Thursday, December 20, 2007

Copper Che-Ode' 2 Violet Valiant Platoon Parade: Bad Company

{MoonHawkLake ~ DevilsCanalPaw}
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Screaming Eagle Ode'aw

KUBAN RIVER SECRETS

"HEAVEN SAVE ME FROM THE (RUSSIAN) ROMANTICS OF THIS WORLD!"
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In the New York daily P.M., a cartoonist portrayed Hitler and the Emperor Hirohito, united for peace, chortling, "You declare war on me, I declare war on you, and we both go to San Francisco."
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For reasons unknown, the musicians were rendering not The Star Spangled Banner, but Lover, Come Back to Me.
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"What can one do with these Russians? You can be on your knees and that is not enough."
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"Where Katusha strikes, nothing lives."
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"What do you need red stars on your caps for? You are frightening the British."
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"One of you guys go back and find my arm. There's a wrist-watch on it I want to keep."
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An early arrival in the American ranks was Lieutenant-Colonel Saul K. Padover, of the US Army's Psychological Warfare Division, who months ago had been set the task of ascertaining what motivated the German nation. Now "stunned by the delirium and the hysteria of the reception," Padover wondered as to the task that lay ahead of him. None of the French men or women who seized his hand or kissed him fervently, ever used the word "German": instead, in undertones of dread, they spoke of "the Boche." It was all, Padover decided, a far cry from London or Washington, D.C.; a young Frenchman, armed with a Sten gun, to whom Padover offered a lift in his jeep, replied in answer to his query, "I am not, really what you would call a soldier, I am what they called a terrorist."

He would somehow need to adjust his perspective, Padover thought, in the weeks that lay ahead.
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"Mein Fuhrer," Guderain began, "we have information that makes it certain that the Russian winter offensive, aimed at Berlin, will begin three days from now... this is the last moment for action. I hope that our report will prompt you to transfer to the eastern front the reinforcements that are needed there -- and do it tonight."Then, as Guderain was always to recall, Hitler threw a mammoth tantrum. Following a cursory glance at Gehlen's maps and charts, he swept them to the floor. "This is completely idiotic!" he shouted. "Get rid of this man -- he ought to be in a lunatic asylum!"Now Guderain's temper rose. "The man who made these is General Gehlen, one of my best staff officers," he retorted. "I should not have shown them to you if I were in disagreement with them. If you want General Gehlen sent to a lunatic asylum, then you had better have me certified as well."

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The Red Army is essentially a peasant army. The soldiers of the Red Army understand one basic plea... save the soil.. and save the motherland. When Germany attacked and the Red Army reeled back the commissars were clever enough not to appeal to save Communism or the Soviet 'way of life'. As in the old days of Bread, Land, Peace... the commissars cried, 'Save the motherland!' Commissars, officers, and party members within the Army literally stood behind their troops with machine guns pointed at their backs to keep them from retreat.
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"The soldier from the West is fairly predictable. One can surmise what a German or a French or Italian group of men will do under certain circumstances. However, the Russian soldier is an Asian, an oriental of sorts and he is completely unpredictable by Western standards. He will fight like a wild man on a given day. On another day, under the same circumstances, he will break and run.
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"The Russian soldier may be the best in the entire world. this is because he is the most expendable. The famous steamroller tactic of World War I was renewed in World War II. This system, basically, uses humans in hordes. Chop down one line and another comes at you. Chop down a third line and face a fourth. Chop down the thirtieth and you face the thirty-first.
"Russians are like a pack of animals on the attack and otherwise. The pack strikes best in numbers. And ... like the animal.. he is most vicious when he is cornered.
"Like the animals, the Russian blends into the natural backgrounds of the landscape and he knows how to use terrain for protection. Like the animal, the Russian is able to endure cold and hunger... better than any soldier in the world. No Russian soldier would think of surrendering to the enemy merely because he is starving. He can disappear into the land like a fawn. He can survive on roots and herbs. For a Russian soldier to get frostbite is considered a crime by his superiors. And ... like the animal... his instincts are sharper and his courage greater under the cover of night. He is a superb night fighter.
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Russian defensive stubborness is legend. The Russian will not be moved from a fixed position unless overwhelmed by an enemy. However, once a position is overrun, the Russian does not retreat in an orderly manner, he plunges back. The Russian has thousands of miles of land in which to fall back.
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The old man shook his head sadly. "Freedom is life, my son. We have heard all of the talk of reform before. Here... this land... this is freedom. You are a Kuban Cossack and that is freedom. If there is anything we have learned it is to smell out those who would take freedom from us."
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The Kuban Cossacks of Glinka clung to their land. These new ways remained strange to them; many of their sons were gone and the village wore unhealed wounds. The agitators sent to enlighten them were treated with suspicion. Their beliefs were as simple and primitive as their lives. The Cossacks had been sent as border guards centuries before by the czars to outposts on the Don and Kuban in Siberia and on other borders. In times of emergency they had raised armies. In exchange, they were granted the status as free men. This, and nothing more, nothing less, was what they desired from the Reds.
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Igor Karlovy reached young manhood with a basic faith in the old ways. He suppressed his personal desires to examine this great new world, for it would have created an untold hardship to follow Alexander from the family farm.
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In other ways, Igor was the son of his father. In true Cossack tradition he became a magnificent horseman, sang with the sweetness of the marsh swallow, and developed into a drinking man of no small accomplishment. His heart, frivolous at times, never truly strayed nor really ever belonged to anyone but Natasha.
Days and sometimes weeks seemed endless until that glorious moment when she rode in from her village and they could go off together to a place known to them alone, away from all the world. But they had come to that time in the springtime of life when meetings brought frustration and partings became a thing of pain.
Natasha understood his yearning to seek the world, his predicament and imprisonment. She did not press him to the promise of marriage, for to have done so would have sealed him to Glinka forever.
And so on a summer's day...
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Daleko... Daleko...
Far, far away,
Where the fog swells,
Where gentle breezes
Sway o'er the wheat,
In your own land,
By a hill on the Steppe,
You live as you did,
Think often of me,
Day.. night... all the time,
From me far away,
Await my love
...
...
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"What the hell goes on around here?"
"So what?"
"You said it!"
~~ Uncle Joe ~~
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On March 7 a squad of the 3rd Platoon, Company A, 27th Armoured Infantry Battalion, reached the great Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, a double-track railroad bridge just over 1,000 ft long..
To the astonishment of the first men on the spot, Sgt. Alex A. Drabik and Second Lieutenant Karl Timmerman, the bridge was intact.
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Within ten minutes 100 Americans led by Timherman, the first officer, had crossed the Rhine.
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The role of the front-line infantryman is often lost to history, but on the night of March 7 an anonymous reporter from the Omaha World Herald sought to set the record straight. Placing a call to the Goldenrod Cafe, in West Point, 75 miles northwest he informed Mrs Mary Timmerman, a waitress, that her son, Karl, was the first officer over Remagen Bridge.
"Your son Karl has just crossed the Remagen Bridge. You know what it means?"
"I know what it means to me: Is he hurt?"
"No, he's not hurt. But listen to this: Karl Timmerman was the first officer of an invading army to cross the Rhine River since Napoleon."
On behalf of all mothers, Mrs Timmerman put the matter in perspective: "Napoleon I don't care about. How is my Karl?"
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To Truman's critics -- and at first there were many, he was no more than an apology for a chief of state: a man naive to a fault.
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On an impromptu lunchtime visit to the bank, the Hamilton National at 14th and G streets, he created one of the worst traffic snarls in Washington history; he had yet to learn that the Bank came to the President. Washington wits soon had a word for it: "to err is Truman."
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