Dimitri > Recent Status Updates

Gneisenau whithered at the Oise thanks partly to a French counterattack with 163 tanks. in the East, a 5th of the German forces participated in the drive for strategic materials such as Finnish nickel (they helped keep Helsinki white) Manganese from the Caucasus and Baku oil, though the Ukrainian breadbasket only ever fed the occupation army.

By June, hurried preparations & enemy intelligence (shorter spring nights meant less concealment) wrote the law of diminishing returns, & the first wave of Spanish influenza voiding whatever reliable manpower calculations existed for Germany. The post-Michael offensives couldn't benefit from Russian transfers. Past March the Eastern Front dwarfed all other commitments, to protect the imperium won by Brest-Litovsk.

The famous mines gained the crest, but the creeping was slower than the infantry. It pulled back, looking to observers as a German counterattack. Next, the creeping pulled backward too much; casualties mounted from friendly fire, plus Jerry guns who'd retreated at the last minute before detonation. Regarding these intreprid German cannoneers, the 4th Australian Division, fresh off Bullecourt, took no prisoners...

Expressed in numbers rather than qualitative improvements, "Messines had 300 planes , 756 heavies & 1510 field guns, for an overall 2:1 superiority in artillery. The period from 21 to 31 May saw a wire-cutting barrage, answered by heavy German counter-fire."
[note to Prior: how important was the focus on wire vs. anti-battery? How many spotter planes vs. anti-Jagdstaffeln ? Throw some numbers THAT way. ]

Messines reaped the rewards from Arras' excellent artillery planning w/ multiple barrages 500 yard deep total + long-range suppressing fire from Vickers heavy MG & all-new spotting techniques for counter-battery fire, which became a priority. W/ Better calculations than Somme of ammo & heavy guns per yard frontage & per enemy gun, but once moved forward these calculations had to start over & became a guessing game.

"Fears that the new 303 ammo was less effective against charging fanatics than its 457 predecessor led to secret tests during the Chitral operations. Captured mullahs were executed by firing squads using the two types of bullet and comparative post mortems were then undertaken. "

High hopes for Peter Hopkirk's Great Game books! "An unpublicised but vital aspect of the Great Game was systematic esponiage by native agents scattered between the Caspian and the Chinese frontier. Many details were not realized until this decade (1990s)"

Haig was vacilitating, but towards the big goal of bursting the salient and the coast. Hubert Gough was brought to Ypres to instill a breakthrough spirit (Robin Neillands also identifies him as a "thruster" - but out of his league commanding an Army)

Rawlingson wanted to capture Messines first (the mines were ready), move all his heavy guns forward in 72 hours to tackle Gheluvelt etc. Haig ended up discarding all proposals & after the failiure at Chemin des Dames, split off Messines, with any follow-up operation postponed to weeks later. Why the wait?

All in all, Rawlingson had come up with the only good plan: Plumer's alternative was to advance towards Passchendaele by careful stages, with an artillery weight which would require more guns than Britain had in the entire west! The think tank at Haig's own HQ wanted to take Pilckem and Messines Ridge with guns and take Gheluvelt only with tanks ; in a wooded, swampy terrain this would've constituted suicide.

#2 "Millions of casualties"becomes a game of numbers and percentages in the hands of the accuser. Usually wounded, sick & civilians are thrown in with the Killed in Action. Officially, the British Army in all theatres lost 900.000 soldiers , with another 1.5 million wounded survivors.

Neillands tackles the 60's myths right out of the gate #1 the majority of the 'château generals' didn't hail from a cavalry background, that arm didn't become the dominant path to a career until 1900. Engineers & artillery had been the Petri dish of the Victorian army whose career officers served as generals in 1914. 224 'impervious' brigade commanders or higher would fall during the war.

"Always a practical warrior, Coucy was one of the few to concern himself with the nature & whereabouts of the enemy in the Nicopolis campaign. the siege of Mahdia had not altered the general contempt for the Saracen foe. As one whose life had been singularly fortunate, Coucy wasn't conditioned for so much misfortune. Perhaps he recognized in Nicopolis' profound failure of knighthood [his own] time to die."

The concept of the immaticulate conception was a modern, absurd contention between Avignon , defened by the great monkish scolar Jean Garson at the University of Paris, and the original papacy in Rome. Yet while the democratisation of chivalry to officials & merchants was morally deplored, few who professed disbelief during life took chances with faith when they neared the end.

In reality, every age is a checkerboard of light & dark:

"Coucy was right in his perception of diminishing prestige, even if his suggested remedy was only to make matters worse. The Guelders campaign of 1388 proved that SNAFU was a military condition long before the word: straight into the wet & mud of the Ardennes. The credit of the Uncles (duke of Burgundy etc.) reigning on behalf of the mad Charles VI ran out"

"Reconnoitering terrain in advance was not part of medieval warfare because it was not part of tournaments. the clash was everything" . [?]

Coucy's gift, unusual for his time, was recognition of realities... [in a similar fashion] Out of the heap of ruins after Poitiers, Charles had learned the discipline of adjusting ambitions to possibilities; his son's reign was to be spent unlearning that as fast as possible."

"A few years later, the papal shism brought Wycliffe to the turning point that led to protestantism ( clergy was ruled non-necessary, in favour of a personal interpretation of the Bible in one's own language). Richard II showed the aristocracy's true colours to the rebellious peasants: "Villeins ye are and veilleins ye shall remain !"

In an era without guns or tear gas, mobs inspired immediate terror.. what had happened in the last 30 years as a result of plague, war, oppression & incompetence was a weakened acceptance of the system, a mistrust of government, an awakening sense that authority could be challenged, that change was in fact possible. the King, like the Tsar, remained the illusory saviour from the misconduct of his nobles.

"If commanders of the Great War had enjoyed the use of battlefield radios or walkie-talkies, casualties in their actions might well have been halved. behind the front line the communication network worked after a fashion, but for much of the war was frequently unreliable and always slow. At the sharp end, the situation was much worse. beyond those trenches, there was no reliable means of communication at all."

"Aside from Charles V, most rulers governed by impulse in the 14th century (when declaring taxes void); their assumptions of full feudalism were also behind the times. While France smoldered, true revolt erupted in June 1381 in England, not of the urban class (like Paris under Etienne Marcel in 1356) but of the peasants. In a time whose economy was largely rural, they were the working class that mattered."

"Scorched at last after 30 years of compulsive plotting, Charles of Navarre was left to live out a destitute & friendless decade in his mountain kingdom so much too narrow for his soul. So might Satan have been penned in a sheepfold."

Two ultra-lavish diners endlessly recycled in popular history books #2:

"At a banquet given in Coucy's time by a certain Vidame de Chartres, the ceiling painted like the sky opened to allow the diner to descend on machines resembling clouds which raised the dishes again when they had been emptied. An artificial storm lasting half an hour accompanied dessert, dropping a rain of scented water & a hail of sweetmeats."

Two ultra-lavish diners endlessly recycled in popular history books #1:
"On a previous visit by the Emperor to the Count of Savoy in 1365, mounted nobles had served platters of food poised on the ends of lances, especially fitted with brackets for the purpose. Whatever its moral limitations, chivalry required a strong wrist"

"Poets & writers served frequently as ambassador because their rhetorical power cobferred distinction on the elaborate speech required on this occassion" [Geoffrey Chaucer is an example]

1375: Coucy's experience of mercenaries in Lombardy was enough to teach him the dangers & undependability of such a Pied Pieper command over 25 Great Companies, even tough it promised him extraordinary aid towards his own purpose against the Habsburgs. He agreed to undertake the great riddance, together with Teutonic crusaders and thousands of restless swords in winter hoods, the 'Engländer' of the Güglerkrieg.

"In short, the British did not establish a parachute force before 1940 because there was no perceived need, as the technique offered no real advantage over the conventional airlift of troops, supplies, or casualties, as first demonstrated at Amara 1915 & interwar colonial campaigns."

"the process conjures up the mental image of locks on some great iron-bound chest, the tumblers of each lock turning one after another to unleash the full force of total war" [...] If one man is to be blamed for bringing that war about, however, then that man is Kaiser Wilhelm II"

The Germans may have created for themselves with Blücher-York a sack from which they could retreat nor advance...unless they could take Reims to supply it, 40 miles from Paris, which stiffening resistance made impossible by June. The US 3rd & 2nd Division proved their mettle at Chateau-Thierry (31/5) & Belleau Wood (6/6). Panic Plan Z considered: the evacuation of the BEF & abandonment of the Channel ports.

In short, Mission creep set in in Ludendorff's mind, widening and changing objectives until there was no end in sight: Reims, the Marne and beyond...

For all its dominance there was never a time when the Church was not resisted somewhere by dissent. Most of all people minded the unfitness of priests and their meaningless Latin doggerel. Being Underpaid led to the necessity of selling his services, the body of Christ, daily for a penny. "charity was once found in a friars frock... but now Avarice keeps the key" .