Meet Grindr

It Needs To Be Said Aloud

Because it's nothing to do with gay dating and rather more with meaty grinding WASH YOUR FILTHY MINDS OUT as in 'Meat Grinder', which I cannot prevent my mind from rhyming with 'Eando Binder'.  Who was a pulp sci-fi author way back a century ago or something.  Art!

     I don't recognise any of these authors apart from Eando.  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi and all that.

     ANYWAY as you may be aware Conrad is busy reading Pritt Buttar's work about the Rzhev Salient, a long tentacle of Soviet territory that the Teutons occupied from 1941 onwards, which is also - you may be ahead of me here - called 'Meat Grinder', thanks to the incessant bloody battles fought over it.  Art!

     Not only that, I have been reading Omer Bartov's 'Hitler's Army' whilst at home, even though it's my official 'Bus Book' that I take to peruse on public transport.  Art!

     It's the second chapter of this work that I want to concentrate on today, since it goes into detail about the Teuton losses during and after Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Sinister Union as of June22nd 1941.  Ol' Barty was dismantling the myth of Teuton cohesion being their bedrock in staving off the Bolshevik hordes; as he shows, their casualties were so high that there was no such cohesion to be found.  He details the travails of three Teuton units: the 18th Panzer Division, the 12th Infantry Division and the 'Gross Deutchland' Regiment.  So we will follow and explicate about these.  Bear in mind that both Nazi Germany and the Sinister Union were autocratic dictatorships where the serfs on the lowest ladder-rung had absolutely no say in what happened or how or why.  Also that the Sinister's population was about 80 million more than Herr Schickelgruber's wretched Reich, a factor that came into play more and more over time.  Art!

18th Panzer Table of Organisation and Equipment:
Reconnaissance battalion, Panzer regiment, Grenadier regiment, artillery regiment, anti-tank battalion and engineers

     18th Panzer began Op Barby with 218 tanks: 6 x Pz.I; 50 x Pz. II; 114 x Pz. III; 36 Pz. IV; 12 x Command Panzers.  Note that the Pz I and II were totally obsolete by this point.  In terms of manpower, the division had 17,174 men and 401 officers.  Art!

Divisional symbol

     The division hit strong Sinister resistance and three weeks later had lost 100 tanks, 2,300 men and 123 officers.  The Division's Infantry Brigade of five full-strength battalions was reduced from 3,000 men to 600.  The divisional motorcycle battalion was reduced to half-strength, illustrating how vulnerable this type of formation was against anything but a routed enemy.  By the end of July the losses totalled 3,200 men and 153 officers.  This is worse than it sounds because these losses were concentrated in the rifle units, whereas the service units to the rear remained unscathed - temporarily.  Art!

Teuton tanks encounter October mud

     By the end of October, 4 months after the invasion began, 18th Panzer was down to 9,323 men and 239 officers.  The rifle regiment was reduced to 814 men and 12 officers.  Senior commanders bewailed the loss of experienced soldiers and officers and noted that their replacements lacked training, experience and any esprit de corps.  This is 'Bewegungskrieg'* coming back to bite them on the posterior; prior to Op Barby, Teuton campaigns had suffered heavy casualties - but only for a short duration, weeks at the most, meaning the overall toll was quite modest.  Art!

     18th Panzer was fortunate enough to be assigned lots of replacements over the winter of 1941 - 1942, except the incessant Sinister attacks continually wore them down: in January and February of 1942 they lost 6,667 men and 120 officers and by end March these losses had risen to 9,148 men and 323 officers.  Again, any reinforcements who arrived were simply thrown straight into combat; officers were not allowed or able to get to know their units or neighbours or the ground to be fought over.  There was no opportunity for units to become 'acclimatised' on quiet sectors of the front line as there were no such places.  Art!

     Ol' Barty doesn't cover the other side of the coin; Sinister losses, so I shall a couple of totals here from Prit's work.  Across the timeframe of 18th Panzer Division, the Sinister armies in that front had lost about 770,000 men, a staggering total that is over twice that of the Teutons across that same front - 330,000 men.  Losing a third of a million men is not how you win wars, gentle reader.

     Back to 18th Panzer.  By the summer of 1942 it had been starved of replacements and was a 'division' in name only, being composed of a motorcycle and three infantry battalions, 3,200 men at most.  Hit hard by the Sinisters in July, it lost 1,363 men and 43 officers.  Art!

     It's swan-song came at the Battle of Kursk in July of 1943, where it went into action with 69 tanks, 30 of them the now-obsolete Pz III, and was ground to powder in the ferocious battles for the village of Ponyri.  After that it was disbanded.  An ignominous end and example of hubris on a Continental scale, where overarching ambition met cold reality and was found wanting.

     Hmmm haven't even touched on the other two units.  Maybe tomorrow.  I bet you can hardly wait.

      

Read 'Em And Seep, Ruffians

You may not be aware that the orcs love them some cucumber, so the recent massive hike in prices that makes them cost the same as steak has been very unwelcome, to say the least.  Of course - obviously! - none of them dare voice their complaints as to why, exactly, this has come about, because 10 years in a gulag.  Art!

     That lot would set the orcs back a week's wages.  Art!

Comes with secure combination lock

'Zomvivor'

I thought I'd share my Comments on this most excellent Thai zombie serial, which has just finished Season One with a cliffhanger.  Will there be a Season Two?  Conrad hopes so.  Art!

     As I've mentioned earlier, these university student survivors are clever; they hide, obtain weapons, study the zombies and one even makes notes with a pen in a notebook, an excellent resource when phones are liable to run out of charge.

     One of the perils they have to cope with is the zombies re-enacting their daily routines, meaning undead students and staff are now roaming the campus grounds.  No, the army has not tried to sweep the area clear - doubtless for sinister conspiratorial reasons.  Art!

     This shambling undead corpse is 'Auntie Jit', one of the janitorial staff and incidentally one of the first 10 'Patient Zeroes' whom turn zombie in the first place.  Our heroes are going to try to ambush and restrain her.

     That's Ning, the medical student, exhibiting one of the rare examples of Typical Zombie Narrative Stupidity, yet being restrained by another survivor not stupid enough to believe loveable old Auntie Jit is anything but an anthropophagous ghoul**.  More to come!

Here's A Question

     NO!

     Next.

One From 'Cape Canaveral Space Force Museum'

Conrad's had this down as a Subscription for ages but, what with the pressure of blogging and working and eating and walking Edna, I've not had a nosy for possibly a year or so, until this came up as a suggestion on Youtube.  Art!

     For what it's worth, that looks like an F-100 Super Sabre, and a painted rendition of one of the Pacific hydrogen-bomb test shots.  So, after 1954 and before 1971, which is how long the F-100 was in service.  The AFSWC was based at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico until it got re-named the 'Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center', which is a little less coy.  Art!

     You'll be familiar with the acronym NASA.  'KSC' stands for 'Kennedy Space Centre', and the rocket-ship here is one of those inspired by Werner Von Braun.  Art!

KSC

*  'Manoeuvre Warfare' as the Teutons absolutely did NOT call it 'Blitzkrieg'

**  She eats people.