That’ll be me then Frank(!) “grammer” to read “grammar”. Well, you did bait me and I bit(!)
Old Staff Clerks never die, they just get put through the shredder.
Seriously, sounds fascinating; once there’s that military experience link, no matter amongst whatever nationality, it’s so easy to smooth the way to a conversation - that can take its toll - certainly alcohol-wise, but that’s another story.
The first hard evidence, I saw of this occurred in one of the frequent Arab-Israeli wars. Yom Kippur war in 1973, IIRC.
The given Arab country was suffering a high loss rate of aircraft. The Soviet airwar advisors insisted the Arabs were just incompetent and not using Soviet tactics properly.
Several flights of Mig’s Soviet piloted but Arab owned followed. The Soviet pilots were shot down by Israeli pilots at an much higher rate than the Arab pilots had been.
Basically the Arabs discovered the Soviet airwar experts and best Soviet pilots were incompetent.
I recall in "78 that the Rhine was the line. if you were stationed east of the Rhine you were the delaying force. (God rest your soul). If you were west of the Rhine you were the defensive force to hold until reinforcements arrived. About half of the NBC training was to make us feel good. All that talk of decontaminating vehicles was a lot of bravo Seirra. Sure CS was easy to decontaminate but a mustard agent would not be decontaminateable. Mustard persists for many years and once your contaminate gets around the engine and radios Oh well. What mechanics would work on it? Run it till it stops and bury it.
can’t be bothered …
Theres a whole book in czech language from the publisher Nase Vojsko, cant remember the title thou. It includes the whole plan from the Czechoslovak point of view.
Guys its realy difficult to explain this to someone who did spend whole life in freedom. For most people this was just hell full of abuse and separation from their families and commanded by drunken stupid communist officers. Wasted years.
Jacob, it might help, if you will forgive me suggesting it, that you clarify your background here; if you are, indeed, quoting from first hand experience, then it might be helpful to explain it to us all here.
We all have something to learn from others’ experiences, and this is as good as any a site to do just that perhaps.
Just a thought.
My English lessons were screwed up as an experiment, by the schools (pad brat) on what to do with Dyslexia, so missed a lot of what I should have understood,
thanks to computers and wife its improved.
Hey Frank, you’re in good company - General Patton was dyslexic; not too bad a role model perhaps?
Depends on which side you were on…
Im sorry for the emotions, should probably take a back seat for a moment. But let me leave the discussion with a quote from a former political officer who told me that “Stalingrad was the biggest battle in human history”. Thankfully he is no longer in charge.
I would put that in question, Jacob. To me, and I guess no French here would argue about that, Verdun 1916 was the biggest and bloodiest battle in newer human history. Roughly 300.000 dead in 300 days …
Ahhh,
but,
if Russian nationalists considers all other nationalities to be sub-humans (untermenschen)
then Stalingrad was the greatest battle in human history.
The fact that the rest of us apes and other creatures have fought other battles among ourselves doesn’t matter to the Russians.
WW II, oops, sorry, Great Patriotic War, didn’t start until Hitler attacked the USSR (crossed the line where Germany and the USSR had divided Poland).
Exactly, and such “leaders” were in charge. I even knew an “agent” who used to get drunk on duty. Armed.
Oh did I mention that most gas masks didnt alow for the wear of glasses ? So the officer said, just point the gun in the direction of the enemy, you dont have to hit anything. I have to stop, I will get myself in troubble.
One more for good measure, how many weeks a year did You guys back then spend with training for military parades ?
Also how much was the bribe for a medical discharge ? I dont recal that one, but I remember that in order to get the car through inspection you had to leave a bottle on the backseat. I will stop now guys. Sorry.
The military service for the position I was designated for was 12 months (plus repeat training for a few weeks a few years later). Some did 15 months, some did 10 and the ordinary soldier did 7.5 months.
We spent maybe a week in total during that time learning the basics concerning marching, straight, turn left, turn right et.c. Before we went to Stockholm to guard the royal palace we spent maybe a week training have the guards move and act.
Let’s say we spent a week in total learning how to walk like soldiers.
Training in how to show, carry and handle a rifle (except shooting) was maybe half a week.
The rest of the time was used for training our roles, (I was supposed to become a quartermaster, responsible for the logistics for a mortar company). Others trained to become fire directors/controllers for the mortars, or shooting and handling the 120 mm mortars, driving vehicles, cooking (DO NOT steam cook pasta, it turns into glue …)
Edit: If I were to leave a bottle on the rear seat when I take my car to inspection I would probably get into legal trouble for possibly attempting to bribe an official. Big No-No.
Medical discharge: If someone is so eager to get out of it the military would be just as eager to get rid of that problematic person.
Battle of Stalingrad casualties(all participants) are estimated at around 1 000 000 deaths in 160 days(5 months and a week).
Or close to 6250 a day.
Versus 1000 deaths a day at Verdun.
I find that’s a big difference.
Cheers,
Angel
Leningrad …
The count of casualties in a battle usually includes dead, wounded and missing
so some care must be taken when comparing numbers.
The holodomor, a man made famine that may have caused 5 million deaths:
If we REALLY want to start counting corpses …
which made a small dent in the Chinese population …