Japanese carrier Zuikaku sinking at Leyte Gulf.
The Japanese commander's penchant for melodrama kept the crew on board far too long to salute the ship as it was sinking costing the lives of half of them.
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Ah! This has been one of my favorite subjects for a long time, the parallel between “The Charge of The Light Brigade” and the Battle of Leyte Gulf! Here is what I wrote just the other day...
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Yes...great book, amazing battle.
I am a movie buff, and have always wished that someone had made a movie about that battle.
The scale of the battle was huge. The stakes were high. The sub-plots were astounding.
Halsey, itching for a fight, taking the bait, and through a common clerical error which threw gasoline on the fire, ends up to his dying days fighting what he viewed as slander by people who questioned his actions, all under the shadow of the words “The world wonders”.
On the other side, almost simultaneously, the Davids of the US Navy in Taffy3 against the Goliaths of the Imperial Japanese Navy and their battleships, darting in, really, the unbelievable parallel to “The Charge of the Light Brigade”.
The destroyers of Taffy 3 with bones in their teeth sailed directly at the Japanese battlewagons, their five inch guns like the sabres of the Light Brigade being flashed in the air, they “Volley’d and thunder’d” like hooves, as the superstructures of the battleships flashed with impacts. They sailed under full steam to what many of them, like the calvary in Tennyson’s poem, assumed was going to be their certain death...”Someone had blunder’d”.
Halsey, in full pursuit to the north, gets the communication from his boss who is trying to discreetly ask what Halsey was up to without ruffling his feathers, ending with Halsey losing it on the bridge of the New Jersey and throwing his hat to the floor in white hot anger and shame as “All the world wonder’d” in Hawaii what was going on.
You could not make this up.
And then, Typhoon Cobra just a month or two later.
With the way they could use computer graphics to recreate that, with the real, unadulterated story line from history, that would be quite the production.
“The Battle of Leyte Gulf”.
Can’t help but laugh at “Agincourt”. If you’ve ever been to the Maryland Renaissance Festival, you might know why.
The Brits continued their tradition of foolhardy charges against the enemy with the Gallipoli campaign in Turkey, WW I.
Wasn’t quite chilly enough to wear my Cardigan today...but did skip into my Raglan sleeved Panther’s jersey.
Japanese carrier Zuikaku sinking at Leyte Gulf.
The Japanese commander's penchant for melodrama kept the crew on board far too long to salute the ship as it was sinking costing the lives of half of them.
APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
But Oct 25 is no slouch either.
Crispen’s Day Speech
William Shakespeare, 1599
Enter the KING
WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!
KING. What’s he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark’d to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God’s will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God’s peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb’red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Today is also the anniversary of the invasion of Grenada in 1983, the turning point of the Cold War. Grenada was the first Communist country to be liberated during the war as a result of military action.
The Soviet Union appeared to have reached the apogee of its power earlier in the year when a pro-Soviet government took power in Suriname. However, the liberation of Grenada was followed by the installation of Pershing II missiles in Europe, and the the balance of power began to shift in favor of the West.
Is it St. Crispin's Day already!
You plan all year and then it slips right by.
We remember.