[archy]

...for a simple soldier going onto the modern battlefield against a higher tech opponent, just showing up is often tantamount to suicide. If you're surely gonna die, what's the difference?

Molan Lave. Camerone! a la baionette! Remember the Alamo; Avenge Goliad. So many Russians! Where will we bury them all? Nuts!

Plevna; surprise, surprise! *Killer Hill* at Kolla, Suomussalmi and the Ratte Road. Into the Valley of death rode the Six Hundred. The Newfoundlanders at the Smomme on July 01 1916. Pickett's men at Gettysberg; Cleburne's Division at Franklin. The Yankees at The Battle of the Crater. Kursk. Two battaliions of crapped-out Israeli Centurions on the Golan Heights, October, 1973. Mush Morton aboard the Wahoo; Kapitänleutnant Günter Prien and the battleship "Royal Oak" in October, 1939. The H.L. Hunley. Vladimir *Popski* Peniakoff and *Popski's Private Army*; The Long Range Desert Group and David Sterling's Special Air Service...and Otto Skorzeny's Brandenbergers.

Lyudmila Pavlichenko and her Tokarev rifle; Carlos Hathcock and his Winchester; Simo Häyhä and his m/28-30 pystykorvaa. Michael Wittman and his Tiger tank, Hauptmann Hans Joachim-Marseilles in his Messerschmitt BF-109; Hans-Ulrich Rudel in his Stuka. Dick Bong in a P-38, Jimmy Doolittle in a B-25 Mitchel over Tokyo, Major Charlie Kelly in his Huey, callsign *Dustoff*.

The difference? I do not know, though I know that we all surely will die, some of us alone and forgotten, others in swell company among the best of friends in the worst of times.

But they knew what that difference was, though they will not tell you. You have to find out for yourself. There are thousands of other examples. Millions.

-archy-/-

[Held_to_Ransom]

If you like reading military history, and enjoy dreaming of the supposed romance of it all, I suggest you read T. E. Lawrence's 'Seven Pillars of Wisdom.' It's required reading for English diplomats going to the Middle East, but not for ours.

They say there are two kinds of people on the modern battlefield. The dead and those about to die. Increasingly, the killers are not even on the field. Walking into the roach trap takes the romance out of going to the refrigerator.

[Travis McGee]

One aspect of war that has not been tested in modern times, perhaps since the Finns drove out the Soviets, is the employment of millions of sharpshooters armed with scoped rifles.

It's hard to imagine an occupation against a population armed with millions of rifles capable of hitting a soldier at 500+ yards.

[Thunder 6]

"Michael Wittman and his Tiger tank..."

Now, there was a tanker!

regards,