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To: jmacusa
The father of my college roommate was an Italian who throughout the war managed to be with four of the armies. First the Italian Army in N. Africa, then picked up by the Germans after his unit dissolved under British fire. Then captured by the British and taken along to Sicily as an interpreter. And finally with the Americans in the same capacity on the mainland. I asked him who in his opinion were the best soldiers. Without hesitation he said the Germans.

I'm an admirer of Stephen Ambrose and there is truth in his admiration of the valor of American boys raised to question everything vs. utterly fanatical Japanese and Germans. Von Steuben observed something similar a hundred and sixty five or so years before, saying with Prussian trainees you told them what to do and they just did it. American troops would demand to know why they were doing things Von Steuben's way. If the Germans had equaled the Americans and British in numbers, mobility, and air and ground firepower the fight in the west would probably have turned out very differently.

I think today's volunteer American army is similar to the Wehrmacht in terms of professionalism, but made up of the same kind of irreverent and free thinking Americans that served at Valley Forge and Normandy. It's more than sad to see them having to serve under this current pack of traitors.

23 posted on 06/06/2015 12:36:50 PM PDT by katana (Just my opinions)
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To: katana
“I fought the British, the French and the Russians. When I fought the Americans I learned how a rich man fights a war. Where often we would send a patrol of ten, you Americans would drop a hundred shells. Often we wondered what you were firing at. But in time we came to respect your co-ordinated artillery fire. And to fear it. You would send your Shermans(tanks) down the road and we would knock them out. We ran out of shells. You never ran out of Shermans’’.— Captured German Werhmact sergeant, June 1944.
27 posted on 06/06/2015 12:59:25 PM PDT by jmacusa (`)
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To: katana

“Certainly they are no good at war’’.— General Erwin Rommel on the capability of Italian troops.


28 posted on 06/06/2015 1:04:14 PM PDT by jmacusa (`)
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