Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Mobile rations.
I have been posting interesting tidbits from the U.S. Army official history of World War 2 in my thread of New Years Resolutions, but this one I thought would be good here.
They were used in the mountainous areas of Italy as the only way to supply the units consistently. From the Quartermaster Corps in the War Against Germany.
Side Note: As a former Quartermaster officer, I keep thinking that an appropriate coat of arms would be a pack mule.
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A collection of Private Snafu cartoons from 1943–1946 is also available as .zip archives, either in H.264 IA format or in MPEG 4 format.Here is a change of pace. A couple of cartoons produced in World War 2, […]
Found them on archive.org. Thanks for reminding me of them.A collection of Private Snafu cartoons from 1943–1946 is also available as .zip archives, either in H.264 IA format or in MPEG 4 format.
The book can be found on archive.org, and does present a very different view than the standard histories of the Flying Tigers. Unfortunately, neither of the two copies are in copy and paste format, so if you want that, you will have to run them through an OCR program like I did. For a brief history of the AVG, you can go here.Generals Scott [Commander-in-Chief of the British Frontier Force of the Burma Division] and McLeod [then Commander-in-Chief of the Burma forces] were two as charming gentlemen as you'd wish to meet—mannerly, interesting when they wanted to be, honorable to the nth degree. But I was afraid that they hadn't the faintest idea of what was going on right under their noses—or of what the terrible future held in store for them. They honestly anticipated no trouble from the Japanese. Subsequent events proved their forces were woefully inadequate, that the loyalty of the Burmese troops was questionable. They did not know, as was proven later, that the Burmese were sheltering dozens and scores of Japs who mingled with the natives dressed as Burmans and were making themselves generally useful to the Emperor. These two charming gentlemen knew Singapore was impregnable, that Britanaia ruled the waves and that the Japanese were much too smart to ever attempt to challenge the authority of their white masters. These things they knew for sure. No amount of argument or logic could have changed their opinions one single little jot. And these were the men who held in their hands the destiny of China's precarious life line, the Burma Road!
But I was afraid that they hadn't the faintest idea of what was going on right under their noses—or of what the terrible future held in store for them. They honestly anticipated no trouble from the Japanese. Subsequent events proved their forces were woefully inadequate, that the loyalty of the Burmese troops was questionable.
[...]
These two charming gentlemen knew Singapore was impregnable, that Britanaia ruled the waves and that the Japanese were much too smart to ever attempt to challenge the authority of their white masters. These things they knew for sure. No amount of argument or logic could have changed their opinions one single little jot.
You can chalk that up to Neville Chamberlain, the Chancellor of the Exchequer from November of 1931 to May of 1937, at which point he became Prime Minister. History knows how that turned out.The British were playing for time, the one resource you shouldn't waste, and can't recover.
They should have gone for continuous rearmament, instead of setting up a policy that assumed that they can see a war coming in ten years, and prepare for it.
Emphasis added.And of the miscellaneous French and Spanish hangers-on of the Court—ministers, courtiers, clerks, commissaries, contractors, and the ladies who in legitimate or illegitimate capacities followed them—few had dared to go off unescorted on an early start.
That is fantastic that they still had their maps.I used to give some vets at the rest home near me a ride down to the VFW for baked steak night, and one guy was a Ranger at D Day, and he was talking about his map, and another down the table, said he was Airborne there and he had a map too. Next time they both brought in their maps, they were in map cases with a clear cover, and transcribed from photo-recon, they had every tree, house, rock, ditch, and everything. They said if you unfolded them, they were as big as a room. Pretty amazing to see D Day that up close.