BAD WAR

A military history tumblr. I place special emphasis on the Eastern Front of WWII, the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Europe in the 17th Century, the Mongols and Tatars, as well as military engineering throughout the ages.

[amightydirge]

My personal is @sapper-in-the-wire. Fuck the troops, ACAB, dismantle imperialism, fuck off TERFs. I am a SHM/NDE engineer and historian, and grad student. 29.

[antoniettabrandeisova]

“Portrait of Princess Marthe-Lucile Bibesco” c. 1911. Giovanni Boldini

[sonnearchive-deactivated2022120]

Hate it when you're wearing "military-esque" clothing like camo pants or combat boots and some old vet asks you if you're from a military family like fuck off papa war crimes I'm appropriating your culture here.

[sapper-in-the-wire-old]

When I’m wearing military aesthetic this is what I mean:

[redroadtoadventure]

[sapper-in-the-wire-old]

[redlipstickresurrected]

Hu Jundi aka Hu Jun Di aka Hu Yong aka 胡峻涤 (Chinese, b. 1962, Juilin Province, China) - The Story of a Girl and a Crane, Paintings: Oil on Canvas

[amightydirge]

Political Cartoon of Adolf Hitler and Pierre Laval, by Dr. Seuss. Pierre Laval was a French Politician, first gaining power near the end of WWI. His career would be marked by appeasement to, and collaboration with, the Axis powers, both before and during WWII. In the failed Hoare-Laval Pact, Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) was handed over to the Italian fascists. Fortunately, both the British and French governments worked to stop the Pact from being signed in, ultimately killing it. However, when the French were defeated and the Vichy Regime created, Laval wormed his way in as the 2nd in command of the new Regime. Laval was very cooperative with Berlin, using forced conscription to send French citizens to Germany as laborers, and directly allowing the Germans to export French Jews to concentration camps in the East. After the war, Laval tried to escape along with other Vichy officials, eventually fleeing to Fascist Spain. Despite the informal alliance between Spain and the Axis powers during WWII, the Spanish Dictator Francisco Franco arrested Laval and his companions, then handed them over to the victorious Allied powers. Laval was tried for war crimes and treason, and was sentenced to death. On October 15th, 1945, Laval was executed by the firing squad.

[uss-edsall]

You’ve pulled a man from the freezing sea all black with ship’s oil fuel You’ve cleaned him off, and see his wounds and wondered what to do, You see the whiteness of his ribs where steam has skinned him too. The guilt you feel when you look at him feeling glad it isn’t you And all you have to ease his pain is aspirin and ‘goo.’ You fear to look him in the eye for the question you know will be there The answer you know is certain death, and there’s nothing more you can do. You light him a fag, and give him your tot as he looks for the rest of his crew. Then you lay him out on the iron deck knowing that’s his lot Briefly wondering if you did aright by giving him your tot. For the rest of the watch, with a sail maker’s palm with needle and with thread You sew him up in canvas with the rest of that night’s dead. With a dummy shell between their feet, making certain that they will sink You sit and sew till the morning’s glow, amid the mess and stink. By dawn’s grey light you carry them aft, to the ensign and the plank. And the hands off watch gather round all bleary eyed and dank. Then the skipper with his bible says a sailor’s prayer Our father which art in heaven (we hope you’re really there). One by one the dead are gone slid from the greasy plank A second’s pause and then a splash, they sink beneath the main. The hands go forward, feeling chill, thinking of those that were slain with a certain knowledge in a while we’ll do it all again. Each one being still alive, breathes a silent prayer of thanks Wondering, with a cold dark fear, will I be next on the plank?

“The Ensign And The Plank”, by Petty Officer Stanley Kirbey (via uss-edsall)

[thegayreich]

WWII Gay G.I.s recounts tale of losing their Lovers

Excerpt from the book Coming out under fire The history of gay Men and Women in World War Two: Combat soldiers often responded to each other’s personal losses with the deepest respect and understanding, allowing gay GIs to express openly their grief over the death of boyfriends or lovers. 

Jim Warren’s boyfriend was hit while trying to knock out a machine-gun nest on Saipan. “They brought him back,” Warren recalled, “and he was at the point of death. He was bleeding. He had been hit about three or four times. I stood there and he looked up at me and I looked down at him and he said, ‘Well, Jim, we didn’t make it, did we.’ And tears were just rolling down my cheeks. I don’t know when I’ve ever felt such a lump and such a waste. And he kind of gave me a boyish crooked grin and just said, ‘Well, maybe next time.’ And I said, ‘I’m going to miss you. And I’ll see your mother.’ There were people standing around, maybe seven or eight people standing there, and I was there touching his hand and we were talking. Somebody said later, ‘You were pretty good friends,’ because I had been openly crying and most people don’t do this. I said, ‘Yes, we were quite good friends.’ And nobody ever said anything. I guess as long as I supposedly upheld my end of the bargain, everything was all right.”

Ben Small was even less able to control himself when his boyfriend was killed in the Philippines. But he, too, was surprised by the other men’s compassion towards him. “We had a funny freak attack of a Japanese kamikaze plane,” he recalled, “and I guess he was getting rid of his last load of these baby cutter bomb, these little bombs that explode at about three feet high so if they went off through a tent they exploded at bed level. I had just been in the tent of a guy I had been going with at the time. He crawled into bed, and I said goodnight and walked out the tent. And this plane came overhead and all we heard was explosions and we fell to the ground. When I got up too see if he was all right, the trust of the bomb had gone through his tent and he was not there. I went into a three-day period of hysterics. I was treated with such kindness by the guys that I worked with, who were all totally aware of why I had gone hysterical. It wasn’t because we were bombed. It was because my boyfriend had been killed. And one guy in the tent came up to me and said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were gay? You could have talked to me.’ I said, ‘Well, I was afraid to.’ This big straight, macho guy. There was a sort of compassion then.”

After a raid in the Philippines, Ben Small remembered, a lieutenant who had been injured was being shipped back to the States, so the men “all went to the plane to see him off that night. It was an amazingly touching moment, when he and his lover said goodbye, because they embraced and kissed in front of all these straight guys and everyone dealt with it so well. I think it was just this basic thing about separation of someone you cared for, regardless of sex.” Small described this tender parting as “a little distilled moment out of time” when men’s “prejudices were suspended” and gay soldiers “could be a part of what this meant.”

[amightydirge]

The mountain sheep are sweeter, But the valley sheep are fatter; We therefore deemed it meeter To carry off the latter. We made an expedition; We met a host, and quelled it; We forced a strong position, And killed the men who held it.

Beginning of the War-song of Dinas Vawr, by Thomas Love Peacock.

[amightydirge]

Who could doubt that such goodness, friendship and charity come from God? Men whose parents, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, had died in agony at our hands, whose lands we took, whom we drove naked from their homes, revived us with their own food when we were dying of hunger and showered us with kindness even when we were in their power.

Oliverus Scholasticus, commenting on Sultan Al-Kamil’s treatment of a defeated Frankish Crusader army. Islamic law laid down by Prophet Muhammad required that captured prisoners be given food and clothing. Cited from Justice Without Frontiers: Furthering Human Rights, by C. Weeramantry.

[amightydirge]

A tough illiterate Manchu, Su Yuanchun was one of the last great warrior Manchus. He gained merit in the field and made it from a simple soldier to a distinguished general. Quite a feat in a time when the Qing fought battles against modern firearms with sabers, spears, bows, arrows and matchlock muskets. He commanded a force against the French at the battle of Zhennan Pass, which despite the technological advantage of the French was won by the Chinese side. Su Yuanchun became a friend of consul Francois Auguste who was one of the first to ever make films of what he saw in China.

Fe Doro

[amightydirge]

Byzantine Military Saint. Fresco located in the Chora Church. 

[amightydirge]

N. But. Nurse Natasha.

[amightydirge]

There are seasons of our lives when nothing seems to be happening, when no smoke betrays a burned town or homestead and few tears are shed for the newly dead. I have learned not to trust those times, because if the world is at peace then it means someone is planning war.

Bernard Cornwell, Death of Kings

[amightydirge]

Pictured is an AMX-10 RC, an amphibious six-wheeled armored car armed with a 105mm gun. Produced and used by France.

Du 13 au 18 juin 2013, environ 150 militaires de la force Serval ont mené l’opération Sirius dans la région de l’Adrar. Cette opération a permis de reconnaître différents secteurs au Sud de Tessalit. 

http://www.defense.gouv.fr/operations/actualites/mali-operation-sirius Crédit : EMA / armée de Terre

[amightydirge]

Armor Garniture, Probably of King Henry VIII of England (reigned 1509–47)

This is the earliest dated armor from the royal workshops at Greenwich, which were established in 1515 by Henry VIII (reigned 1509–47) to produce armors for himself and his court. It is also the earliest surviving Greenwich garniture, an armor made with a series of exchange and reinforcing pieces by which it could be adapted for use in battle and in different forms of the tournament. Furthermore, the overall etching and gilding place it among the most richly decorated of all Greenwich armors. The design of the decoration is attributed to the German-born Swiss artist Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543), who worked at the English court from 1526 to 1528.

The surviving exchange elements of this armor are a reinforcing breastplate with lance rest for use in the field or in the mounted tournament with lances; a left-hand gauntlet reinforce, or manifer, also used in the tournament with lances; and a right-hand locking gauntlet for the mounted tournament with swords.

A highly unusual and innovative feature is the ventral plate, which was worn strapped to the chest beneath the breastplate in order to lessen the weight supported from the shoulders. A ventral plate is found on only one other armor, made in Greenwich in 1540 for Henry VIII.

This armor is believed to have been made for Henry VIII and presented by him to the French ambassador François de La Tour d’Auvergne, viscount of Turenne, who led a diplomatic mission to London in 1527. After the viscount’s death in 1532, the armor presumably passed to his friend Galiot de Genouilhac, grand master of artillery and grand ecuyer (master of the horse) of France, from whose descendants it came to The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

[amightydirge]

A Soviet sniper with her Mosin-Nagant 91/30. The rifle is equipped with a 3.5x PU scope.

[amightydirge]

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

- Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (via amightydirge)