Rusty's Naval/Military History thread

[Buster's Uncle]

I really hope you too found something you can identify with and be proud of. If I had to guess Buster is someone you're proud of but I don't know you well enough to make any more educated guesses.

That wasn't short at all. I apologize.

I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.

(Fortunately, Rusty doesn't seem to have a problem with this line of talk so far, it having so much to do with history, not least military history...)

[Eadee]

I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.
(Fortunately, Rusty doesn't seem to have a problem with this line of talk so far, it having so much to do with history, not least military history...)

[Rusty Edge]

I'm a proud North Carolinian, and anyone who has a problem with that can go to Hell - no ameliorating smiley.
(Fortunately, Rusty doesn't seem to have a problem with this line of talk so far, it having so much to do with history, not least military history...)

No, I don't have a problem. It is relevant.

The North Carolinians were a particularly competent group in the war, both on land and at sea. They weren't the instigators of the war, neither were they beaten. More than can be said for most states. To me, in war time , you do your duty to the best of your ability without losing your humanity, according to where you live. It's a test of character, and it's okay to be proud of good character.

Likewise, it's interesting to get another German perspective.  Particularly since the perils of being punitive during and after an industrial war can sow the seeds of another one.

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh yes oh yes oh yes.  NC was the last one in the stupid Confederacy, but also the last one out.  North Carolinians fought like demons on the battlefield, and there are conflicting stories, but the performance of NC regiments in the Late Unpleasantness was the origin of our nickname, the Tar Heels.

-Now I have to add googling a Tarheel logo to today's to-do list.  I actually just started a written list.

P.S.  South Carolina sux, and if any state needed wrecking forever, it was SC, NC's New Jersey.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Rusty Edge]

P.S.  South Carolina sux, and if any state needed wrecking forever, it was SC, NC's New Jersey.

 

[Buster's Uncle]

They DO have better public TV and you can get decent firecrackers there - also, the gasoline is cheaper and it's not as cold in wintertime, mostly.  And NC has no good beaches.

-I just exhausted the entire list of ways South Carolina is superior to North Carolina.

[Eadee]

Its even inferior in regards of alphabetical order

[Rusty Edge]

On a barely related subject, I've really been enjoy the National Geographic Channel's "American Genius" which focusses on the historical rivalries in innovation and industry-

Samuel Colt vs. Daniel Wesson ( revolvers)  and Hearst vs Pulitzer ( newspapers, which incited  the Spanish-American War )   were particularly interesting to me. So was Jobs vs. Gates, sort of a single episode version of the lengthy documentary, "Triumph of the Nerds"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_of_the_Nerds

Those are the only ones I've seen so far.

[Buster's Uncle]

Britain's frontline WWII tunnels rediscovered
AFP
By Robin Millard  8 hours ago



A hidden tunnel complex that formed Britain's first line of defence in World War II opened to the public this week after six decades buried as a forgotten time capsule (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)



Dover (United Kingdom) (AFP) - A hidden tunnel complex that formed Britain's first line of defence in World War II opened to the public this week after six decades buried as a forgotten time capsule.

The underground labyrinth is inside the White Cliffs of Dover, an iconic symbol of England on its southeastern tip and a natural coastal defence at the closest point to continental Europe.

Standing at the clifftop entrance, tour guide Gordon Wise looked across the busy Channel.

"You can actually see France, 21 miles (34 kilometres) away, just 70 seconds flying time for a shell," he said as he surveyed the lights, buildings and beaches visible on the other side.

"You get some idea that this was really the frontline. This was where the defence of Britain had to start."

The tunnel network, 75 feet (23 metres) down inside the chalk cliffs, supported the 185 troops and their four officers who manned three gun batteries and slept in bunks.



Visitors look at some of the original wartime documents relating to the Fan Bay Deep Shelter within the cliffs overlooking Dover, England, on 23 July, 2015 (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)


The digging began after prime minister Winston Churchill visited Dover in July 1940 and was enraged to see enemy German ships sailing unopposed through the straits between Britain and Nazi-occupied France.

The Fan Bay Deep Shelter tunnels were constructed within 100 days.

The 3,500 square feet (325 square metres) of tunnels were abandoned in the 1950s and filled in with debris in the 1970s. Only a metal cover plate on the grassy clifftop gave any clue as to what lay beneath.


- Trap door into the past -

The National Trust conservation body rediscovered the shelter after purchasing this section of the cherished cliffs in 2012, and began a mission to revive the tunnels.



Fifty volunteers spent 3,000 hours over 18 months removing by hand 100 tonnes of rubble tipped down the surface entrance to the Fan Bay Deep Shelter within the cliffs overlooking Dover (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)


Fifty volunteers -- Wise among them -- spent 3,000 hours over 18 months removing by hand the 100 tonnes of rubble tipped down the surface entrance.

"It's an important piece of wartime heritage and it's also a piece of forgotten history," said Jon Barker, the site's project manager.

"The story of the cross-Channel guns was largely forgotten," he told AFP.

Some 125 steps down, the tunnels are damp with condensation due to the moist, warm summer air. They smell of the creosote on the wooden support beams.

The tunnels are lined with rusting corrugated steel arching, some of which was removed for scrap in the 1950s, revealing the fossil-filled pristine white chalk behind it.



Volunteers clearing the Fan Bay Deep Shelter found traces of the soldiers' lives like graffiti from the latrines making light of the lack of toilet paper; "Parade is due I dare not linger / here goes I'll use my finger," reads one (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)


The temperature remains a cool 54 degrees Fahrenheit (12 degrees Celsius) all year round.

"Today the tunnels are abandoned, they feel quite spacious and they're very quiet," said Barker.

"But during the 1940s, it would have been an extremely busy place. It would have been quite hot, noisy and smelly."


- Saucy graffiti -

The project's volunteers found abundant traces of the long forgotten soldiers' lives.



A WWI acoustic mirror which concentrated sound waves and gave an early warning on the direction of incoming aircraft, shipping and enemy fire (AFP Photo/Leon Neal)


Cigarette packets, telegrams, improvised clothes hooks, football betting coupons and rifle rounds were discovered, while a copy of "The Shadow on the Quarterdeck," a 1903 raunchy naval adventure, had been stashed on top of an air duct.

The chalk walls are etched with graffiti, usually the names of troops, such as "Nobby Clark 7/11/42."

Elsewhere there is a game of noughts and crosses, a tiny carved face, and some bawdy graffiti on bricks from the latrines, making light of the lack of toilet paper.

"Parade is due I dare not linger / here goes I'll use my finger," reads one example.

Later graffiti carvers left their mark, including adventurous cavers and locals. "Nick and Julie" snuck inside for many enjoyable visits in the 1970s.

"It was very difficult and dangerous to get in. Because of that, it's kept the tunnels in fantastic condition, which is why they're a time capsule from the 1940s," said Barker.

The dig also uncovered two rare World War I acoustic mirrors built into the cliff face.

Before the advent of radar, the 15-foot (4.6-metre) diameter concave sculptures concentrated sound waves and gave an early warning on the direction of incoming aircraft, shipping and enemy fire.

Hosted by volunteer enthusiasts, a torchlit guided visit down the tunnels costs £10 ($15.50, 14 euros).

Telephones from the 1940s connect the shelter to the surface. The handset in the tunnel suddenly rings and a jovial volunteer answers, "Hello? Winston?"

http://news.yahoo.com/britains-frontline-wwii-tunnels-rediscovered-042435795.html

[PLATO]

My own tangent, and forgive me if I go ahead and go off on a thing now that I introduced the subject, 'cause I read an article a few days ago on a rather far leftist site I follow, about a ceremonial burial of a Confederate flag in Florida (not part of "The South", BTW, except in the far northern part) that set my teeth on edge, and I'd be crucified if I spoke up there, however diplomatically.  The performance art/political cremation and burial of a long-dead symbol I could care less about, and even approve of on several levels, but the article, written by an associate professor of history who therefore ought to know better than to make such bald and un-nuanced assertions about the history in question in passing, really bugged me.

(This isn't aimed personally at anyone here, because the Civ community has been pretty cool to me about my origins with me not having to hide that I'm North Carolinian at all and never even got MUCH static about it from the trolls of 'poly when it once came up - it's a rhetorical cry to the Yankees of the world and everyone who's bought their propaganda that's. still. going. on. [today and seemingly forever, the winners writing the elementary school history texts starring the Divine Lincoln Who Died to Save us From Our Sins and all])

All that stuff that happened 151(+) years ago?  I wasn't there, I wasn't involved, and I don't happen to approve of either side - so stop insulting me.  Stop insulting my mother.  Stop insulting whatever shreds of pride I can salvage from the tatters of my heritage.  From The Beverly Hillbillies to Hee Haw to Momma's Family to whatever's out there right now that I don't know about since I stopped watching TV while I was in Texas - but I'm sure there's SOMEthing.  From critically-acclaimed stuff like the plays of Tennessee Williams (good but entirely alien to my experience in every way, and I resent being lumped in with his degenerate characters so, alas identified with "Southerness") to the movie of In the Heat of the Night (the TV adaption was nuanced with bigots and good people, smart and ignorant and all in-between, and it gets the BU "Southern" militant seal of approval for being true and good in its complexity - we are not so different than everyone else, save some stuff a very long time ago we will never be allowed to live down.)

This is tiring.  This is a subject so long and involved that it needs a book to begin to cover it all.  This is a subject with the game so profoundly loaded that it is a really bad idea to bring up at all -ever- to anyone but fellow victims of the systematic oppression and bigotry.  Pretty much only bigots (sure we have some - doesn't everyone?) angry young white men from the southeastern US (the same sorts who may or may not be bigots but definitely don't know what insensitive, impolitic, perspective-lacking jerks they're being when they wail of superficial unfairness like recent race riots or the stuff men's rights activists go on and on about) and absolutely no public figure a millimeter to the left of the late Lewis Gizzard would ever dream of raising in public.  I wouldn't dream of it in a crowd any larger than this for all that I love you guys and trust you to think and be cool.

I'd love to discuss this with a German - I intuit with my enormous buncle powers that a German would get it for some mysterious reason.  The changes in South Africa were too recent to be applicable, I think, though when Buster's Daddy was a missionary in New York City in the 90s, he knew a white girl from SA who later admitted she'd been surprised at how much he exceeded the expectation she'd had the second he first spoke in front of her and gave his regional origins away.

This is my life.  I used to travel a lot for my work - and I might still be out there in tights, making bank flirting outrageously with women avec renfair cleavage if I hadn't gotten my start with a crowd of Minnesota bigot-hypocrites who thought they were in Mayberry and provided me with a textbook example of a hostile working environment.  Here's how it works, whether you're black, fat, a woman or "merely" of a despised geographic origin: they make (hateful) jokes (and treat you in general like you're nothing in whatever way occurs to them, which part escalates if you ever object) until you get pissed off, then hold your attitude against you while also collecting anything else they can run to the boss with.  Being disliked because abused is a hole I have absolutely no notions -even in far-fetched theory- how you could possibly ever climb out of.  They got the impression that I was an angrier person than I actually am, which is really saying something.

(Also what they did to me at WPC, BTW, though because nerdz doing institutional gang-up bullying, not because bigotry.  I don't think it's something people plan out to get you, but it IS a kind of groupthink thing that happens once the group decides they don't like you strongly.)

Mayberry.  Y'know, I'm not stupid, and smart as I am, not a sport, either - that's part of the myth, the Andy, who explains the exceptions that aren't all that hard to find.  My college-graduate parents are smart, and all my grandparents, none of whom were educated beyond high school and some not that, read for pleasure in their spare time.  They were not terribly unusual for that.  I'm not in the Klan, haven't, to my knowledge ever known anyone who is, and I'm not related to myself for about four generations back.  Momma checked, despite the Yankees burning down a lot of courthouses and a great deal of the records of my decent.  Not a lot of slaveholders in the family tree, which in one case goes back to 15-something in Saxony.  Nobody's family tree is clean on that count -sorry Ben Affleck - it's only a matter of how far back.

Those ignoramuses with the Confederate battle flag on the back of their coat or otherwise on public or private display?  God, do I ever wish they'd stop for a long list of reasons, only some of which don't relate to this rant.  Yeah, it's a totally jerk-ass thing to do, who anyone over the age of six should avoid for the obvious reason of the message it tends to send.  And I do not deny for a second that that symbol that has been irretrievably soiled so badly by a worst element almost as bad as Nazis is nothing any decent person not in a historical movie should ever have anything to do with EVER - and some of them with the flag are saying exactly what all you outsiders think.  -But let me point out some other things it sometimes says, not that strongly related to the first meaning.  A lot of times it's a great big ol' raised middle finger to our conquerors who still vigorously oppress us, with an eternal barrage of insults and jokes and contempt forever, if nothing else.  You wouldn't think that was a non-problem if it happened to you.  -All your. life.  And Neal Young - oh. my. God, Neal Young and his song The Southern Man.  Look it up if you never heard the song -I'll wait- and enjoy the story you'll find about how the classic Sweet Home Alabama was a direct result/reaction.  (It's a rockin' good song, for all that as far as I can see, Alabama sucks.  Mr. Young, that parts really true about the "Southern" man not needing you.)

Some of them pitiful Joe Dirt doinks in their denim Confederate-from-the-back jackets ain't sayin' a thing in the world but that they like Skynard.  Honest to God.

I am a citizen of the United States of America by force, for all that I think we're all better off in our imperfect, hypocritical, oppressive, union.  I am a conquered subject tired of being punished for stuff I wasn't in on, even the stuff around the time I was born.  And the first time I traveled out of state working renfairs, I got pulled into nearly as many conversations about the Late Unpleasantness, the War of Northern Aggression (a self-serving label, sure, but still with some truth attached) as the rest of my previous 30 years on this planet combined.  It is not a subject of any great interest to me, and I assure you that I am not unusual in that.  That is another of those myths perpetuated against us, possibly with the justice that someone talking to a Yankee would tend to be in mind, possibly bringing it up as an expression of hostility, overt or otherwise. It honestly looks from my seat like we're not the ones most guilty of holding onto it, given all the crap I've mentioned having to live with, not least the winners' propaganda history.

Incidentally, accents are a thing.  I have one, and there's nothing wrong with that, and I think you talk funny too, but consider bringing it up appallingly rude.  I don't even have a normally-strong local accent, I've been told, but it's certainly been strong enough that the sin of talking has rebounded on me to my displeasure far too often in my travels, ever being too often and it's been more than that.  Please world-ruled-by-Yankees, stop singling me out as a comedic figure for something everybody is guilty of.  It's beyond old, and I don't want to have to insist you respect my boundary twice - this being about the millionth time, and it seeming a bit abusive by now from over here.

Americans have collectively never made their peace with losing that war in Vietnam, because when you've got a pretty solid record, you don't want to admit to the marginal cases.  We took a real beating in 1812, but the British went home without achieving their war aims, so win.  Korea was horrible, scarred my daddy to his deathbed, but South of the 49th is still not communist, so war aims and win.  We don't like to admit Vietnam --- because it hurts.  It does something to you as a society.  And my people already knew that hurt, a hurt we can't expect the winners to understand, but wish they would stop rubbing it in, stop endlessly forever and ever claiming it was about one single [inexcusable] thing with which we are tarred and shamed with poor justice after all these years when any sensible close reader of even faintly objective history knows it was the violent stage of a cultural and economic power struggle older than this nation.  Slavery was always in that mix, but stop lying that slavery was all - because if I don't have any problem admitting the truth that my people were way behind the curve of civilization on a horrible and inexcusable matter, I think it's reasonable you, oh my tyrannical northern masters, to admit that it's a bullcrap excuse for a democracy of the people that kills you by the millions and erases your heritage forever for some Old Testament seven generations of guilt bullcrap vengeance stuff, and the lie that a very complex thing was only about one thing is a cover for an illegal war of conquest, with no angels, even the Divine Martyr Lincoln.  It was 151 years ago, and now safe to admit.

Where I sit, the bones of my ancestors are pretty much all buried within 200 miles, going back 500 years.  Nobody very far at all in the past is in any position to throw stones, and all that Washington-owned-slaves/the-Emancipation-Proclamation-only-applied-to-slaves-in-states-rebelling/race-riots-in-New-York-City-during-the-war stuff.  You go ahead and have your pride in your place and your people, whatever you can manage, and leave me mine in peace.  Please. Let it go and stop assuming -or EVER saying; that's rude- ugly things about my mother, a decent woman who didn't choose her place of birth, but embraces it, nonetheless, as is only human nature.  It just isn't right that I, a man at least as imperfect and flawed as the next, but who has struggled to understand the other and be kind and better than his sinful nature and prejudices for his entire adult life has it so bad that his back goes up from the very mention of The South.

The South, message being that I am an ignorant inbred three-toothed retarded KKK racist, and so's my mother who is probably also my sister.  The South, where they had to censor this or that in a racist way or our theaters wouldn't show it, and absolutely not an excuse for racism on the part of the non Southern racists.  The South, font of all that's bad in the United States that forced it to stay in and must regret it by now.  The South, which was not still behind the curve when I was born because we were conquered impoverished occupied and oppressed -still oppressed 100 years later- and angry about it, bucking the federal government possibly more on general principals -because screw you and your tyranny of the majority- than on (undeniably) backwards ideas about the issue at hand.  The South, which is bad because they's just bad and has everything in common with Germany in 1938 and nothing in common with Germany in 1920 (look it up; it made me want to launch a revenge war and conquer France, too).  The South, which is at total fault and not kicked-around people pissed and acting out because of being angry at abuse and engaged in all-too-human regrettable-but-still-common scapegoating (seriously - go read the Wikipedia about the Weimar Republic and give it a good long deep think - yes, I did just try to blame the lingering of my people's racism on the Yankees, and no, I don't really stand behind that, but I'm not kidding about what a harsh and hateful occupation after a lost war, combined with generally awful hard times and the most insane inflation that you just won't believe how bad it was did to the German zeitgeist - Hitler was a product of his times, I swear.)

I just have to ask; in this nation of the people for the people and by the people  --- if it wasn't time yet when everyone involved in the Civil War and slavery and all that was dead --- when exactly do I get to be just one of the people, distinguished only by my own merits and accomplishments and acts, or lack thereof, and not despised, even in South Africa while still under apartheid, for the accident of my birth?

I don't want that flag back, but how about the fair chance and the human dignity everyone deserves?  Let me be an American, just another American at last, like everyone else, not a Southerner assumed guilty - and please lay off my mother.

OMG my Brother!  Thank you!  I just had to quote the whole thing.

I had one grandfather born in 1883 and one in 1891...both remembered living relatives from their youth that survived the raping of the South.  Any Yankee that knows the truth of what happened during the conquering of the South and would support that cause is worse than any Southerner who ever lived.  As a child I remember the stories of summary shootings of unarmed men, raping of women, stealing of family valuables, and burning of homes.  Absolute war crimes by any definition and all these stories about crimes against CIVILIANS.  My own ancestors suffered greatly at the hands of the northern occupiers.  The county that I grew up in did not achieve the same level of economic output it had in 1860 until 1971!!  Over 100 years to just get back to even.  What happened to the South and, to a much smaller extent, is still happening is one of history's greatest cover ups.  The victors truly do write the history.

Even with all that said...it is not the past that has me tainted to northerners...it is the present.  Their condescending ways seem almost endless.  I certainly wish that posts like yours found their way to many places on the internet.  It is my sincere hope that most Yankees are just ignorant of the true facts and not just worthless bastards.

[Buster's Uncle]

As to the last, did you see what Oerdin said about the North Carolina flag?

[PLATO]

No...I try to stay away from Confederate/Civil War/Slavery threads at Poly.  It is so frustrating to see some of the tripe that comes from those threads.  Except for his Iraq blog and his posting in the Ukraine thread you just have to shake your head at Oerdin.  I am going to San Diego in October for a conference and November for a training class.  I keep debating about if I should try to set up grabbing a beer with him.  Not sure how that would go.....

[Buster's Uncle]

He'd get drunk.

-I've expressed concern to him privately that he's an alkie.  It would explain a lot if he's drunk posting even when he's not so hammered it's obvious.  He has unbelievable gaps in his memory, for one thing...

(He said it in the Wales-bashing thread last Sunday.  -And I bet he doesn't remember saying it, seriously.)


Funny thing - I happened to have made the post you quoted before the murders happened in South Carolina.  The weeks since on the webs have just proved my point - and been pretty unbearable.

Treason?  REALLY?  You doinks are saying treason like it was still 1870?  REALLY?  Points for nationalism, none for democracy, you pigs.

[Rusty Edge]

Here's a story about a ship that didn't sink.  http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33543706

Why is the US still using a Nazi tall ship?

The Eagle was built by the Nazis and fought for Hitler in World War Two - so how did a tall ship that once flew the swastika end up as a training vessel for new US Coast Guard cadets?

Driving home along the coast of Connecticut one winter's evening, Tido Holtkamp saw a ghost.

There she was - moored in the harbour, her three towering masts, draped with those familiar sails he had rigged back in the German Navy in World War Two.

Her body had been repainted in the red, white and blue of the US, but her curves were unmistakable.

"That's my ship!" shouted Holtkamp, stopping the car. "That's my ship. The Horst Wessel. What in the world is she doing here in America?"




He may be 89 years old now, but the old sailor still twinkles wide-eyed as he recalls that moment back in 1959. "

It tells about the ship's role in WWII.