War stories...

[Truckman]

I know much too little about the First World War. The following article served to inform me truly how little.

Wow! You and me both, Joe...The first battle alone would take a long time to digest just from its Wikipedia page...I see one discrepancy between it and the newspaper link you provided...The Telegraph article said 30,000 Belgian and 2,000 German losses...Wiki puts it at 30K Belgian, 20k German with 6,000 additional civilians killed...Either way, that's a monstrous loss of life for one battle......Ben

[wacojoe]

You might appreciate this article on the Battle Of The Somme, Ben, which is generating much discussion in the British papers now because it took an horrendous toll of their army 100 years ago next week. The colorized photos put a different feel from what we have grown up with. I tend to think of WWI in aged black & white thoughts and even more unrealistically of silly people moving stiffly and quickly like ancient movies showed them. Stupid, but hard to vacate from your mind even knowing they were very real and just like us.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...years-ago.html

[Truckman]

Good find, Joe...For those wondering, in the third picture down the device held by the officer on the left is a trench periscope, used to see what the enemy is up to while keeping one's head attached to one's shoulders...Keep it coming, Joe......Ben

[Truckman]

Cold warriors have their stories too; this one is especially poignant...Edward R. Murrow of CBS radio had prepared a segment of his popular "Hear It Now" series telling the story of a simulated long-range bomber mission featuring a Convair B-36 and its crew, culminating in a bomb run over the Eglin Field practice range in Florida...All went well, and Murrow got the story he wanted, but at the exact time it aired on April 27, 1951, the same B-36 and crew were on another practice mission over Oklahoma...

Included was practice for a flight of P-51 fighters as they took turns diving at the giant, while the bomber's gunners simulated defensive gunnery with their gun cameras...One P-51 pilot miscalculated his attack, and sawed through the fuselage of the B-36, and both aircraft fell from the sky...I can only imagine the horror experienced by the crewmembers as they helplessly fell to their deaths, and what went through the survivors' minds as they floated down to the ground in their parachutes after exiting the broken-off tail section, and being forced to watch the remainder of their team plummet to their fate...

Here is their story......Ben

[Mike]

Army Capt. Paul “Buddy” Bucha faked out the enemy while leading a motley crew in Vietnam.

The Medal of Honor recipient was hailed as a hero after he made North Vietnamese fighters believe his 187th Infantry Regiment was much bigger than it really was. The combination of bravery and cunning helped him earn the nation's highest military honor, an award bestowed upon him by the president.

In 1967, Bucha — who graduated from West Point and earned an MBA at Stanford — arrived in Vietnam and was given a squad filled “with the rejects of all the other units,” including writers, intellectuals and men who had served time in military prison, he said.

“We were called the 'clerks and the jerks,'" he recalled. "We were a few smart guys and a lot of badasses … considered the losers of all losers.”

SOURCE Be sure to read the article and watch the video.

[Truckman]

SOURCE Be sure to read the article and watch the video.

Wow! That could be the "Dirty Dozen" all over again......Ben

[mgrist]

In the longest battle of the war, the German plan to wear down the French army and break civilian spirit failed. Casualties were huge: 355,000 German and 400,000 French.

Russian General Alexei Brusilov attacked the southern Austrian defences, advancing the front more than 60 miles and inflicting a million casualties.

The battle of Somme-Total casualties: 1,088,907 (both sides)

, the Germans were ready for the attack at Chemin des Dames and inflicted 100,000 casualties on the first day.

Just a few of the casulties, where did anybody ever get the people to fight WWII?