Your Future Leader

[fapoleon-bonerparte]

David Fertig - Bonaparte, at the Saint-Bernard Pass, Crossing the Alps (2014)

[waldopeircegoestowar]

                                                  Le Salut au pinard !                          

Pinard (French slang for wine) – brought up to the front on a narrow gauge railway.

“The Ambulance man is death on prohibitions — of any sort— but particularly of beer and wine. It disquiets him to think that the Statue of Liberty, which he left holding high the torch of freedom, now extends toward him, a member of the magnificent army of Liberty, a “Liquor Verboten” decree.”

 AFS Bulletins, numbers 85-86.

Photo: Wine and Warfare

[julesfelden]

Just Austrian officer dudes bein’ dudes.

From the Fliegende Blätter, unfortunately I don’t know which issue.

[nemfrog]

Three. The book of the cat. 1903.

[thunderstruck9]

Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid (Russian, b. 1943 & b.1945), The Red Flag (from Nostalgic Socialist Realism series), 1983. Oil and tempera on canvas, 96 x 80 in.

[somuchcolour]

My part of the cat exchange with @quercusrubra! (which should be an actual thing imo) 

It’s a pattern! Which is supposed to be inspired by kokhlama patterns but I may have failed. 

[leguillemet]

Oh my god this is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

[millefeuilleus]

General Daendels Taking Leave of Lieutenant-Colonel Krayenhoff

by Adriaan de Lelie and Egbert van Drielst, 1795, detail.

[peashooter85]

Ship’s cat walking along the guns of the HMS Elizabeth, 1915, World War I.

[retrowar]

More metal, more weapons

[voicesoftherevolution]

Found in the archives:

a cat’s perspective

[x]

[peashooter85]

The Drunken Bolsheviks and the Greatest Hangover in History,

On October 25th, 1917 Bolshevik soldiers and sailors stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, former home of the Russian Czars.  Among the wealth and grandeur of the palace, the revolutionaries stumbled upon perhaps the greatest treasure of the Romanov Dynasty; Nicholas II’s personal wine cellar, which housed the largest collection of fine wines, liquors, and cordials in the world.

Having thousands of heavily armed men and civilians in the proximity of the largest cache of booze on the planet was certainly a big problem for Bolshevik officers and politicians.  Already Bolshevik soldiers were carting out kegs and bottles, beginning a Bolshevik boozing spree that would quickly get out of hand.  At first Bolshevik leaders considered blasting the cellars with high explosives, however it was feared that this would severely damage the palace.  Finally Bolshevik leaders ordered the cellars be barricaded and placed under heavy guard while the booze was disposed of.  At first the booze was hauled out in crates to be dumped, however convoys tasked with this duty were ambushed by drunken soldiers and civilians. Finally it was decided to simply pour the booze down the drain.  This plan failed when people by the thousands gathered around the palace drains with buckets.

Finally, the large drunken Bolshevik mob stormed the Winter Palace a second time, easily overwhelming the guards and overrunning the cellar.  Immediately, St. Petersburg erupted into an orgy of drunken rioting and looting.  Boozed up Bolsheviks began fighting or having sex in streets. Rape and murder was common, so were brawls and shootouts among heavily armed soldiers. Many people were killed by stray bullets as soldiers fired their weapons into the air in celebration.  Martial law was declared and a Bolshevik army was dispatched to gain control over this situation.  However, this did little as many of the oncoming soldiers joined in on the fun. After about a month of alcohol induced chaos, the booze ran out, and order was restored in St. Petersburg.  The resulting hangover must have been terrible.

[kirascuro-deactivated20241231]

The Deluge, John Martin - oil on canvas (1834)

[peashooter85]

Greek resistance fighters, World War II.

[nemfrog]

Drawing, Landscape at woods, June 1870; Frederic Edwin Church (American, 1826–1900)

[syuminiki-deactivated20201111]

Napoleonic Soldiers by Henri Georges Jacques Chartier

[the-female-soldier]

Klavdiya Kalugina was one of the youngest Soviet snipers who fought during the Second World War.

Born in 1926, Kalugina was 15 years old when Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, at which time she was working in a munitions factory. Shortly after the invasion she joined the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) and in 1943 she was accepted into a Komsomol sniper school. Although she initially struggled with the training, Kalugina credited her graduation from the school to the patience of her squad commander.

Kalugina was sent to the front lines in March, 1944, where she joined the 3rd Belorussian Front. Aged 17, she operated in a sniper-spotter team with a girl who she had trained with, Marusia Chikhvintseva. Her usual weapon was a Mosin-Nagant rifle with a PU scope, with which she engaged enemies at distances from as close as 200 metres to as far as 1200. She described her objective as eliminating key targets such as enemy commanders and machine gun emplacements, making one shot per day from a heavily camouflaged position and then returning to base at night.

Kalugina survived the war, although her partner, Chikhvintseva, did not. There is no account of her life following the end of the war.

An interview with Kalugina describing her experiences of her wartime experiences in detail can be read here.

[john-marshall]

reblog if you’re a gossip who teases the dead