Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

Under Innocent III crusading became not only a matter of defending the far-flung boundaries of between the Latin Christian world the realms of Islam, but as a political tool to coerce secular rulers everywhere to do the Pope's bidding. During his 18 years as Pope, Innocent proclaimed 6 crusades and inspired a seventh; not one of them reached Jerusalem. The most notorious occured (against the Albigensians).

"It was a neat and alluring calculus. What the warrior had plundered, the Pope sanctified."

The order of Cluny rebuilt its main abbey church with the Spanish tribute of local muslim potentates to King Alfonso.

"Alltough all this* had occured before Odo's** time, it was a famous story with two powerful lessons. First, the enemies of Cluny and Christ could be easily conflated. Second, punitive military action was often the only language such people understood."

*the kidnapping of Majolus, abbot of Cluny, by muslim raiders in 972 near St.Tropez.
** future pope Urban II

De Duitsers kunnen snel de balans in hun voordeel keren [na de eerste Antwerpse uitvallen van het Belgisch leger] , maar ondertussen wordt beslist om meer troepen ten noorden van Brussel te houden. Een omsingeling van de Versterkte Positie Antwerpen kan alleen gebeuren via het westen; hier is Dendermonde natuurlijk een struikelblok omdat het de sleutel vormt tot het gebied achter de Schelde.

The court and its bureaucracy both civilian and military were determined not to allow "society" to profit from the war to enhance its political influence. Deep in their hearts the entourage continued to regard Russia as the dynasty's private domain & to treat every manifestation of patriotic concern on the part of the population as "meddling".

In the event of a French attack [from the border fortress Maubeuge] through Charleroi [with the main bridge over the Sambre] the Prussian staff had determined to make a stand above the village of Ligny, in front of the cobbled highway from Namur to Nivelles [the main unification artery for the Allies ] they had reconnoitered this potential battlefield & distributed the resulting survey to senior officers on 22 May.

De Franse wind waaide heftig maar van een vernietigende storm was nog net geen sprake. Wat volgde waren 5 hectische minuten waarin de aanval beslecht kon worden & de Fransen meester konden worden over het oostelijke deel van de heuvel en het kruispunt. Toen sloegen de Britten terug.

"Alle linies [bij Quatre Bras] lagen onder Frans vuur en begonnen te wijken. Tot er plots grote stofwolken opwaaiden op de weg vanuit Nijvel. Uit het niets verscheen daar de Antwerpse generaal Van Merlen aan het hoofd van de Belgische lichte cavalerie. De huzaren waren goed herkenbaar door hun hemelsblauwe uniformen. De ruiterscolonne was bijna een kilometer lang. Ze had 9h non stop gereden.

"Napoleon was de moderne Prometheus "

The efforts of Cyril & Methodios, were thus brought to a successful [postmortem] conclusion... Through a political manoeuvre designed to reduce Roman influence over Bulgaria, Basil I made sure that the empire would secure an orthodox ally on uts western border.

A step in the right direction to buffer or allign the Slavs, while butressing Islam in eastern Anatolia.

The weather, so often overlooked in these accounts, made a difference here, for the drizzle of spring softened everything apart from metalled roads, forcing the American vehicles to keep to the highways, where they were targeted by Panzerfaust wielding Volksgrenadiers. Despite the overcast, Messerschmitt 109s and jet-propelled 262 swooped on US units at every turn.

Those 67 Wehrmacht "divisions" in the West included 150k fully equipped personnel uselessly bottled up in four Atlantic ports, the Channel Islands & Dunkirk. In addition, 23 divisions were still contesting Italy against Mark Clark's Fifteenth Army Group, with 11 pointlessly lurking in Norway & 12 operating in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean.

"The Rhine is as swift as the Rhône, as wide as the Loire, limpid and green as the Somme, historic as the Tiber, royal as the Danube, mysterious as the Nile, spangled with gold like a river of America and covered with fables and phantoms like a river of Asia."

VICTOR HUGO

The Reich's western moat, a cornerstone of the German psyche, had proved to be a gentler experience than 6th Army Group had right to expect.

The throb of a hundred little engines carried through the silence of the night & the Germans soon realised what was afoot. The first wave of the Thunderbirds were unmolested, but the second wave had a hard time, losing half its boats, their occupants swept away & drowned in the speedy current.Enough made it, there was a glint of bayonets in the moonlight & the closest German positions fell.

[Theo's secret place] "Cinnamon colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a 19th century painting. Rugs worn to threads, painted Japanese fans and antique valentines flickering in candlelight, Pierrots and doves and flower-garlanded hearts. Pippa's face pale in the dark."

"What mattered more was the feeling, a rich sweet undertow so commanding that in class, on the school bus, lying in bed trying to think of some environment where my chest wasn't tight with anxiety, all I had to do was sink into the blood-warm current and let myself spin away to the secret place where everything was all right."

This piece, not of the first quality, doesn't fit with anything else I own, and yet isn't it always the most inappropriate thing, the thing that doesn't quite work, that's oddly the dearest?

Despite its abortive nature, the B-17 incident with the Transport Force was the first to send a ripple of genuine concern through Yamamoto's staff. The whole tactical concept relied heavily on Tanaka's fleet being undetected until after Nagumo's carriers began their strike at Midway.

This was a gathering of dedicated sailors for a cold, sober assessment of cold, sober facts. They knew that the Japanese conquest of Midway would give their bow-shaped homeland a steel-tipped arrow aimed straight at the heart of Hawaii. Moreover, it would be a symbol that Pearl Harbour had been no fluke, that the US could not protect its own territory even when the element of surprise was absent.

As soon as Nimitz' eyes lit upon Halsey, he knew the doctor was right in blowing the whistle on him. The bag of his uniform revealed at least a 20 lbs loss of weight; the dark smudges around his eyes spoke of sleepless nights. Six straight months on the bridge in physical torment from a full-body skin eruption since the Tokyo raid, had taken their toll. Halsey was simply in no condition to lead a fleet into battle.

This little intra service squabble would not be worth recording had it not contained rather disturbing overtones. The immediate honoring of the midget submariners, the ignoring of the fliers [who died accomplishing their mission at Pearl Harbour], indicated unmistakably that Combined Fleet still had not quite accepted the airmen into the full brotherhood of the sea.

Sub E18 did not return from patrol at all. She struck the "V100" on 26/5 outside Libau [but] Calm conditions & good danage control meant that the destroyer was successfully brought in. She conducted an unsuccessful attack on 3 torpedo boats the next day. Her wreck was discovered in 2009 off Hiiumaa. Examination suggests she detonated a mine amidships while on the surface, probably on 2/6/16. There were no survivors.

Had the Russians mounted a sustained surface campaign against the convoys from Sweden [a WW2 style lifeline of metal ores, horses, food] the limited German forces in the Western Baltic would've been hard pressed. The 4 Dreadnoughts entering Russian service in 1916 would've had been met by [transferred] Hochseeflotte units.

"The dust in Normandy was also affecting the heavily oiled ammunition belts; the ejection of the shell cases became clogged with dust as it whirled up underneath through the ejection shutes of the Typhoon, so out came a team of Boffins to have the problem conquered "in no time at all", 2 to 3 months! Our flight sergeant armorer solved the problem quite simply. He glued pieces of toilet paper to the chutes."

The only drawback in war is a tendency for the mule to bray, a sound which carries for miles, particularly at night, and most army mules had their vocal cords surgically removed to prevent an unwitting bray giving their [handlers' ] position away to the enemy.

Despite the difficulties of converting an industrial base that was not under state control into a machine that could play its part in total war, by 1916 the weapons avaliable to the British infantry were as good as anything the Germans had and in some cases, such as the Lewis light machine gun and the Lee Enfield rifle, better.

[They] could easily obtain the staple of the British soldier, fried eggs & fried potatoes. It is said that the current Belgian obsession with chips with everything stems from their enterpreneurial culinary activities during the war, although this does not their curious habit of lacing them with mayonnaise.

Put'em up, vinegar boy :-D

He marches all the way to the front, singing Tipperary and smoking his pipe, forage cap on the back of his head. Reaching the line, he is put into a filthy hole in the ground & stays there until 1918. If he survives, he is fed a tastless, meagre diet of bully beef & biscuits. Most days, if he's not being shelled or bombed, he goes over the top... never sees a general, while rats gnaw the dead bodies of his comrades.

For the war of 1914-18 we need not ask "was it in the British interest for there to be a war at all?" For clearly it was not. Britain had no territorial ambitions in Europe, nor did she have designs on any of Germany's colonies.

Nice try, Mr. Corrigan. The whole chapter turns on the possession of the North Sea coast & Channel harbours as a long-term... "interest" is the preferred British term.

A dozen pages per day while travelling through Bavaria & Czechnia...