polish submarines.

The British Army had first examined the weapon when they received a number of Polish-built examples in 1937 for testing, known as the "QF 40 mm Mark I" (QF standing for "quick firing"), or "Mark I/2" after a minor change to the flash hider. A licence was acquired and the gun was converted from metric to imperial measurements. They also made numerous changes to the design to make it more suitable for mass production, as the original Bofors design was intended to be hand-assembled, and many parts were labeled "file to fit on assembly", requiring many man-hours of work to complete. Testing showed that aiming the guns against high-speed aircraft was a serious problem. Although the gun could be trained quickly, aiming accurately while doing so proved difficult. In order to address this, the British introduced a complex mechanical analogue computer, the Kerrison Director, which drove the laying electrically. A three-man team operated the director simply by pointing it at the target whilst dialing in estimates for speed, range, and various atmospheric conditions. The director then aimed the guns directly through powered mounts, as the gunners loaded the clips. This eliminated the need for the lead-correcting reflector sights, which were replaced with a backup system consisting of a simple ring-and-post sight known as a "pancake". In this form, the "QF 40 mm Mark III" (Mk II was a designation used for a Vickers "pom-pom"), became the Army's standard light AA (anti-aircraft) weapon, operating alongside their 3-inch and 3.7-inch heavy weapons. The gun was considered so important to the defence of Britain after the fall of France in 1940 that a movie, The Gun, was produced to encourage machinists to work harder and complete more of them. British production started slowly: by September 1939 only 233 equipments had been produced; but by the end of the war total production from British, Canadian and Australian factories was over 19,000. Peak production year was 1942 when British factories produced 5,025 and Canadian factories produced 1,311.

In combat it was found that the Kerrison was difficult to set up to use in many situations, as well as making logistics more complex due to the need to keep its electrical generator supplied with fuel. In most engagements only the pancake sights were used, without any form of correction, making the British versions less capable than those used by other forces. Eventually an anti-aircraft gunnery school on the range at Stiffkey on the Norfolk coast delivered a workable solution, a trapeze-like arrangement that moved the pancake sights to offer lead correction, operated by a new crew-member standing behind the left-hand layer. The "Stiffkey Sight" was sent out to units in 1943, arriving in Canadian units in the midst of the Battle of the Aleutian Islands. A final wartime change to the elevation mechanism resulted in the "QF 40 mm Mark XII". They also designed a much lighter two-wheeled carriage for airborne use. The Army also experimented with various self-propelled anti-aircraft systems based on various tank chassis. Changes to the breech for this role created the "QF 40 mm Mark VI", which was used on the Crusader to produce the Crusader III AA Mark I. The main self-propelled version of the Bofors used the gun set on the chassis of a Morris Commercial four-wheel drive lorry, this was known as the "Carrier, SP, 4x4 40mm, AA (Bofors) 30cwt". Such guns were used in support of Army divisions to provide swift protection against air attack without the need to unlimber. They saw service in North West Europe, where six SP Bofors of 92nd (Loyals) Light Anti-Aircraft Regiment, Royal Artillery, landed with the British 3rd Infantry Division on Sword Beach on D-Day to protect the vital bridges over the Caen Canal and Orne River (Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge), shooting down 17 German planes. Later in the campaign, SP Bofors were used extensively for ground shoots as well as in an anti-aircraft role. In British army service the Bofors found a highly specialised role: during the North Africa Campaign at the Second Battle of El Alamein, they were used to fire tracer horizontally to mark safe paths for units through the German minefields. This practice was further developed during operations in North-West Europe, where bursts of colour-coded tracer were used to define the axis of advance of the different formations in large-scale night attacks.

The Royal Navy also made extensive use of the Bofors. Their first examples were air-cooled versions quickly adapted to ships during the withdrawal from Norway. Locally produced examples started arriving in 1942, known as the "QF 40 mm Mark IV" for use in twin-mounts, or the "QF 40 mm Mark V" for single mounts. The Navy ran through a variety of versions of the basic Bofors gun over the war, including the Mark VII to Mark XI. The Royal Navy's home-grown light anti-aircraft weapon, the QF 2-pounder gun, also had a caliber of 40 mm, but was referred to as the QF 2-pdr. The final British Bofors mounting that saw service was the "stabilized tachymetric anti-aircraft gun" (STAAG) which was twin-barrelled, stabilised, and carried its own tachymetric (i.e. predictive) fire control system, based around the centimeter Radar Type 262, capable of "locking on" to a target. This mounting was heavy (17.5 tons) and the high-vibration environment of the gun mounting was poor location for sensitive valve electronics and mechanical computers. STAAG Mark I carried the radar dish over the gun barrels where it was subject to damage during firing, therefore STAAG Mark II shifted the set to the roof of the control cabin. STAAG was ultimately too difficult to maintain in the harsh environment of a warship and was later replaced by the Mounting Mark V with the fire control equipment located remotely.

In order to supply both the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy with much greater numbers of the guns, Chrysler built 60,000 of the guns and 120,000 barrels through the war, at half the original projected cost, and filling the Army's needs by 1943. Over the lifetime of the production, their engineers introduced numerous additional changes to improve mass production, eventually reducing the overall time needed to build a gun by half; most of these changes were in production methods rather than the design of the gun itself. There were many difficulties in producing the guns within the United States, beyond their complexity (illustrated by the use of 2,000 subcontractors in 330 cities and 12 Chrysler factories to make and assemble the parts). The drawings were metric, in Swedish and read from the first angle of projection. Chrysler had to translate to English, fix absolute dimensions, and switch to the third angle of projection. Chrysler engineers also tried to simplify the gun, unsuccessfully, and to take high speed movies to find possible improvements, but this was not possible until near the end of the war. The United States Navy's Bureau of Ordnance purchased a twin-mount air-cooled example, spare parts and 3,000 rounds of ammunition directly from Bofors, which arrived in New York on August 28th, 1940 aboard the Army transport USAT American Legion, which had evacuated 897 people, including members of the Norwegian royal family, through the Finnish port of Petsamo. The gun was quickly chosen as the Navy's standard anti-aircraft weapon over the British 40mm calibre, 2-pounder pom-pom; however, negotiations with Bofors for licensed production stalled when the Swedes requested airplane export and manufacturing licenses in return. Reportedly, the Navy secretly imported a set of imperial designs from Britain and started production illegally. A formal contract with Bofors was reached in June 1941. The resulting Mark 1 and Mark 2 weapons were intended for the left and right side of a twin mount, respectively, and were adapted by Chrysler for water cooling.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941, the existing 1.1" (28 mm) quad mount and .50 caliber machine guns were determined to be inadequate against modern aircraft, and their replacement by 40 mm Bofors and 20 mm Oerlikon weapons was accelerated. The water-cooled version was used almost exclusively by the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard. In 1938 the United States Army introduced a 37 mm gun of their own design, but found it to be of limited performance. In early World War II, six British Bofors were imported for testing, along with Kerrison Predictor directors, and they proved to be superior in all areas. By the middle part of the war, most of the 37 mm guns had been replaced by the 40 mm. In U.S. Army and Marine Corps service, the single mount Bofors was known as the 40 mm Automatic Gun M1. The U.S. version of the gun fired three variants of the British Mk. II high-explosive shell as well as the M81A1 armor-piercing round, which was capable of penetrating some 50 mm of homogeneous armor plate at a range of 500 yards. In the Army, each Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA) auto-weapons battalion was authorized a total of thirty-two 40 mm guns in its four firing batteries. During World War II, the twin mount version of the gun was mounted on an M24 Chaffee tank chassis as the M19 Gun Motor Carriage. In the 1950s, the M41 Walker Bulldog tank was heavily modified into the M42 Duster with the same twin 40 mm mounting. After being largely withdrawn from service in the early 1960s, the M42 was re-introduced beginning in 1966 for the Vietnam War, where it was mostly used for ground fire support. The U.S Airforce created the Bofors 40 mm gun § AC-130 Gunship.

In World War II Germany, the Wehrmacht used a number of Bofors guns which had been captured in Poland and France. The Kriegsmarine also operated some guns obtained from Norway. In German naval use, the gun was designated the "4 cm Flak 28", and was used aboard the cruisers Admiral Hipper and Prinz Eugen toward the end of the war. Germany also purchased a large number (200+) of Hungarian made Bofors guns. In return, Hungary received 75 mm PAK guns for every 4-5 Bofors. Then Wehrmacht used Hungarian guns after German occupation of Hungary from late 1944. Most of them lost during the fights in Budapest and Trandanubia. Japan captured a number of Bofors guns in Singapore and put them into production as the Type 5. Both Japan and West Germany continued to use the Bofors gun throughout the Cold War. The Federal German navy used it in destroyers, frigates, and fast patrol boats until 1984, and in minesweepers to the present day.

The Bofors 40mm post-war service has endured through the cold war and into the modern era. In the post-war era, the original design was not suitable for action against jet-powered aircraft, so Bofors introduced a new model of significantly more power, the 40 mm L/70. In spite of sharing almost nothing with the original design other than the calibre and the distinctive conical flash hider, this weapon is also widely known simply as "the Bofors". Although not as popular as the original L/60 model, the L/70 remains in service, especially as a multi-purpose weapon for light armoured vehicles, as on the CV 90. Bofors has been part of BAE Systems AB since March 2005.

#second world war #world war ii #world war 2 #military history #wwii #history #british history #american history #naval warfare #long post #military equipment #anti-aircraft gun #aviation

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englishlistwords · 4 years

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Howl, Parts I & II

Allen Ginsberg- 1926-1997

For Carl Solomon

What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men! Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments! Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb! Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities! Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! Moloch in whom I sit lonely! Moloch in whom I dream Angels! Crazy in Moloch! Cocksucker in Moloch! Lacklove and manless in Moloch! Moloch who entered my soul early! Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body! Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy! Moloch whom I abandon! Wake up in Moloch! Light streaming out of the sky! Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! Visions! omens! hallucinations! miracles! ecstasies! gone down the American river! Dreams! adorations! illuminations! religions! the whole boatload of sensitive bullshit! Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! Real holy laughter in the river! They saw it all! the wild eyes! the holy yells! They bade farewell! They jumped off the roof! to solitude! waving! carrying flowers! Down to the river! into the street!

#allen ginsberg #howl

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katsens-writing · 5 years

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Meeting the Team

Summary: You’re a SHIELD agent doing some research on your future co-workers... until you run into one of them.

Word Count: 2.1k (give or take a few)

Content: Fluff, maybe a little angst? Let me know if I need to add any!

A/N: This. This thing right here was supposed to be just a simple, short and sweet meet-cute. Three stories and three weeks later, I’m done. This and the second story, Meeting the Agent, are parallel running stories but you should read this one first. The third story is called Meeting the Sergeant. It should be read before or after Meeting the Team and Meeting the Agent. Let me know what you think! I might make more from it...

As soon as you got through security at the museum, you went straight to the exhibit you were looking for. It’d been a while since you had been to the Smithsonian, but you knew the way from memory. You smiled wistfully as you walked past other familiar displays and cases. Weaving through them was like walking down memory lane for you. Finally reaching the exhibit you had come to see, you opened your notebook and pushed the brim of your black baseball cap up with the end of your pencil. You remembered the first time you went to see the Captain America exhibit with your mom. You must have been only four or five then, but you loved it so much that you wanted to go there for every birthday and special occasion. By the time you went to see it on a class trip, all the museum employees in that wing knew you by name. Eventually, you guys moved away when your mom was assigned to an embassy. You hadn’t been there in years when your mom heard from some old work friends back in D.C. that the Smithsonian had added an Avengers exhibit. As soon as she heard, she immediately booked some plane tickets to go see it opening day, as a surprise for your birthday. The second you saw it, your jaw dropped in awe. After walking through it you whipped around and told your mom that you were going to be an Avenger one day. You remembered your mother’s amused expression as you marched off to the Captain America exhibit.

When you got your acceptance letter from the academy years later, you both jumped up and down screaming and crying. Just a month after that, you said goodbye to your mother and moved back to the States. Two years later, your mother wept in the audience as you walked across the stage to receive your badge from Nick Fury and shake his hand at the SHIELD induction ceremony. When you met her for lunch last week in Prague and told her about your new assignment with the Avengers, you could’ve sworn she was going to pass out. Now here you are in D.C., reading up on your future coworkers. You already knew so much about most of the team, but you wanted to refresh your memory before meeting them.

You read over the story of Captain America again, even though you practically had it memorized even after all these years. As you walked through his exhibit, your eyes fell on the section dedicated to the Howling Commandos. You remembered hearing talks of the museum restoring the mural of Captain America and the Howling Commandos, so you quickly jotted down a reminder to check it out later before you moved over to the panel about them. You read through the brief articles on display about each of the commandos, for fun more than anything.

‘Caporal Jaques “Frenchie” Dernier, France, born January 2, 1911. Explosives and demolitions expert. French resistance.’

Frenchie? You thought with a smirk. How original.

‘Private Gabriel “Gabe” Jones, United States. Born August 14, 1918, in Macon, Georgia. Translator and Communications Specialist. United States Army, 92nd Infantry Division.’

I remember learning about him in high school. You blinked thoughtfully. I think he was the one that arrested Zola.

‘Corporal Jim Morita, United States. Born October 20, 1919, in Fresno, California. Marksman and Medic. United States Army, Nisei Squadron.’

Brigadier James Montgomery Falsworth, Great Britain. Born January 2, 1914, in Birmingham, England. Tactician and Marksman. British Armed Forces, 3rd Independent Parachute Brigade.

Huh. He had two kids. You blinked, pleasantly surprised.

‘Sergeant Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader “Dum Dum” Dugan’.

Your eyebrows rose a little and you tried to stifle a laugh but it ended up coming out as a small snort. That’s a mouthful. No wonder he went by Dum Dum Dugan.

You kept reading. ‘United States, born April 11, 1912. Transport specialist. United States Army, 69th Infantry Regiment.’

You tilted your head curiously at a series of panels you hadn’t seen before, covered in newspaper articles, headlines, and various official reports. Drawing closer, you realized they were a replacement for the old panel ‘A Fallen Comrade’. You began reading the first panel titled ‘James Buchanan Barnes: War Hero, Winter Soldier, Avenger’. You casually scanned the headlines and titles until one caught your attention. Your eyes widened in shock and you froze as you realized just what exactly you were reading-- you had been there.

You had been working for SHIELD for almost a year when it fell. You were in the control room when Alexander Pierce ordered the manhunt for Captain America and declared him a fugitive. You were in that same room when Captain America revealed over the P.A. system that Hydra had taken over and you did everything you could to fight back, passively and physically. After the helicarriers were launched, you and your coworkers managed to retake the control room, but it was too late. You contacted the aerial commander and told him to gather all SHIELD pilots. You lowered your head, a wave of guilt washing over you. One of them must have been Hydra. They never made it off the ground.

You were literally forced to watch helplessly as Steve fought the Winter Soldier on the helicarrier and your heart stopped when you saw him plummeting to the earth, watching in horror as the fiery wreckage rained down upon him from the sky above. You were five floors below where one of the helicarriers crashed into the building. The impact was bone-shaking and caused your Hydra captor to stumble, allowing you to gain the upper hand. After subduing him, you grabbed his radio. Without hesitation or authority, you took charge and immediately organized and coordinated search and rescue teams. You scattered the teams all over the SHIELD compound, the river, and its banks to look for any survivors, before joining one yourself. Now with SHIELD reforming, you were one of the first agents to return. After having already proven your loyalty, you were an easy choice for your new assignment.

You shook your head to clear your thoughts. ‘James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes, aka the Winter Soldier, possibly the world’s deadliest assassin and Hydra’s greatest weapon and asset.’

You winced as you read that part. Why did they have to include that? You wondered. He’s not some tank or fighter jet.

You continued reading. ‘Originally suspected in the terrorist attack on the Sokovia Accords Summit that led to the deaths of many ambassadors and political figures, Barnes was later found to be innocent, another victim of the real culprit, Sokovian nationalist Baron Zemo.’

Your eyes narrowed as you read exactly how much the article had on the summit bombing. You were one of the few who knew the whole story. After SHIELD had fallen, you went to work for Stark Industries, where you met up once again with Maria Hill. When the news came out naming Barnes as a suspect in the bombing, you were one of those assigned to keep tabs on Steve, though you never found anything... as far as anyone knew. When Maria quietly slipped off the grid without a word to anybody, you were the only one to notice, and you made sure of that by covering her tracks.

You never really believed that Stark honestly expected you to turn in Steve if you located him, not when he knew your history. He knew how painful it was for you to track Steve and how it reminded you of when Hydra had taken over SHIELD. He knew that for you it felt just as wrong tracking Steve then as it had before, yet he still assigned you to the task. You smiled to yourself, in spite of the painful memories. You would never forget the day when Tony received the call saying everyone had escaped from the Raft; you could hear Ross yelling at him on the phone from two rooms away before Tony sauntered into the main office with a barely concealed grin on his face. He definitely looked far more amused than he should have, considering.

After you finished reading the new panels, your eyes drifted back to another old one about James. ‘Born in 1917, James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes was the oldest of four kids. He lived in Brooklyn where he was an excellent athlete and student. He enlisted in the Army shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was assigned to the 107th. His unit was sent to the Italian front where they were captured by Hydra. Separated from his unit, Barnes was starved and tortured...’

You blinked your eyes and looked away; you knew what happened after that. Your eyes fell on a display of pictures of Captain America, Bucky, and the Howling Commandos. You drifted over to it. Scanning the pictures, you couldn’t help but smile as your eyes fell on one of Steve and Bucky at one of the allied camps. They were standing side by side with lopsided grins, but Barnes looked like he’d just woken up from a nap.

“Ugh, of all the pictures they had...” you jumped at the sudden voice behind you and spun around to find a man shaking his head, looking down at the ground. “They just had to pick that one.”

The man lifted his head, revealing his face that had been hidden by the brim of a grey baseball cap, and your eyes fell on a familiar lopsided grin accompanied by a pair of startlingly blue eyes. The man looked a little embarrassed. Your own eyes widened and your mouth opened slightly in surprise.

“Bucky!” you gasped softly.

The former assassin just stared at you blankly for a moment. Realizing what you had done, your face reddened in embarrassment. You began to apologize, but Bucky simply waved it off. Shaking his head with a grin, he reassured you.

“No, it’s ok, really. People just don’t usually recognize me.” His smile faded slowly as his eyes shifted to the notebook in your hands, tilting his head curiously.

You looked down at the notebook you had forgotten you were holding and quickly pulled it closer to yourself, realizing how you must look. “It's just some research I’m doing for work,” you quickly offered.

Bucky’s face scrunched in thought before it lit up. “You must be the new SHIELD agent assigned to the compound.”

“Yeah, I am,” you replied, relaxing a little, but still a bit uneasy.

“I thought you weren’t due in until next week?” Bucky looked at you, still curious.

“Well, I wanted to get some research in. I like to learn a bit about who I’m going to be working with,” you shrugged, a little embarrassed but not apologetic. Looking into coworkers was a habit you had formed in the aftermath of SHIELD falling, out of caution and perhaps a little guilt. You had been caught off guard and you vowed you weren’t going to let that happen again.

“Well that makes sense,” he nodded thoughtfully, almost like he understood what you were thinking. He shook his head lightly and with another lopsided grin, he held out his hand. “I’m James Buchanan Barnes. Or Bucky.”

You took his hand and shook it, your gaze rising to meet his with the slightest hint of awe. “Y/N. Agent Y/N Y/L/N. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Y/N,” Bucky repeated, a smile growing on his face. “It’s nice to meet you too.”

You lowered your eyes to the notebook in your hand, fidgeting awkwardly. Bucky cleared his throat, almost making you jump again.

“Well Y/N, if you have any questions, I’d be happy to help. The information here isn’t exactly complete...” his voice trailed off.

“I noticed,” you replied, glancing to the side at the section about the bombing at the summit. Clearing your throat, you turned back to Bucky. “They don’t really have anything on Black Widow or Hawkeye.” That didn’t really surprise you, after all, what good is a spy with their face on display at one of the world’s busiest museums?

Bucky arched an eyebrow with only the slightest hesitation. “Well, if you would like, I can fill you in on the team.” He glanced down at his watch then rubbed the back of his neck before completely throwing away caution. “Heck, I can even introduce you to some of them if you want.”

Bucky looked up at you and grinned again, his eyes shining, and you just couldn’t help the smile spreading on your own face as your shoulders relaxed. “I would appreciate that, thank you.”

Bucky looked down at his watch again. “Great, I’m meeting Clint- that’s Hawkeye- for lunch in an hour. You’re welcome to come,” he looked up at you and hesitated. “In the meantime, have you seen the Howling Commandos memorabilia exhibit?”

You nodded. “Yeah, it’s been a while though. Are you sure Clint won’t mind the extra company at lunch?”

“He’ll get over it,” Bucky replied with a grin and you couldn’t resist a small chuckle. Turning back to the direction of the memorabilia display, Bucky nods his head. “Shall we?”

With a smile you walked alongside the super soldier, laughing and asking questions as he told stories about the items on display. You may not have learned much about the team like you had wanted to that day, but as it turned out, you learned more than you could have ever hoped.

#The Avengers #the winter soldier #bucky barnes #insert reader #short story #marvel #fanfic #MCU #avengers fanfic #marvel fanfic #the howling commandos #Steve Rogers #captain america #Captain America: The Winter Soldier #Captain America: Civil War #Meeting the Team by Kat #katsens-writing

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alliwanttodoiscollectpoetry · 5 years

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Howl~ Allen Ginsberg

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aroundtheworldinsearchofcoke · 5 years

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Day Sixteen: Journey’s End

[Illustrated Version: https://aroundtheworldinsearchofcokev.blogspot.com/2019/07/day-sixteen-journeys-end.html]

Today we went to the bridge at Arnhem, to the Airborne Museum at Oosterbeek at to the cemetary at Oosterbeek. We then spent the afternoon in Arnhem. I’ve decided to focus on the history today, as it explains much of what I want to say better than a blow-by-blow account.

---

The British 1st Airborne Division dropped on Oosterbeek on the morning of 17 September 1944 - about five miles from their objective of Arnhem. The RAF had feared possible anti-aircraft guns around the Rhine Bridge, and refused to drop any closer.

Shortly after landing, General Roy Urquhart, having made his headquarters in a hotel recently evacuated by Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model, left to reconnoiter the area. By evening, he had not returned, and a dispute had broken out over who was to be in command while he was gone. He'd designated Brigadier Lathbury, but he was not the ranking officer. 1st Airborne command fell into paralysis.

In the mean time, a hodge-podge of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the Parachute Regiment had reached the bridge and dug in. They were under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Frost, who expected to have to hold the bridge for three days until XXX Corps arrived.

By the next day, he'd recieved no reinforcements from either Oosterbeek or the south. A reconnaissance column of the 9th SS Panzer, commanded by Victor Graebner, charged the bridge that morning but was without support and destroyed - Graebner was killed. But more and more of the SS were mobilising and moving in. The sitaithon became worse and worse.

Eventually, Urquhart returned to Oosterbeek - he had had to hide to evade German patrols. An attempt was made to relieve Frost, but by now the Germans had reached Arnhem in force. It was repulsed. The paratroopers on the bridge were doomed.

The Paras fought on until the end, and Arnhem was heavily damaged. At last, on the early morning of the 21st, Frost surrendered. At about five in the morning, a final radio transmission reported ‘out of ammunition; god save the King.’ The last hope of ending the war in 1944 died with them.

With Arnhem retaken, the SS scented blood. They began to push on the Oosterbeek pocket. John Barskeyfield, now a sergeant, manned an anti-tank gun and knocked out several tanks - it was enough to win the Victoria Cross. It was not enough to save his life. He died on the 20th of September, aged 21.

By now, XXX Corps had finally reached the southern bank of the Rhine, and the Polish had secured Driel. Horrocks advised an attempt to relieve the 1st Airborne to be performed by the Poles - Sosabowski, now commanding them, refused. He had never believed in Market Garden, and now perceived an attempt to sacrifice them in a doomed charge in boats in darkness over the Rhine. Correspondingly, XXX Corps sent some of its infantry - all it achieved was to trap even more men on the wrong side of the river - but Sosabowski’s refusal to send his brigade in made him an easy scapegoat for the ultimate failure of Market Garden, and he lost his command.

At last, the Allies bowed to the inevitable. Operation Berlin saw infantry of XXX Corps rowing over the Rhine to relieve their comrades in the 1st Airborne - or what remained of them. Of a division of around ten thousand men, only two thousand made it back over the river - another two thousand were killed, and the rest taken prisoner. Urquhart’s division had been effectively destroyed for no material gain.

For his part, Montgomery was content to claim that the operation was ninety percent successful. Nobody else saw it in such optimistic terms. Sosabowksi and Ramsey’s concerns were vindicated, and the Canadians began the bitter task of clearing the Scheldt Estuary. Monty’s reputation among the Americans, never great to begin with, never really recovered. American historians have savaged him (and often by extension, the British Army) ever since.

Market Garden was perhaps the nadir of Anglo-American cooperation. To the Americans, the British soldier was slow, unintelligent and at worst, dishonest, relying on Americans to do the bleeding for him. To the British, the American GI was unprofessional, impetuous, overly gung-ho and more than a little pompous. These stereotypes have persisted in the works of many historians to this day.

Yet the fact remains that all of the troops deployed in the battle performed to the best standard they could. Time and time again, they were let down by high command - particularly Browning and Gavin. They had been given a plan that was optimistic, rushed and made no account for the existence of opposition. Given what was asked, that they managed to be ‘ninety percent successful’ is itself astounding.

The Germans enacted a terrible revenge on the Dutch, who had supported the Allies every step of the way. The civilian population of Arnhem was forcibly removed, and nearly all food production, already meagre, was directed away from the Netherlands. Let this be clear; this was not wartime shortage, but a deliberate policy of punishment by Adolf Hitler, who had given up the last of his pretence of civility in an insane attempt to bring Europe down in flames with him. The Hunger Winter killed twenty thousand. This was not famine. It was murder.

Today the Netherlands are rebuilt. The road from Neerpelt to Arnhem can be driven in about two hours, three at most. The area has never forgotten Market Garden, and the road is pockmarked with memorials and museums to those September days. None of these are more stark then the rows of white headstones in graveyards along the way.

Over a thousand men still lie in Oosterbeek. Each grave is the same at a glance, with only the names and inscriptions distinguishing them in death. Many have epitaphs from family - wives, brothers, sisters and parents. Most are in their twenties. Many are eighteen or nineteen. Lieutenants barely out of college commanded men at thirty or even older.

Historians, particularly military historians, like the word ‘only.’ When compared to the titanic battles on the Eastern Front, onlythirty thousand were killed, wounded or captured. Yet every single person who died meant something to somebody. They were somebody’s son, somebody’s daughter, somebody’s girlfriend, boyfriend, wife, husband, father or mother. They worked for somebody. They had friends and enemies. They lived and breathed and loved and lost. For some the end came instantly, for others only days.

Perhaps the most famous of the war poets was Wilfred Owen, who died on the 4th of November 1918, just a week before the war ended. One of his most famous works was Anthem for Doomed Youth- written for the men in the trenches of the First World War, but I feel is still fitting for the men dropped into Arnhem in 1944;

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells;

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—

The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.

The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,

And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

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