Remembering PRESTAGS

'The Principles of War' - interesting website

The Principles of War website - https://theprinciplesofwar.com/ 

Australian content and contributions

 

On the road again

After an awesome drive from Brisbane to Toowoomba, and back, I find myself pining for the open road again. This time my animal magnetism was overstretched, and I had neither man nor dog as companion. I did have a beast though!

Although it looks much the same as the Thrifty (best car hire firm ever!) beast, this one was noisy. I had forgotten how much noisy it makes. And Thirsty. For this journey, I used my entire quarter's fuel allowance for the Prius. Old tech, I suppose.

Spring was showing on the road with the wattles just starting to burst.

I stopped at a rest area and found some Rosellas and Grass Parrots enjoying a midday feed.

I had all these lenses in the car, but the trouble with those is by the time you have them all set up, the target has gone!

Just before jumping into the car again, I checked out the name of the reserve.

I can just image the Germans saying "There is a mad Aussie down there chucking grenades. Let's decamp." Thomas Derrick did inspire me though: next time I'm with my mates, I'll spend some time chucking grenades around.

Road Trip Stage One is a success, and Blust is in the Black.

Now I wonder if I will get a turn. The again, if John Michael Young wanted a turn, he had to invent a whole game. I just have to be patient, I suppose.

Anzac Day 2018 - Canberra Dawn Service

Carl and I were just near the steps to the actual memorial entrance. A very large crowd. Took a few photos, only 3 near passable - in focus shots handheld in the dark are a challenge.

Very good addresses from the services chaplain and the retired army surgeon. Very good sermon from Fr Leung at Requiem Mass later on in the morning.

Looking South a few minutes before the start. all those big street lights were turned off for the event.

 

Kiwi flag at half mast.'

Last Post and Reville from top of memorial.

Remembrance Day

We remember.

At 11 am on 11 November 1918 the guns of the Western Front fell silent after more than four years continuous warfare.

The 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month has now attained a special significance. The moment when hostilities ceased on the Western Front is universally associated with the remembrance of those who had died in the First World War, and indeed all wars. The first modern world conflict commencing 100 years ago in 1914 had brought about the mobilisation of over 70 million people and left between 9 and 13 million dead, perhaps as many as one-third of them with no known grave.

Despite nationalistic propaganda, which continues to this day, the First World War was not about good vs evil or right vs wrong. It was a devastating and unnecessary war instigated by ruling class elites to fulfil their own motives for power and wealth. What an evil waste of so many young lives, ordinary decent folk on both sides of the war.

The bravery of the Australian and New Zealand solders at Gallipoli is now the stuff of legends, as are the exploits of the Light Horse in Egypt and Palestine. However these battles cannot compare to the scale of conflict on the Western Front. In July 1916 Australian infantry were introduced to combat at Fromelles, where they suffered 5,533 casualties in 24 hours. By the end of the year about 40,000 Australians had been killed or wounded on the Western Front. In 1917 a further 76,836 Australians became casualties in battles, such Bullecourt, Messines, and the four-month campaign around Ypres, known as the battle of Passchendaele.

I honour  and respect the bravery and sacrifice of all these soldiers, and I never question their sincere loyalty or motives. They were heroes. But I refuse to respect the leadership of the nations that fought this war, and I despise the "Empire" that devoured the youth of our own nation, which was not yet even 15 years old.

For our own country, the First World War remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.

These numbers are staggering. We are indeed fortunate not to have lived in such times.

My great grandfather in Victoria could have been sent to the war. However, he had a Dutch name which the authorities thought was a German name so they would not let him in the armed services. I should be grateful the authorities were so ignorant, or I may never have existed.

Great unit art quality in the latest Strategy and Tactics game

Paul was curious to see more units from the latest game. I note that the graphics art, when blown up with a scanner, is very impressive and catches quite a level of detail.

The game is an ambitious one. It starts with the begining of the German offensive and lasts to the end of the war. Germany has to try to knock France or England out for the war in the first weeks. Failing that, it has to hold on until the end of the year. Time is not on the German side. The extra number on the US unit is the arrival turn.

The maps are even more ambitious - there are two maps covering most of the western front. I'll need to borrow the dining room table is I ever play this.

Related articles

2014: A Century Since 1914

Who am I

I am on the latest Strategy and Tactics issue. Below are my mates. Who am I and what era?

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The Answer

 

ANZAC Day 2014

I remembered in Canberra.

 

2014: A Century Since 1914

This year will mark the centenary of the beginning of the First World War. Already in the UK they are planning events for August and the propaganda machine has begun its work. The Tory Education Minister, an idiot called Michael Gove, described the war as "a just war for freedom" and he even criticized Black Adder for painting an unpatriotic view of the war.

What a load of rubbish. I am going to get in early and state my view: The First World War was a war perpetrated by the ruling classes for their own interests, imperial territory and power. It was not about freedom. England was not the good guy and Germany the bad guy. It is an absolute tragedy that so many were slaughtered, including so many Australians, for a war that did not have a just cause.

I really hope propaganda does not defeat the real history of this war as various ceremonies are undertaken around the world. So far I have not heard anything idiotic from an Australian politician but it is probably just a matter of time.

In response to Gove's remarks in the UK, Seumas Milne made a number of excellent comments in the Guardian (9/1/14) which I applaud:

"Unlike the second world war, the bloodbath of 1914-18 was not a just war. It was a savage industrial slaughter perpetrated by a gang of predatory imperial powers, locked in a deadly struggle to capture and carve up territories, markets and resources".

"Germany was the rising industrial power and colonial Johnny-come-lately of the time, seeking its place in the sun from the British and French empires. The war erupted directly from the fight for imperial dominance in the Balkans, as Austria-Hungary and Russia scrapped for the pickings from the crumbling Ottoman empire. All the ruling elites of Europe, tied together in a deathly quadrille of unstable alliances, shared the blame for the murderous barbarism they oversaw. The idea that Britain and its allies were defending liberal democracy, let alone international law or the rights of small nations, is simply absurd".

"It's not just that most men and all women in Britain were still denied the vote in 1914 – unlike Germany, which already had full male suffrage – or that the British empire was allied with the brutal autocracy of tsarist Russia. Every single one of the main warring states was involved in the violent suppression of the rights of nations throughout the racist tyrannies that were their colonial empires. In the decades before 1914, about 30 million people died from famine as colonial officials enforced the export of food in British-ruled India, slaughtered resisters in their tens of thousands and set up concentration camps in South Africa".

"Britain was supposed to have gone to war to defend the neutrality of "plucky little Belgium" – which had itself presided over the death of 10 million Congolese from forced labour and mass murder in the previous couple of decades. German colonialists had carried out systematic genocide in what is now Namibia in the same period. As to international law, Britain's disdain for it was demonstrated when Germany had asked by what right it claimed territory in Africa a few years before. London refused to reply. The answer was obvious: brute force. This was the "liberal" global order for which, in the words of the war poet Wilfred Owen, the ruling classes "slew half the seed of Europe, one by one".

"In reality, it wasn't just the seed of Europe they sacrificed, but hundreds of thousands of troops from their colonies as well. And in case there were any doubt that all the main combatants were in the land-grabbing expansion game, Britain and France then divvied up the defeated German and Ottoman empires between them, from Palestine to Cameroon, without a thought for small nations' rights, laying the ground for future disasters in the process".

What a terrible and depraved war. Completely senseless. And how much were the seeds of later atrocities - nazism and communism - sown in the First World War.

I am with Black Adder 100%.

Paul's Boat with crane extended

I couldn't fit the dog into this one...

Remembrance Day

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place: and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

John McCrae (1872–1918)

Australia is covered with war memorials, most in remembrance of the First World War and the Second World War. In a Burwood park next to one of the main shopping centres near my home is a war memorial that was opened on Remembrance Day 1922. That is 91 years ago. This memorial now remembers 9 wars up to Vietnam.

Even on my own street, a few minutes walk from my house, is a row of olive trees that is actually a war memorial to the Rats of Tobruk. Most people would drive past these trees without realising what they signify.

I remember.

Tee hee

Our PP, Fr Andrew Feng has been in Australia for a year after the Church moved him from China because he refused to acknowledge the state appointed bishops. He was preaching on Zacchaeus being called down from the sycamore tree today. He noted that the had recently been assigned as a chaplin to the army. He said he met his commanding officer (I think that is what I heard) who greeted him with "Hello Father. I understand you are the pastor for the diggers." "Oh" said Father Andrew, "I thought I was the pastor for the soldiers."

Known Unto God

One of the first things Tony Abbott's new government did has not received much publicity, although it was an excellent decision.

In the dying days of the former labor government, the governing council of the Australian War Memorial (led by the War Memorial's director, former liberal leader Brendan Nelson) decided to remove the words "Known Unto God" from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. These words were to be replaced with words from a speech by former labor prime minister Paul Keating: "He is one of them, and he is all of us".

Our new prime minister Tony Abbott, and the new Veterans' Affairs Minister Senator Michael Ronaldson, intervened and there will now be no change to "Known Unto God".

I would like to see Brendan Nelson and every member of the council that attempted to remove the reference to God sacked immediately. I have had an absolute gutful of the political correctness (which is a tool of the evil that never sleeps) editing out God at every opportunity, and even creeping into sacred places like the War Memorial.

The stupidity of this whole episode is that the words "Known Unto God" were written by Rudyard Kipling and chosen by the generation of diggers themselves. Although the words were added in 1999 these are the words the diggers had placed on thousands of crosses around the world to mark the graves of their comrades who were unable to be identified.

The Australian War Memorial exists through the efforts of First World War veterans and their vision of how to remember their mates: "Here is their spirit, in the heart of the land they loved; and here we guard the record which they themselves made" (Charles Bean, 1st World War Official Historian). Precisely. Who are we in our modern corrupt pathetic society of 2013 to change the way the war veterans themselves want to be remembered.

I agree with radio broadcaster Michael Smith's view about the current governing council: "The people who made the plan to remove the historical words used by our diggers are vandals. They have no place as stewards of our most sacred national memorial".

I grew up in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) and one of my favourite places was, and still is, the Australian War Memorial. These days the ACT is a hotbed of leftist extremism, perversion and social engineering. The War Memorial has had a narrow escape, although no doubt the God haters will be back. Perhaps they will try and remove actual items from the War Memorial that offend their evil master, such as the Long Tan Cross.

I have never had much time for Paul Keating, and his words have no place in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in the Hall of Remembrance. However, Keating did use words in parliament once that I believe are a good description of the vandals and anti Christians that wage a continuous assault on our nation: "Scumbags of dog's vomit; sleazebags of pigswill; maggot-infested buckets of pus; crims; grubs; boudoir bandicoots; box-heads; liars; lice; maggots; in and out of a cat's arse; like a dog returning to it's vomit". Yes, that was our former prime minister speaking. He had a turn of phrase, but was not Rudyard Kipling.