Category: Military

Definitely No Snowflake

History, Military

Yikes.  Try this wilting flower for size:

Virginia Hall was fluent in French, Italian and German when she went to work for the US foreign service before World War II but was invalided out of the service after a hunting accident in Turkey.
Her shotgun slipped from her grasp and as she grabbed it, it fired, blasting away her foot.
By the time she got to a hospital, gangrene had set in. To save her life, the surgeon had to amputate her left leg below the knee.
Always able to see the funny side of things, Miss Hall immediately named her wooden leg Cuthbert.
…
When the Nazis invaded France in 1940, she fled to London, and with her language skills, was soon recruited by the SOE.
After training in the clandestine arts of killing, communications and security, she went to Vichy France to set up resistance networks under the cover of being a reporter for the New York Post.
After the November, 1942, North Africa invasion, German troops flooded into her area and things became too hot even for her.
She hiked on her artificial leg across the Pyrenees in the dead of winter to Spain.
During the journey she radioed London saying she was okay but Cuthbert was giving her trouble.

…and then she got really serious about doing bad things to Nazis.  Read the whole thing.

Turning Round And Biting

Military, Mocking Furriners

It appears that the BritGov has a perennial shortage of men wanting to join their army.  This led them, amid much merriment, to launch an ad campaign appealing to the Snowflake Generation — and apparently, to pretty much everyone’s surprise, it worked:

The controversial Army recruitment campaign aimed at ‘snowflakes’ led to an unprecedented wave of youngsters signing up, figures reveal.
Posters released on January 3 targeted ‘snowflakes, selfie addicts, class clowns, phone zombies and ‘me, me, millennials’ ‘ as part of a £1.5million campaign aimed at overturning negative stereotypes.
Critics said they patronised youngsters and the soldier used on the ‘snowflake’ poster threatened to quit.
But the Army said yesterday it had 9,700 applications in the first three weeks of January – a five-year high – compared to 5,437 the previous year.

Whether anyone would want  more of said demographic in their army, or anywhere for that matter, is a topic for another time, but whatever.

What’s troubling is the way that the Brit Army supports its soldiers once they’ve joined.  Try this little horror show (and you may want to put all guns and/or throwable objects out of reach before you read it):

How hero soldier won the Military Cross for unimaginable bravery in Iraq then years later was smeared as a war criminal by leeching lawyers

Disgusting.  And I’m not just talking about the fucking lawyers.

P.S.  Mind you, that’s not to say the U.S. doesn’t do the same thing.  Fuckers.

Mega Weapons

Military

Apparently, the Russians have a new weapon:

The Russian Navy reportedly has a new weapon that can disrupt the eyesight of targets as well as make them hallucinate and vomit.

Oh yeah?  Well, we have a couple of those too:

 

…except that common decency (and probably the Geneva Convention) would prevent us from using them — even against Russians.

Dropping Standards

Military

It’s about time somebody took a stand — and it happened in Britishland, too:

Woman who failed frontline infantry fitness test given a ‘pass’ by the Army until furious male soldiers who HAD completed course staged rebellion

Corporal Daisy Dougherty was hoping to become one of the Army’s first female infantry instructors following the landmark decision last year to let women join combat units and Special Forces.
The first stage in the selection process required her to prove her fitness by completing an eight-mile march in under two hours over arduous terrain while carrying a heavy pack and a rifle.
Despite being a qualified personal fitness trainer and a member of the Army’s athletics squad, the 29-year-old took too long to finish the challenge. Under course rules, she should have been immediately ejected and sent back to her unit.
But Cpl Dougherty – the only woman on the course – and 14 others who also failed were told they could carry on, sparking a furious backlash among the 75 soldiers who passed the test.
The soldiers rounded on commanders at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon, Mid-Wales, accusing them of lowering standards to suit women. When top brass refused to back down, troops contacted The Mail on Sunday to expose what they claimed was ‘positive discrimination’.
Fearing a public backlash if they allowed her result to stand, commanders backed down and asked Cpl Dougherty and the other soldiers who failed the march to leave.

Read the whole article, because there’s some equally-good news about the Paras towards the end of it.  (Ex-Para Mr. Free Market, for one, is chortling into his morning gin even as we speak.)

I repeat, for the umpteenth time:  women have no place in combat units.  Period, end of statement, end of story.

One Hundred Years On

History, Military, Patriotism

At 11.00am on this day in 1918, the guns at last fell silent.

Of course, the armistice came too late for millions upon millions.

For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon

With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.

Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.