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30th January 2013, 01:37 PM | #161 |
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Any possibility of buying the BBC series on DVD?
ETA: Not trying to derail. PM me if you know. |
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30th January 2013, 01:38 PM | #162 |
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30th January 2013, 01:48 PM | #163 |
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New Zealand's Pioneers were particularly favoured for these jobs because most countries had experienced miners but mining is done in rock. Our Pioneers were mostly Kauri gum diggers who work in mud and clay, so their experience were enormously useful, particularly in areas like Ypres. The Messines mine was dug almost exclusively by our Kauri gum diggers. Incidentally, this is where the nickname "Digger" comes from, which ended up being applied first to NZ Pioneers, then to all NZ soldiers, and eventually to all ANZAC soldiers. |
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30th January 2013, 01:55 PM | #164 |
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Just now catching up on this thread and simply had to put in a short derail about one of my pet topics.
I consider the Battle of the Coral Sea to be the turning point in the Pacific War, as opposed to the commoonly held view of Midway. Stopping the Japanese short of Moresby is what killed their momentum and took them off the offensive as well as all the logistical benefits that the Allies retained and that were denied to the Japanese. Now back to your regularly scheduled thread. |
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30th January 2013, 02:06 PM | #165 |
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30th January 2013, 03:19 PM | #166 |
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30th January 2013, 04:00 PM | #167 |
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30th January 2013, 04:13 PM | #168 |
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And there's of course the "if WW1 was a bar fight".
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30th January 2013, 04:13 PM | #169 |
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30th January 2013, 06:02 PM | #170 |
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CW agents of the era killed about 2%, however those who didn't die often suffered for the rest if their lives.
Ah, Allenby. He didn't want to be there but he did a good job. And contributed significantly to the knowledge of the migration patterns of storks. A good point. Especially given some of the ordnance used Picric acid as a filler. Doesn't age well. While I was in the USA, about twenty years ago, a souvenir shell from the ACW that'd been blamelessly sitting on a mantelshelf for 120+ years detonated one Thanksgiving, without casualties. |
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30th January 2013, 07:31 PM | #171 |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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30th January 2013, 07:36 PM | #172 |
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Plus it gave Australia a cool story about cavalry charges.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_..._Horse_Brigade |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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30th January 2013, 07:42 PM | #173 |
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Most of them. A lot of our pioneers were put in British units because no one else had experience mining that sort of terrain. In the Ypres Salient, virtually any time any sort of mining is mentioned, regardless of which troops are "on paper" doing it, they were almost all New Zealand gum diggers. In the late 19th Century/Early 20th Century kauri gum was New Zealand's single biggest export, and 20,000 people were employed in the activity.
New Zealanders in the infantry or other units, who were found to have gum digger experience, were immediately moved into the pioneers. |
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30th January 2013, 09:05 PM | #174 |
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i loves the little birdies they goes tweet tweet tweet hee hee i loves them they sings to each other tweet twet tweet hee hee i loves them they is so cute i love yje little birdies little birdies in the room when birfies sings ther is no gloom i lobes the little birdies they goess tweet tweet tweet hee hee hee i loves them they sings me to sleep sing me to slrrp now little birdies - The wisdom of Shemp. |
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30th January 2013, 11:30 PM | #175 |
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O xein', angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti têde keimetha tois keinon rhémasi peithomenoi. A fan of fantasy? Check out Project Dreamforge. |
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31st January 2013, 06:02 AM | #176 |
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Just stay away from Passchendaele - I mean the first ten and the last twenty or so minutes are pretty good as a war movie, but the rest is a really badly paced love story set in 1918 Calgary...
I wanted a Canadian War Movietm, I got nothing like it. |
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31st January 2013, 07:03 AM | #177 |
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Seeing Snoopy in full flight above reminded me... Over the course of the war we went from just barely being able to fly to developing remarkable aircraft with reliability, maneuverability, and firepower... All in just a few years.
Compare the first Wright "flyer" to a Gotha bomber..... |
31st January 2013, 07:08 AM | #178 |
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Cornish Tin Miners, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Durham Coal miners and Cleveland Ironstone Miners were digging as well. One of my Great Uncles was a Mine deputy from Morrisons Pit (Ironstone) In East Cleveland. He just about lived underground.
Time Team did a 'special' on the Mines joining in with excavating some of the tunnels and galleries. there were miles and miles of them. They didn't just dig a tunnel and pack it with explosives, they had underground battles involving hundreds of men attacking into each others tunnels. |
31st January 2013, 12:15 PM | #179 |
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Took 1.5 months, but finally finished it. Slow at start, but all that detail means you really know whats at stake by the time you get to Jutland. Amazing book.
One of the main points I took away from the book were how brave those sailors were, and how incredibly incompetent some of the commanders were. Especially when no one bothers mentioning to Jellicoe that the enemy just happens to be slipping by behind them, trying to escape... |
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31st January 2013, 01:48 PM | #180 |
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castles of steel is a fun book to read. Very good for the first half of of the war. It contains some technical errors, but overall a good read.
I do think Massie is something of a Jellicoe fan, because the book more or less ends after the battle of Jutland, when Jellicoe was making his greatest errors (the battle against the u-boats). All in all I found his book Dreadnought much much better. That book explains how and why the Great War started. That book, combined with The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman gives a very thorough explanation about the run-up to and the first month of the Great War. |
31st January 2013, 02:06 PM | #181 |
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Seconded for Guns of August
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31st January 2013, 03:42 PM | #182 |
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31st January 2013, 03:52 PM | #183 |
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31st January 2013, 05:22 PM | #184 |
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Not just planes but all kinds of tech. I'll plug "White Heat: The New Warfare, 1914-1918" again, as it covers air, sea, artillery etc very well... just gives an idea of the scale of the changes and what the commanders had to deal with.
Hmmm, looks out of print... still, worth getting if you can find it! http://www.amazon.com/White-Heat-The...+john+terraine |
31st January 2013, 07:23 PM | #185 |
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1st February 2013, 03:23 AM | #186 |
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I haven't got that one by Terraine (I find him a bit too Haig-apologetic).
I do have this one by Tim Travers, which sounds like it treads similar ground, but also covers the pre-war views on tactics. The Killing Ground. It's a very good book. |
1st February 2013, 06:59 AM | #187 |
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Yeah, Terraine is a bit of a Haig apologist (to the extent that the "average Brit" who thinks he was an incompetent butcher is misinformed and he was a professional soldier who compares decently against other nations WW1 generals or other British generals of the 20th century. He doesn't make him out to be one of the great commanders of history, just a competent professional who operated in difficult circumstances).
Thanks for the book recommendation - I'll take a look! |
1st February 2013, 07:16 AM | #188 |
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Still working my way through The Great War and have been very struck by the story it tells of Germany starting the war at an advantage as its industry and technological development had already been expanding quickly and were well able to supply and support the military. It took the British a couple of years to appreciate how total war needed a real national effort to supply the front lines.
Although I knew parts of the story I had never really joined the dots, so to speak. |
1st February 2013, 11:08 AM | #189 |
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1st February 2013, 02:46 PM | #190 |
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If you want a real butcher general you want Montgomery, he won battles in a first world war style. Have more men to die than the enemy.
He just had a better understanding of PR. |
1st February 2013, 03:27 PM | #191 |
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There is a great series on WW1 from the Canadian perspective. It's called "For King and Empire". I think there are some videos on youtube.
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1st February 2013, 03:29 PM | #192 |
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The genesis of WW1 trench warfare can be found in the American Civil War, for example if I recall correctly, the earthworks around Vicksburg were nearly indistinguishable from WW1 trench systems.
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2nd February 2013, 05:38 PM | #193 |
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I'm watching the 26th and final episode now. Really excellent series.
One amusing stylistic point: the footage is 'flipped' wherever needed to maintain the convention of map direction. On the Western front, the Germans always shoot to the left and the French, British etc always shoot to the right. I didn't notice it until I spotted a German sniper whose rifle appeared to have the bolt on the wrong side. |
2nd February 2013, 09:23 PM | #194 |
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With the 100th anniversary of World War ..1914...just a year away, there is the expected spate of books on the Topics. Over the next couple of months ,on Amazon, I counted Three Major works on the outbreak of World War One are going to be published and I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg. It will probably bring a few good books, and few medicore ones, and some real junk, as most spates of historical books do.
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3rd February 2013, 08:55 AM | #195 |
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3rd February 2013, 01:01 PM | #196 |
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3rd February 2013, 01:05 PM | #197 |
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3rd February 2013, 01:20 PM | #198 |
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The Iran Iraq war was called "A War fought with 1980's Weapons, 1916 Tactics, and 1200's Mentalaties".
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4th February 2013, 04:20 AM | #199 |
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In the world of WW1 texts there needed to be a Terraine to act as a counterpoint to the (then) standard texts, eg Liddel-Hart. But he does over-egg it a bit. His 1918 one (To Win a War?) is great, but...he defends Haig's cavalry obsession beyond the point (IMO) that would be reasonable. He downplays the usefulness of tanks in exploitation, which is fair enough to some extent, however he provides the full story of Musical Box...which sort of mucks up that one a bit. And the examples of cavalry exploitation really don't boost his argument.
Travers does a better job of straddling the two camps. He does what Giz talks about above and provides the background to the whole shebang. Haig comes across as a very professional soldier, and not without imagination. He was not the anti-tank commander others have attempted to show him as, for example. |
4th February 2013, 01:08 PM | #200 |
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Yes, there's a bit of that in his work. I don't remember too much defensiveness about Haig retaining so much cavalry… I remember him talking about the cavalry taking up a large amount of valuable supplies during the British advances in late 1918 (and him saying or implying that the logistical system could have been put to more efficient use as the cavalry were unable to "breakout" against the German rearguard). However, I also remember reading about (don't know if this was Terraine or someone else) how the retreating British were so glad that the Germans didn't have any cavalry during their Spring Offensives earlier in the year (and Ludendorff was criticized for having omitted his only exploitation troops from the "decisive" battle).
In other words, I think having cavalry on hand is yet another "damned if you do and damned if you don't" WW1 situation. Don't have them, and you have left out your only (limited) exploitation troops, do have them and you are tying up a lot of valuable logistics. I'll definitely look up Travers. Hopefully it's on Kindle, I feel as if I am (Falkenheyn-like) trying to read unlimited amounts with limited bookshelf resources. Hmmm, this thread is making me want to pull out my "Paths of Glory" board game. |
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