French Warfare

In This Intro We Are Not Going Into The Blood And Thunder

Rather the mud and <thinks> wonder? of the Ockers in France as of November 1916, derived from their Official History of the First Unpleasantness.  I did mention this in a previous blog, where the Australian General White looked at the chaotic and ineffective operations in support of their front lines and thus took a verrrry systematic and analytical approach to provide solutions.  Art!

     You may not recognise it, but this is the village of Flers.  Or what was left of it by the end of 1916.  By mid-November 1916 fighting along this front had died down thanks to the horrendous weather conditions, not to mention the general exhaustion of both armies.  General White thus laid down a scheme of works that were to be carried out in order to better befit his troops to sustain and endure.    Art!

There Would Be Camps: O boy would there be camps!  White did not want his men suffering by bedding dpwn in squalid fields of mud, which happened all too often.  Instead, each of the two front-line divisions would prepare hutments - jargon for a whole lot of huts - for two of their three brigades, or 2 x 5,000 men, whilst the 3rd brigade was in the front lines.  These would be situated behind a crest line, meaning they were out of sight of Teuton artillery observers.  Art!

     In case you were wondering and even if you weren't, the other 2 Ocker divisions would be in reserve or training, miles behind the front lines, thus out of harm's way.

Front Line Trenches:There were to be 3 lines dug, on the forward slope of crest lines, which made them vulnerable to Teuton shelling but which allowed them to control, by fire, the ground in front of them.  Deep dugouts were to be excavated in these trenches, all the better to protect from Hun shelling.  Art!

Railway Sidings: That sketch map above shows the broad-gauge and Decauville narrow-gauge railways that supplied the Australians in the front lines.  Under General White's scheme, sidings would be created to drop off supplies en route, where brigade transport could pick them up.  Running engines to the end of a rail line was risky, as the Teutons would shell places like Bernafay, since they could see the steam produced by locomotives, if not the engines themselves.

Water: Ironically the supply that fell from the heavens was not a reliable source, so it had to be piped in and stored.  Not just for men, draught animals needed a great deal of water, too.  Wells were to be sunk locally to provide extra potable water.  Art!

Bathing & Drying Facilities: Essential for hygiene and morale.  It's not clear if the British model was adopted, where soldiers ditched their old uniforms before hot showers and were given a brand new set after drying off.  The old uniforms were then de-loused with steam, washed and re-issued.

Trench Stores: You might think of these as 'consumables' that were left in the trenches when a unit rotated out, rather than taking them away.  White planned to have sufficient of them to hand so no formation ran short.  Items like barbed wire (which would have been a literal pain to transport away!), piquets, pit props, shovels, corrugated iron, emergency rockets, telephone wire, sandbags,  duckboards and revetting materials, all those sorts of things.  Art!

Trench stores in use.  Note the periscope being used.

Burying Cable Lines: One of the most unglamourous chores imaginable, yet so important.  Telephone lines, you see, were vital for communication yet were very vulnerable to damage.  Major Fraser-Titler, in 'Field Guns In France', stated flatly that any phone lines laid out at night or in the early morning would be irreparably severed by 11 a.m. usually thanks to Teuton artillery.  Blundering vehicles or horses were also liable to sever them accidentally unless they were raised off the ground.  The answer was to bury the wires in a narrow trench, six feet deep, then back-fill it.  This would proof it against anything but the very heaviest shell.

Home Comforts: by late November 65,000 sheepskin jackets had arrived for the Ocker troops, along with leather waistcoats, fur jerkins and worsted gloves, all essential for surviving winter weather out in a cold, wet, muddy front line trench.  Art!

     Also provided en masse were thigh-boots, as normal Wellington boots weren't sufficiently high to keep the mud out and would often be left behind when the wearer moved forward.  For front line cooking or making billies of tea, 'Tommy Cookers' were provided, which burned solidified alcohol - which burned without producing smoke, thus not giving away the brewer's location.

     Now that we are well into autumn, Conrad's jaundiced and cynical eye turns to the fields and trenches of another conflict, that of Ukraine versus Mordorvia.  The Ukrainians look after their people; how many of the actions described above are the orcs commanders and generals going to carry out for them?

Fellow Nerd Found

As you may have gathered, Conrad can be a bit of an obsessive bore when it comes to the film 'Forbidden Planet' and I keep readers in line by threatening them with my 5,000 word monograph on it's influence.  Art!

     I found a vlogger who is even sadder/better/more awesome <delete where applicable> than I am, and whom did a vlog about the Krell, the vanished super-civilisation of Altair IV.  Art!

     He, or she, or it - no judgements here - made the point that, given they were a spacefaring civilisation, it's highly likely that various spaceships survived the Night Of Apocalytic Ending that finished off the planetside Krell.

     Yes, replied Conrad, in my best hair-splitting style.  Maybe so, but said survivors would have been a mere fraction of a percent of the Krell population, far too small in numbers to survive any length of time, let alone 200,000 years, nor leave any evidence of their existence.  Or, if they landed on Altair IV, inadvertently utilising the powers of The Great Machine and destroying each other.

     Doubtless this debate will rumble on, as it has for the past 70 years.  Thus we may come back to it.  I bet you can hardly wait.  Art!

Kross Krell

Tanks For The Memories

Here's one we've covered previously in the pages of 'The War Illustrated' where the focus was on the Far East and a whole page showed a Valentine Bridge-Laying tank in action.  Art!

     I like to have a few bystanders in frame to give an idea of scale.  Here is the VBLT in folded form, and I'll prod Art into finding an illo of it unfolded.  Art!

     That's the bridge being unfolded.  If need be the VLBT could recover it afterwards, which seems a bit odd - how do your tanks get back over the river you have just removed the bridge from?  Art!

     Say hello to one of the most numerous armoured vehicles ever made; although the sign says 'Universal Carrier' it's universally known as a 'Bren Gun Carrier'.  It was produced in vast quantities, to the tune of 100,000 and served everywhere British and Commonwealth forces went, numbers being sent to the ingrate Sinisters as well.  The Teutons loved the bones out of them and used any they captured until irreparable breakdown.  Think of it as a two-ton Jeep on tracks.  Art!

Gosh!

Your Humble Scribe idly clicked on a news item on the BBC's News webpage, and found this.  Art!

     This is 'The Crescent' in Salford, which I've been in a few times for a pint after work when I worked at Connexions.  It closed it's doors in 2017 and has been derelict ever since.  Conrad remembers it being a bit shabby but it had a good selection of real ales.  It's alleged that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were amongst it's patrons back in the day.