John Kerry was deeply saddened or was that Daschle?
Posted on 09/02/2004 10:59:14 PM PDT by snippy_about_it
The Automatice Updates once again offered me a peice of Windows X Service Pack 2. There was a report just recently that one out of every ten XP computers may not reboot after installation. That's a chance I'm not ready to take just yet.
IF and it's a big if, I do install XP SP 2, it would most likely be by a CD. The Internet download is about 2, almost 3 hours. That's too long for me as I have only one line and it gets taken when I'm on the computer.
Anyway, we'll what happens.
How's things going for you, Snippy?
later
Good morning, Foxhole! Falling in, without the medic today!
That could be the book. I read it a looooong time ago. It was the only book I remember about Enigma mentioning a stolen machine.
Somewhere in my storage locker is book that contains official postwar Army evaluations of German and Japanese equipment. At the beginning of the war, it seems, almost everyone had light and medium tanks that were superior to what the Germans had, in particular the French, Poles (cited above), and even the Russians.
German armored success was due to tactics, not equipment. The Germans were the first mass armor into their own formations and use as traditional cavalry to create the breakthrough and get into the enemies rear. Everyone else regarded the tank as an infantry support asset and dispersed them throughout their army in insufficient numbers.
In one account from a book on operation Barbarossa, a Russian KV tank sat itself on the opposit end of a bridge deep in a wooded area. It took them (if I recall correctly) 2 or 3 days to get rid of it while it destoyed dozens of German mark IIs and IIIs and held up army group north's advance. I believe this occured in Lithuania.
John Kerry was deeply saddened or was that Daschle?
Not bad, things are finally starting to really get on the fast track. First it was "hurry up and wait" now it's "we need to have what? By When?!"
Morning tax-chick
Falling in, without the medic today!
Glad to hear you're feeling better.
Morning, SAM! Busy here today, but I'll get around to reading this eventually :-).
Right, I got an A in my "Military History" course in College because of the paper I wrote arguing this point. :-)
I believe this occured in Lithuania.
I remember reading this account, It may have been in "Hitler Moves East: 1941"
Snippy and I understand busy :-)
I'm thinking both. Not to mention Hanoi Jane and the rest of the "Peace" movement.
The Long Walk: The True Story of a Trek to Freedom
by Slavomir Rawicz
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1558216847/qid=1094227151/sr=ka-1/ref=pd_ka_1/104-2990703-7928726
Paperback: 256 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.60 x 8.64 x 6.10
Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1.00 edition (December 1, 1997)
ISBN: 1558216847
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Cavalry officer Slavomir Rawicz was captured by the Red Army in 1939 during the German-Soviet partition of Poland and was sent to the Siberian Gulag along with other captive Poles, Finns, Ukranians, Czechs, Greeks, and even a few English, French, and American unfortunates who had been caught up in the fighting. A year later, he and six comrades from various countries escaped from a labor camp in Yakutsk and made their way, on foot, thousands of miles south to British India, where Rawicz reenlisted in the Polish army and fought against the Germans. The Long Walk recounts that adventure, which is surely one of the most curious treks in history. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"One of the epic treks of the human race. Shackleton, Franklin, Amundsen. . .history is filled with people who have crossed immense distances and survived despite horrific odds. None of them, however, has achieved the extraordinary feat Rawicz has recorded. He and his companions crossed an entire continent--the Siberian arctic, the Gobi desert and then the Himalayas--with nothing but an ax, a knife, and a week's worth of food. . . His account is so filled with despair and suffering it is almost unreadable. But it must be read--and re-read."
--Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm
"The long walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget. . ."--Stephen Ambrose
Ingram
In 1941, Slavomir Rawicz and six fellow prisoners escaped from a Siberian labor camp and walked across 4,000 miles of the most forbidding terrain on Earth to freedom. This is their astonishing story. 8 cassettes. --This text refers to the Audio Cassette edition.
From the Back Cover
In 1941, the author and a small group of fellow prisoners escaped a Soviet labor camp. Their march out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India is a remarkable statement about man's desire to be free. With a new Afterword by the author, and the author's Foreword to the Polish edition, this new edition of The Long Walk is destined to outrank its classic status. (6 X 9, 256 pages, map) "One of the epic treks of the human race. Shackleton, Franklin, Amundsen...history is filled with people who have crossed immense distances and survived despite horrific odds. None of them, however, has achieved the extraordinary feat Rawicz has recorded. He and his companions crossed an entire continent--the Siberian arctic, the Gobi desert and then the Himalayas--with nothing but an ax, a knife, and a week's worth of food...His account is so filled with despair and suffering it is almost unreadable. But it must be read--and re-read." --Sebastian Junger, author of The Perfect Storm "The Long Walk is a book that I absolutely could not put down and one that I will never forget..." --Stephen Ambrose
Book Description
The harrowing true tale of escaped Soviet prisoners’ desperate march out of Siberia, through China, the Gobi Desert, Tibet, and over the Himalayas to British India.
Do yourself a HUGE favor buy and read this book!
Trust me you won't regret it.
Back tonight.
Hi alfa6.
WOW
Hi miss Feather
Personal 111th birthday wishes to Bilbo.
Happy Friday to you PE!!!
WOO HOO!!!
What a coincidence! I came accross this info doing my final paper for Military History 201 at SJSU. When I told the instructor I wanted to do it on Operation Barbarossa, he rolled is eys and said "not another one!"
Apparantly this was a popular topic in previous classes. He warned me that unless I could come up with something he hadn't heard or read on the subject before, I would likely not get an A. I Got an A+ and was told it was the best paper he had read on the subject. Sadly, this was before the age of affordable PCs and I have lost the original hard copy.
Strangely, for a professor that had published a couple of books on military history (WWII in the Pacific), he was woefully ignorant of things like basic firearms capabilites.
While studying Napoleon, the statement was made that formations of riflemen were engaging each other at ranges of 1,000 yards. Being quite familiar with black-powder firearms (having built and fired them), I challenged this. I said that if Napoleonic soldiers were engaging the enemy at 1,000 yards, it was because they were essentially using the musket as an indirect fire weapon (high angle of fire), to rain musket balls on a general area (a tactic in common practice), because no BP musket then, or even now, is accurate enough or has the muzzle velocity required to engage single targets at that range.
Well, of course, the instructor and all the military wanna-be's ganged up on me (I was then in the ROTC program and attending class in uniform). I tried to explain the difference between maximum range (which is probably what they were hung up on), and maximum-effective range using the M-16 as an example. All these guys, who have never picked up a firearm in their lives, including the "published" instructor, were having none of it.
A few days later one of the class suck-ups brings in a book showing how, during napoleonic times, they had experimented with rifled muskets that had tapered bores at the muzzle (to get the kinds of velocities needed to shoot accuratly past 500 yds). I was familiar with these (had that same book and othere as well), so I asked them why they were never widely used. They didn't know. so I had to explain that it was due to their tendency to blow up when fired. If the bullet jammed rather than exiting the muzzle, which they did more often than not, it turned the rifle into a pipe bomb.
Sadly regardless of my efforts, they refused to be educated on this issue and continued to believe that Napoleonic riflemen were taking each other out with aiimed shots at 1,000 yards.
Ever since then I have been wary of things I've read in military history books not written by people first-hand military and weapons knowledge.
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