The First World War - Page 2 - History -- Two Plus Two Poker Forums

wiper · 03-07-2011, 05:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zurvan

Now, soldiers are taught to point and shoot. No aim required. The goal is to get rounds downfield, and make the enemy stop shooting. The role of riflemen in modern warfare is to make the enemy duck; they're killed by machine guns and other heavy ordnance.

Being able to blindly squeeze a trigger while hiding is much easier, mentally, than trying to aim at a target

nah, it's not that.

you should really pick that book up, it's called "on killing: the psychological cost of learning to kill in war and society" by lt. col. dave grossman.

you may be right, this obviously isn't an area i'm familiar with. but the author talks about the great lengths our military had to go through in changing the psychological aspect of training.

face-to-face killing, especially with weapons other than guns, is soooo much harder than say, firing a .50 cal from several hundred yards...and that's easier than dropping a bomb from 30,000 feet.

that's what the book is about, how distance affects the psychology of killing. has stats/interviews/stories from every war.

good book, if that's your thing.

wiper · 03-07-2011, 05:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wamy Einehouse

Town-to-town fighting in France is an odd example from WW2. That's pretty tame by the standards of the Russian front, the Holocaust, or the conduct of the Japanese, but whatever; the trenches clearly invoke a specific type of war that we all consider extraordinarily hellish for a variety of reasons.

ha, you're right.

at this same time i'm responding here i'm also listening to my wife's phone convo upstairs and awaiting the firestorm coming on me from whatever she's talking about.

Wamy Einehouse · 03-07-2011, 05:15 PM

One of the most interesting and astonishing pictures of World War One in my humble opinion, citizens of Munich welcome war in 1914, with a young Adolf Hitler circled and inset:

fishdonkey · 03-07-2011, 07:58 PM

WW1 or WW2 more brutal? Just how brutal WW2 was depends on what you include and how hard you try to be objective. I'm pretty sure the commonly accepted figure of 60 mil casualties includes ones that go as far back as 1937 China. Wiki says 10-20 mil Chinese ww2 casualties. It seems to me that the most brutal wars in history were fought in Asia and that this may be true of ww2 time. But let's disregard Asia. I even want to disregard soldiers in combat because brutality is what they're supposed to be living. Reading about brutality towards European civilians, particularly Germans for some reason, is the only thing that has nearly brought tears to my eyes. During and after which war were the most people tortured, starved, raped and mistreated outside of combat in Europe? Has to be ww2 by far. Looking strictly at how battles were fought in western europe I understand that one could try to argue WW1 was even more brutal. By all accounts the soldiers were in hell.

**Zeno** · 03-08-2011, 01:04 AM

I highly recommend Good-bye to All That, by Robert Graves:

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Bye-All-T...9562094&sr=1-1

This is an excellent book; much of it is a first-hand account of WWI battles and soldiering, including the battle of the Somme. But it is also a great book in that it is an all inclusive look; of the pre-war conditions and up bring of an English Gentleman, then WWI, and the aftermath. This makes the book all the more interesting and telling. It is not just a cut and paste job of a few years of war - Really an autobiography that includes much about WWI. All the better for it.

-Zeno

plaaynde · 03-08-2011, 10:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wamy Einehouse

I´ve read this classical picture is a fake. Apparently they came to the conclusion, that he doesn´t fit into the picture properly.

Wamy Einehouse · 03-08-2011, 12:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by plaaynde

I´ve read this classical picture is a fake. Apparently they came to the conclusion, that he doesn´t fit into the picture properly.

Hmm still seems to be a big debate on this.

4:36 onwards in this video seems relatively convincing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPvV4WPwlyg

DonkDonkDonkDonk · 03-08-2011, 08:50 PM

Quote:

"Good-morning; good-morning!" the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
"He’s a cheery old card," grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

.

DonkDonkDonkDonk · 03-08-2011, 08:52 PM

Quote:

We’d gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,
With bombers posted, Lewis guns well placed,
And clink of shovels deepening the shallow trench.
The place was rotten with dead; green clumsy legs
High-booted, sprawled and grovelled along the saps
And trunks, face downward, in the sucking mud,
Wallowed like trodden sand-bags loosely filled;
And naked sodden buttocks, mats of hair,
Bulged, clotted heads slept in the plastering slime.
And then the rain began,—the jolly old rain!

A yawning soldier knelt against the bank,
Staring across the morning blear with fog;
He wondered when the Allemands would get busy;
And then, of course, they started with five-nines
Traversing, sure as fate, and never a dud.
Mute in the clamour of shells he watched them burst
Spouting dark earth and wire with gusts from hell,
While posturing giants dissolved in drifts of smoke.
He crouched and flinched, dizzy with galloping fear,
Sick for escape,—loathing the strangled horror
And butchered, frantic gestures of the dead.

An officer came blundering down the trench:
‘Stand-to and man the fire-step!’ On he went...
Gasping and bawling, ‘Fire-step ... counter-attack!’
Then the haze lifted. Bombing on the right
Down the old sap: machine-guns on the left;
And stumbling figures looming out in front.
‘O Christ, they’re coming at us!’ Bullets spat,
And he remembered his rifle ... rapid fire...
And started blazing wildly ... then a bang
Crumpled and spun him sideways, knocked him out
To grunt and wriggle: none heeded him; he choked
And fought the flapping veils of smothering gloom,
Lost in a blurred confusion of yells and groans...
Down, and down, and down, he sank and drowned,
Bleeding to death. The counter-attack had failed.

.

I

Sassoon.

ctyri · 03-10-2011, 11:48 AM

I am fascinated by WWI... have been hoping for a "Saving Private Ryan" style epic about the Great War to no avail.

smrk · 03-10-2011, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ctyri

I am fascinated by WWI... have been hoping for a "Saving Private Ryan" style epic about the Great War to no avail.

Legends of the Fall, lol

smrk · 03-10-2011, 06:44 PM

My favorite Owen poem is not a WW1 poem (Shadwell Stair) and my favorite WW1 poem is not an Owen poem:

An Irish Airman Foresees His Death - W.B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.

loK2thabrain · 03-11-2011, 06:24 AM

If anyone is interested in a solid fiction novel set during WW1, I highly recommend The First Casualty, written by Ben Elton.

Hope this thread takes off. I don't have anything to add at this point beyond the book recommendation but hopefully can contribute something of substance down the road.

chezlaw · 03-11-2011, 06:13 PM

All Quiet on the Western Front http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Qui..._Western_Front

Probably not enopugh made up fantasy for the saving private Ryan fans but a genuine WW1 epic.

Gullanian · 03-16-2011, 11:43 AM

In regards to aiming at people, I read a psychological study which found that soldiers initially would aim above their targets naturally, not really wanting to kill them. It took a lot of adjustment in training to make people actually shoot to hit.

Also that suicide poem is beautifully written, thanks for sharing it.