WHAT YOU MUST KNOW

What is the craziest military tactic ever used? Imagine you've time travelled back to the 7th July 1944, and you're now a squad leader on the island of Saipan in the Mariana Islands with the 105th Infantry Regiment of the US Army. As your cutting around giving the ‘grunts' on the .30 cal Browing machine-gun their ‘arcs of fire,’ suddenly, multiple blood-curdling screams across the battlefield could be heard - BANZAII The Japanese have just launched a massive banzai charge, leading from the front are their officers, brandishing their samurai swords. Just behind the officers are thousands of Japanese soldiers with bayonets fixed, and as the sun glints down on the cold steel you feel the sweat beads across the forehead form. You lift your helmet and wipe the sweat with your sleeve as you wait for them to get in range. . . you wait. . . and wait. . . RAPID FIRE!!! Your M1 Garand’s barrel is glowing red, the .30 cal is clattering away bursting your eardrums. As one of the enemy ...

On the 31st January 1941, in Oslo, Norway, Reichsführer-SS Himmler accepted the oath of the first group of Norwegian enlistees in the Waffen-SS. During World War 2 numerous Norwegian volunteers served within the ranks of the German Wehrmacht. Prior to 1940, there were few such volunteers, but after the invasion, their numbers increased dramatically totaling around 50,000 by wars end.  Nowhere did Norwegians serve in greater numbers than in the ranks of the Waffen-SS, but equal mention should also be made of those who served in the Kriegsmarine, Luftwaffe, Heer and in the various auxiliary forces such as Organization Todt and even the Reichsarbeitdients. Norway was invaded by Germany on April 9, 1940. The attack was a surprise, and the 50,000 man Royal Norwegian Army fought back as best it could, aided eventually by British, French, and Polish troops. By June of that year, the German hold on the country was secure. After the Germans occupied Oslo, Vidkun Quisling announced himself a...

Germany has promised Ukraine a field hospital, an unnerving, nearly despairing, gift for a war that hasn’t exactly begun yet, as if we can --prospectively -- bandage a war and make it better. It has been experiences in war-time hospitals that awakened many writers to some kind of pacifism, to an understanding that war inflicts injuries that are collective and deep, injuries that must be healed on a moral or spiritual level.  It was during the Crimean War, in army hospitals, that Tolstoy’s pacifism was born, a pacifism based on the understanding that war attacks truth: here, you “behold war, not. . . with music and drum-beat, with fluttering flags and galloping generals, but you behold war in its real phase—in blood, in suffering, in death.” Walt Whitman wrote of his work as an army nurse during America’s Civil War, as if that work of healing could be perpetuated by his verse: “On, on I go, (open doors of time! open hospital doors!) The crush’d head I dress, (poor crazed hand tear n...

Reading This, Made Me So Upset A Beautiful Little Girl Subjected To A Monster That Decided That Anything Related To The Jewish Culture Was Obsolete How Minimal Was Hitlers Minset To Concur He Was To Be An Exercutioner To A Human Race. Her name was Czeslawa Kwoka, and her crime was being Polish, Catholic, and 14 years old.  Her red triangle was for political prisoners, because of where she was born in Poland.   After this photo was taken, she was killed in Auschwitz extermination camp on March 12, 1943 with a phenol injection in the heart. Just before the execution, she was photographed by prisoner Wilhelm Brasse, who would later testify against the executioner of Czeslawa, a woman.   Just before the photo, the executioner punched Czeslawa in the face, as the hematoma on her lip shows. This is the face of a terrified little girl, who didn't even speak the language of her executioner.   She had lost her mother a few days before.  But she dried her t...

I have always loved this picture. In case you are not a wrestling person....👇 At the 1972 Munich Olympics, Wilfred Dietrich, 38, executed the greatest throw in wrestling history, on 444-pound Chris Taylor.  If you wrestled in the 70s, you know this poster. It happened at the 1972 Munich Olympics, in Greco-Roman wrestling. Grit, Perseverance, Determination, Belief, Confidence, Defiance, Will Power..... Many words could be used to describe what it takes in order to fully commit to the execution of this move, in this moment.  If you ever need just a picture to show you that anything is possible.....this is it.  Be inspired today. Realize that you are capable of greatness! The only thing in the way is your own mind.  Confidence doesn't just appear, you have to achieve in order to believe. Survive in order to thrive. Just do it, to prove your grit.  Wrap your arms around whatever is in your way and give it a toss!!! 💪

Do soldiers listen to music when going into combat or is it quiet? Absolutely not. A Marine with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment take cover behind a berm after receiving accurate small-arms fire, Feb. 13, in the city of Marjah, Helmand province, Afghanistan. Marines with Bravo and Alpha Co., 1/6 inserted into the city at night by helicopters as part of a large-scale offensive aimed at routing the Taliban from their last-known stronghold in Helmand province There are many reasons why, but the most obvious and glaring is, it severely fucks with your situational awareness. You won’t be able to hear the enemy if you’re busy listening to Eminem or Taylor Swift. Combat isn’t the time, nor place, to sit down and watch a movie, or listen to anything except orders, and the enemy’s movements. Secondly, it draws attention. If you’re a guerrilla, or a sniper, or anybody in general who is trying to be sneaky, you don’t want the enemy to know you’re there. You want to surprise t...

Are drill instructors ever nice? I present Drill Instructor Sergeant Winston, USMC (Sadly, no photo of him, but here is a perfectly adequate DI webperson to give the feel for him) Drill Instructor Sergeant Winston was one of the two bottom drill instructors in my platoon. Senior Drill Instructor Staff Sergeant Simms was the lead, he’s supposed to be the one who is nice periodically, but not in my platoon. Sergeant Winston was a hard-ass. He was happy doling out punishment for the most minor infractions. But his true passion was comedy. Seriously. After the first 3 weeks, the break-in period where we were learning the most basic aspects of being a Marine, his comedic side started to show. When it was his night to monitor the platoon, after dinner until reveille the following morning, we would have some independent time to clean our rifles, polish boots, and do basic other things we were always behind on keeping up with.  Every 7 minutes, or so, he would call the entire plat...

There isn’t really a British equivalent of the US Marines. I know some will say the Royal Marines, however, although they share the same title ‘Marines’ (and a bit of a shared lineage), the Royal Marines are a small special operations-capable force. Their training is longer, harder, and they are, man-for-man, more elite (no shade on the US Marines - the US Marines have MARSOC etc at their more elite end) Others will say the British Army. Their training is probably of an equivalence, but the Marines are a true combined arms force, with an infantry force bigger than the British Army, an air force probably similarly sized to the RAF, and then the whole US Navy behind them. The US Marines are a fairly unique proposition in the world’s combat forces, one that probably only the US could afford to have as a stand-alone combined arms force. We Brits can replicate some elements (but not all), exceed some, but, overall, we do not have anything that equates to the US Marines, for good or for ...

Why is the rank "Second Lieutenant" not popular in the Army or Marines?Because they’re inexperienced and irresponsible assholes. American gunners of B Bty, 6 Bn, 27 Artillery fire a M-110 8 inch howitzer during a fire support mission at Landing Zone Hong approx 12 km north east of Song Be, South Vietnam, 26 March 1970. 2LT is the first officer rank, meaning they’re the equivalent of a Private. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re usually bad leaders, and narcissists who think they’re massively important just because their pay-grade begins with an O. I’m not saying officers are bad, they definitely aren’t. 97% of them are actually good leaders who care about the men under their command, and live by the military ethics and values. Any commissioned officers seeing this, I am not speaking about you, or trying to tarnish reputations. I’m just saying it how it is. Lots of people romanticize military service, especially during wartime. They don’t want to hear the real side...

Was a black British person able to serve in the British army alongside a white British during the 20th century? The soldier in the centre of this picture of the 7th (Light Infantry) Parachute Battalion is Sergeant Sidney Cornell, born in Portsmouth, England. During training at RAF Ringway he earned a distinction, and his record states, “Best performer in his section, intelligent, willing, cool, and keen.” Dropped into Normandy on D-Day to capture Caen and Orne, the Battalion was scattered, and Sgt Cornell showed great bravery and courage under fire for the next month and a half, being awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal in February 1945. His DCM citation reads: This soldier was one of the parachutists who landed behind the German lines in Normandy on the night of the 5th/6th June 1944. During the next five weeks, he was in almost continuous action of a most trying and difficult nature. Cornell was a company runner and has repeatedly carried messages through the most heavy and accur...

On 1 February 1944, the Polish resistance carried out the assassination of Franz Kutschera, known as ‘the executioner of Warsaw. The assassination of this SS officer and police commander in the Warsaw District of the General Government was one of the most spectacular operations in the history of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), because never before or after was such a high-ranking Nazi officer eliminated in Poland. Despite being fully aware of the cruel reprisals, that the Germans would do, , the Home Army command decided to launch the so-called “Operation Heads” (Akcja Główki). Its goal was to eliminate the most cruel Nazi officers. Among them was Hans Frank, general governor of the occupied Polish territories. The assassination attempt took place on a train, 29 January 1944 and was carried out thirty kilometers east of Krakow. Frank survived because the explosive was triggered too soon. In retaliation, a massive execution of several hundred Poles detained in the Krakow prison on Mon...