Gena Turgel obituary

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/gena-turgel-obituary-z62pm36t5

Holocaust survivor and educator known as the bride of Belsen who tended to a dying Anne Frank and lectured Prince Harry

June 27 2018, 5:00pm, The Times

Norman and Gena Turgel met when he helped to liberate Bergen-Belsen; within six months she married him, wearing a dress made from the silk of a parachute

Prince Harry was about 13 when he and his friends filed into a classroom at Eton College to hear Gena Turgel, the “bride of Belsen”, give, in a thick, mittel-European accent, her first-hand account of the Holocaust and warn that it must not be allowed to happen again. What she told the elite of British education was much the same as she had told school-children, students and thousands of others over the previous half century.

100 Years Ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/the-need-of-men-svjtdj3jn

JUNE 28, 1918

The need of men

The Prime Minister intervened in a debate on the medical examination of the older recruits in the House of Commons tonight with an important statement on the need for men. After reminding members that the emergency was overwhelming, the Prime Minister declared that the comb-out in this country was not comparable with that in Germany or in France. It was true that the Americans were coming, and were prepared to be brigaded with our divisions. But, he explained, that was on the understanding that, when the new comb-out materialized, the men who came in would take the places of the Americans, so that they could form their own divisions.

Sir Auckland Geddes opened the debate. After reminding the house of the Prime Minister’s statement that it was proposed to post 7 per cent of the older men this year, he announced that so far 11.2 per cent had been medically examined, and less than one-third of 1 per cent had actually been posted. Turning to the comb-out of the younger men, he explained that for every man of the new age period who had actually joined the forces, approximately 30 young men had been combed out.

Sir Donald Maclean told him that he was still very nervous about the older men. He demanded that they should have at least as favourable a medical examination as men of lower age, and contended that there had recently been a change in the standard. He suggested that an equitable arrangement could be made if the Minister would meet the seven chairmen of tribunals who were members of the House.

The Prime Minister accepted Sir Donald Maclean’s suggestion on behalf of Sir Auckland Geddes. He gave an assurance that the War Office would use the older men, not for the fighting line, but for services behind the line and in this country. But he pointed out that their use in this way would enable the military authorities to comb out men who were fit for the fighting line, and so increase the combatant strength of the Army. As for the younger men, objections did not come from those combed out, but from the industries employing them. He appealed to the industries to remember how serious the emergency was. He said that about 6,000,000 men had already been taken out of civil life, including those who had volunteered. 

The Campaign in German East Africa - 1917-1918

The Campaign in German East Africa, 4

This week's chapter examines the campaigns of 1917-18, the difficulties of the rainy season, General Hoskins reorganises the forces, Van Deventer in command, German strength and resources, June 1917, enemy spying out Portuguese territory, the chase of Naumann, Germans murder British officers, Van Deventer's strategy, Northey's operations, Kilwa and Lindi operations begun, the new Belgian campaign, Mahenge captured by Major Bataille, the main offensive, Von Lettow's narrow escape, Colonel Tafel surrenders, sufferings of British prisoners, ten months' campaign in Portuguese East Africa, enemy success near Quelimane, rapid enemy march north, Germans in Northern Rhodesia, Von Lettow surrenders

Besides antelope of many kinds the Germans eat monkey, lion, elephant, giraffe, zebra and other strange meat, and also crocodile eggs. In everything they showed ingenuity; for instance, aeroplane bombs were turned into land mines

Bill Speakman, VC, fought off enemy onslaught in Korea – obituary

Bill Speakman

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/06/21/bill-speakman-vc-fought-enemy-onslaught-korea-obituary/

Sergeant Bill Speakman, who has died aged 90, won the Victoria Cross on November 4 1951 as a private with the King’s Own Scottish Borderers during the Korean War.

From 4  o’clock on the morning of November 4, on Hill 217, north-west of Yonchon, the defensive positions held by 1st Battalion, The King’s Own Scottish Borderers, had been subjected to heavy and accurate enemy shell and mortar fire.

Three companies of the KOSB, mustering at the most some 400 men, were dug in on the forward slopes of a narrow, arrow-shaped ridge facing down into a 1,500 ft-wide valley filled with rice fields and a scattered village – no-man’s-land – with the Chinese in the hills beyond. As the defenders made their preparations they could not know that some 6,000 Chinese had been ordered to retake the ridge and had selected their positions as the main objective for the attack.

This week in history - Little Big Horn (25th June 1876)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

Little Big Horn (25th June)

The battle of Little Big Horn, known to many as ‘Custer’s Last Stand’, was in the words of General Terry ‘a sad and terrible blunder.’ The operation’s aim was to force the Indians back on to the reservations and back under Federal control. The Americans planned to do this by encircling the Indians with three columns of troops, led by Generals Crook and Terry, and Colonel Gibbon. The campaign of Little Big Horn, however, went wrong from the beginning. The column led by General Crook was stopped almost immediately, and after a severe mauling fell back to its supply base. Custer, commanding the 7th US Cavalry Regiment under the leadership of Terry, disobeyed his orders and followed a trail left by a large number of ponies towards the Little Big Horn. On the morning of 25 June he encountered a large camp of Indians. Splitting split his command into three groups and failing to asses the strength of the Indian force Custer attacked; with disastrous consequences. By 6pm 210 troopers of the US 7th Cavalry regiments and Custer were dead. On 26 June the Sioux and their allies followed up their success by travelling upstream and attacking Reno, Custer’s second-in-command. Reno’s command, the remainder of the regiment, suffered a further 47 casualties. General Terry and Colonel Gibbon reached the remains of the camp the following day.

Reinhard Hardegen, U-boat commander and ‘ace of the deep’ – obituary

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2018/06/20/reinhard-hardegen-u-boat-commander-ace-deep-obituary/

Reinhard Hardegen in a wartime propaganda photograph, climbing out of the hatch of a U-boat 

Korvettenkapitän Reinhard Hardegen, who has died aged 105, was the last of the so-called “aces of the deep”, U-boat commanders who sank more than 100,000 tons of Allied shipping.
On December 23 1941 Hardegen sailed from Lorient on the French Atlantic coast in U-123, one of five boats destined for Operation Drumbeat, the German attack on shipping on the East Coast of the US.
Three weeks later, after having negotiated continuously appalling weather in the crossing, he waited on the seabed for a night before entering the mouth of New York harbour, where, despite warnings of his arrival from British naval intelligence (who were analysing German radio messages), ships were silhouetted against the bright lights of the city.
Hardegen, who had visited New York as a cadet, saw the lights from houses and cars on Coney Island. From there to Cape Haterras, North Carolina, between January 12 and 19 1942, Hardegen sank eight ships of 48,396 tons, of American, British, Latvian, Norwegian and Panamanian registry.
One of his last victims was the US steam tanker Malay, which, despite being shelled and torpedoed, reached New York five days later and was refitted for service.
Three times Hardegen heard via public radio broadcasts that he had been sunk by American planes. But with all torpedoes expended, and the port diesel engine malfunctioning, he recrossed the Atlantic, finding two more victims, which he sank with a 105mm gun on the fo’c’sle.

Professor Richard Pipes obituary

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-20/register/professor-richard-pipes-obituary-hfvg5wggd

Historian who escaped from the Nazis and spent his life warning of the dangers posed by the authoritarian regime in the Soviet Union

Richard Pipes at Harvard, where he taught for almost 40 years, in 1991AP

When Richard Pipes, a young Polish-Jewish emigrant to the United States, began in 1945 to discover what had happened to much of his extended family during the Holocaust, he made a number of life-changing decisions. After reading letters from a few surviving relatives about brutal deportations and death camps, he avoided pursuing much more knowledge “for the sake of my sanity and positive attitude to life”. At the same time, he concluded that his own immediate family’s miraculous escape from Nazi-occupied Poland in 1940 should make him “delight in every day of life that has been granted to me, for I was saved from certain death”.
His life was not to be wasted, but used “to spread a moral message by showing, using examples from history, how evil ideas lead to evil consequences”. Rather than studying the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis, “I thought it my mission to demonstrate this truth using the example of communism”.

Pipes went on to make his career at Harvard where he became one of the best-known historians of Russia and the Soviet Union. He saw significant continuities between tsarist imperialism and authoritarianism and what followed the 1917 Revolution, and wrote unfashionably and unflinchingly about the personal evils and culpability of communist leaders such as Lenin and Stalin. And he took his academic perspective of Russian behaviour into a brief but highly influential political role as an adviser to President Reagan in the early 1980s, persuading him to adopt a less compromising approach towards Moscow in the belief that the Soviet Union could not survive a sustained economic and military challenge.
Such was Pipes’s prominence that the Kremlin published a book denouncing him as the “Falsifier of History”. While critics accused him of Russophobia, Pipes insisted that “I draw a sharp distinction between Russian governments and the Russian people”.

On this day in 1919: The German Fleet is scuttled at Scapa Flow

On this day in 1919: The German Fleet is scuttled at Scapa Flow
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/21/day-1919-german-fleet-scuttled-scapa-flow/

The SMS Bayern sinking Credit: Royal Navy official photographer

Following the Armistice at the end of World War One, there were conflicting views about what to do with the High Seas Fleet (Hochseeflotte) of the German Imperial Navy.Pending a final decision at Versailles, the vessels were ordered to be interned at the vast natural Royal Navy harbour at Scapa Flow in the Orkneys.
Seventy German ships arrived on 21 November 1918 under an escort of 100 Royal Navy vessels. Four more joined them soon after, making a total of 74 interned ships, with some 20,000 German sailors.

100 Years Ago - Piave battles

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/home-rule-and-conscription-2z8qc3px5

june 21, 1918

Home rule and conscription

In the House of Lords tonight Lord Curzon indicated an important development in the Irish policy of the Government. He declared that in present circumstances it was out of the question to proceed with a Home Rule Bill which there was not a ghost of a chance of anyone accepting. If they could not have Home Rule, he added, they could not have conscription. The debate attracted a large attendance of peers, and several peeresses occupied seats in the side galleries. Mr Shortt, the Chief Secretary, and Sir Horace Plunkett, the Chairman of the Convention, listened from the steps of the Throne. Lord Londonderry opened by drawing attention to the inconsistencies of the Government, which cajoled Ireland at one moment and dragooned her the next. Lord Wimborne, Lord French’s predecessor as Lord Lieutenant, severely criticised ministers and suggested that conscription was now a physical impossibility. Lord Midleton urged the Government not to make the position more difficult by attempting to drive a Home Rule Bill through during the war.

Lord Curzon, replying, narrated the circumstances which had led the Government earlier in the year to adopt the separate policies of conscription and Home Rule for Ireland, and went on to the discovery in May of a formidable conspiracy of the leaders of the Sinn Fein movement with the enemy of this country. He explained how those revelations had occasioned in the Cabinet surprise and consternation. This new situation was accentuated by the fact that the attitude of every section of opinion about Home Rule had changed. His conclusion was that to proceed with the preparation of a Home Rule Bill and its introduction into Parliament would be a folly and almost amount to a crime. It was necessary in respect both to conscription and Home Rule not to abandon their policy or to change their front, but to recognize the facts and adjust their policy to them. Turning to Lord French’s appeal for voluntary recruits, Lord Curzon said that he would be surprised if the clergy did not come out on the side of this country in its present crisis. He intimated that the Government would put down boycotting, and would prohibit meetings likely to lead to a breach of the peace.

100 Years Ago - The American Army in Europe

The American Army in Europe

This week's chapter examines America's contribution, military unpreparedness, conscription of the nation, the American divisions, transport of the army, the first troops in France, reorganisation of the French ports, vast work of transport and supply, horses, staffs, artillery, aeroplanes, training, first operations, Cangny, Chateau Thierry, the Allied offensive, the Marne, July 18, 1918, St Mihiel, advance in the Argonne, march on Sedan, the Armistice, America's achievement

Nothing could well have been more different than the behaviour of the Australians and the Americans in action. The Australians were veterans who did their work cunningly and with a peculiar lounging carelessness which was characteristic of them: the Americans, on the other hand, were novices, immensely eager, who fought with a gripping earnestness and an intense desire to get to close quarters with the enemy

100 Years ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/enemy-brought-to-a-halt-39jhq82j0

june 15, 1918

Enemy brought to a halt

Looking back on the week, which has been one of considerable anxiety, one may say that the offensive which began on Sunday, though it has brought the enemy to within about five miles of Compiègne and farther east has seen the French retire from the salient between the Oise and the Aisne, has been, on the whole, a decided disappointment to the German High Command. It has lasted a shorter time than any of the others, and has resulted in a much smaller advance. For the moment this particular road to Paris is barred.
There is a note of satisfaction in Paris today at the turn events have taken. No one is foolish enough to imagine that the enemy will accept as final this check to his operations, but the idea is generally expressed in the Press that he will seek out some other point for his next blow. Arrangements for the defence of Paris and for its possible evacuation are, nevertheless, being pushed forward. The authorities have already removed to safety the greater part of the national art collections. The galleries of the Louvre have for the most part become empty corridors, with here and there the great bulk of some sandbagged statue. The Venus of Milo has gone, the Winged Victory is covered with sandbags, and the vaulted cellars are filled with a mixed company of antiquities.

Documents in French hands point eloquently to the sanguinary nature of the Montdidier-Noyon battle. The finest “shock” troops of the enemy have suffered badly, some units have been wiped out, and the reserves have been cut into so freely that the Crown Prince has had to borrow divisions from his Bavarian cousin. One of these documents runs as follows: “State of losses of the 11th company, 34th Regiment, June 11, 7pm, remaining in front line — one officer, three non-commissioned officers, and eight men. State of losses of the 10th company, 34th Regiment, same date, trench effectives — one officer, one non- commissioned officer, and three men, remainder dead, wounded, or missing. Fighting effectives — one officer, one non-commissioned officer, and six men, with one light machine-gun. I have run out of munitions and grenades. The enemy is 100 yards from us. I beg urgently for reinforcements and munitions.”

The armies of France, 1914-17

The armies of France, 1914-17

This week's chapter examines the main burden of the war by land on the French, five periods of the war, five sectors of the Front, the first four periods, Joffre's offensive policy in the East, the Battle of the Grand Couronne, retreat from the Sambre and Meuse, Battle of the Marne, the Aisne, the race to the sea, trench warfare, the French soldier, Verdun, the Somme, the German retreat, the Aisne offensive, the Chemin-des-Dames, Malmaison, Morthomme

Day after day all through the summer French and Germans went on attacking and counter-attacking on the hills of the Moronvillers massif and the hogbacked ridge along which runs the Chemin des Dames, till the whole of their surface soil and the green things that had grown there were shelIed to powder and buried deep beneath a hideous coating of broken lumps of chalk and rusty iron and decaying human remains

This Week in History - Battle of Bunker Hill (16 June 1775)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

Today visitors enjoy a leisurely walk around a five-acre park on a peaceful hilltop. This is all that remains of the ground that became a raging battlefield and the venue of the first, and arguably the bloodiest, full-scale battle of the Revolutionary War. It was at the top of this hill, on the night of 16 June 1775, that the acrimony between the British and many American colonists boiled over into savage fury, while the nearby wooden buildings of Charlestown, Massachusetts, burned from artillery fire by British warships.

This significant Revolutionary War battle, through time, was acknowledged to have been fought on Bunker Hill, but it actually took place on nearby Breed’s Hill. The campaign gained the British a narrow victory, but at the same time it inspired the colonists to continue to fight. The battle served to prove to the American people that the British Army was not invincible. It became a symbol of national pride and a rally point of resistance against British rule.

---

Extract from Essential Histories Specials 7: Liberty or Death – Wars that forged a nation

Outbreak – Shot heard round the world

The year 1775 marked the formal outbreak of hostilities between the British and Americans. A small skirmish in Lexington led to a larger confrontation in Concord, and the British withdrawal from Concord sparked a savage fight for survival and the beginning of outright conflict. The battle of Breed’s Hill (Bunker Hill), in June, was the first pitched battle of the war. This was followed by a bold American attempt, in December 1775, to seize and conquer Canada. After these events there could be no turning back. It was war.

Italy 1917-18: Austria’s last offensive

Italy 1917-18: Austria's last offensive

This week's chapter examines the fall of the Boselli government, Oct 1917, the Orlando ministry, political situation and Italian morale, Austria, the chief enemy, anxiety about Allied policy, the situation in spring 1918, the controversy between Italy and the Yugoslavs, the London Agreement and Italian claims, the Pact of Corfu, the Pact of Rome and its meaning, the military situation at the end of 1917, some minor successes, bombs on Venice and Padua, the Austrian offensive in June 1918, failure in the north, Austrians cross the Piave and are defeated, the importance of the Italian victory

The Austrian losses in the double battle were calculated by the Italians at from 180,000 to 200,000 men, and it is probable that the figure is close to the truth. The Italian losses were 80,000. Hardly another single week throughout the long struggle of the war saw more bloodshed than the week which put an end to the last Austrian hopes of a victorious peace

 

Italy's ordeal — Venice threatened

If the Austro-Germans succeed in crossing the Piave there is no longer any natural barrier between them and Venice https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/italys-ordeal-venice-threatened-l6nzrc9fr?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_06.06.2018%20Italy%20(1)&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_3487692_118 november 11, 1917 Italy’s ordeal — Venice threatened The Italian forces have fallen back to the right (western) bank of the Piave and the artillery has entered into action. Before leaving Conegliano (five miles east of the Piave) Arditi shock troops made a fine defence in the streets, and between Conegliano and the Piave counter-attacked firmly, while at the same time the cavalry charged, advancing on the enemy on both flanks. Then before the enemy had recovered the Arditi and the cavalry passed undisturbed over the Pritla bridge, which was immediately blown up. The conduct of the rearguard troops, which have fought without intermission from Udine to the Piave, has won the admiration of the whole Army. Yesterday the Austro-Germans were closing round Conegliano. It is not to be expected that Conegliano, though protected on the north by hills, will be able to delay the enemy much longer. The troops left there are tough and have done all possible to prolong resistance, to the extent, even, of barricading the streets. They must inevitably fall back or find their line of retreat cut. They must retire across the River Piave by the great new bridge, and Italy must then stand face to face with her second and her greater crisis. Her first crisis came on that morning when the Germans passed through the gap at Caporetto on to Italian soil. Udine and the Friuli fell into their hands then, and a limb of the country was gone. But today, with the arrival of Austro-Germans on the Piave, a greater peril may have to be faced. If the Austro-Germans succeed in crossing the Piave there is no longer any natural barrier between them and Venice, and it would be as if the hair of Italy had been torn from her brows. Strategically it would mean that Austria had practically gained naval preponderance in the Upper Adriatic. A good omen is that the skies have repented of their favouritism. Rain has been falling, which will swell the river. It is a pity it did not fall sooner, but the Piave, like the Tagliamento, rises quickly. It also resembles the Tagliamento in those banks of gravel which lie in its bed but are covered when the river is high. Besides the bridge on the Conegliano road other important bridges were on the road to Oderzo and at Vidor, just after the river leaves the mountains, near where the poet Browning lived at Asolo.

This Week in History - The battle of Cold Harbor - American Civil War (2-6 June)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

The Federal victory at Memphis deprived the Confederacy of a valuable bastion in their defence of the South and won for the Union naval dominance on the Mississippi, a crucial strategic artery. Cold Harbor was a bloody defeat for the Union. Ulysses Grant launched the Army of the Potomac in a bludgeoning frontal attack on Robert E. Lee's well-entrenched Army of Northern Virginia, and suffered terrible casualties. But Lee could not exploit this defensive victory and trench warfare set in with the Union noose gradually tightening over the next ten months around Richmond, the Confederate capital, which was only eight miles from Cold Harbor.

Further Reading

New Vanguard 49: Mississippi River Gunboats of the American Civil War 1861-65 (extract below) and New Vanguard 56: Union River Ironclad 1861-65 describe the design, development and operation of the innovative and improvised warships that contested the rivers and coastal waters of North America. The two battles are placed fully in context in Essential Histories 10: The American Civil War (2) The war in the West 1861-July 1863 and Essential Histories 5: The American Civil War (3) The war in the East 1863 -1865 (extract below). Essential Histories Specials 1: The American Civil War: This mighty scourge of war , which combines the present four American Civil War Essential Histories in a single volume, is published this month.

This Week in History - D-Day (6 June)

https://ospreypublishing.com/thisweekhistory/

Załadunek wojsk inwazyjnych w Wielkiej Brytanii, 4 czerwca 1944 r.


Extracts from The D-Day Companion.

The Key Role of Intelligence and Double Agents

The factor which above all else ensured both OPSEC and the success of the deception effort as a whole was intelligence. The role that intelligence played in the success of D-Day should not be underestimated, and it contributed in a number of ways. First, counter-espionage by MI5 had led to the imprisonment or turning of all of Germany’s operatives in Britain by the time of D-Day. MI5 had set up a special branch in mid-1941 to deal specifically with counter-espionage, and its efforts were made easier as the war progressed, as the various British intelligence agencies penetrated their opposite numbers in Germany and British intelligence broke German signals ciphers (particularly significant of which was the breaking of the so-called ENIGMA codes, used by the German Services). MI5 was also approached by a number of non-British nationals wishing to work for British intelligence as agents. By the beginning of 1944, MI5 had 15 double agents, and these fed carefully crafted misinformation into the German military intelligence apparatus, known as the Abwehr. The ‘Double-Cross’ agents were invaluable for reinforcing the physical deception measures. The secret of their success in the overall BODYGUARD deception can be attributed to the fact that most had been working as double agents since the early part of the war and were, therefore, trusted by their Abwehr controllers. To have double agents of such long standing was not without its dangers. In order to maintain their credibility, agents had to provide just enough information to keep them in the Germans’ employ. A certain amount of sensitive material had to be leaked to the Germans, typically information on size or disposition of forces, shipping movements, etc, which the Germans could corroborate using their own means.

74 Years Ago

D-Day: June 6th 1944 as it happened

Timeline of the D-Day landings of 6th June 1944 hour by hour as events
unfolded on the day

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-two/10878674/D-Day-6th-June-1944-as-it-happened-live.html

Canadian soldiers land on Courseulles beach in Normandy, on June 6, 1944 as Allied forces storm the Normandy beaches. Photo: STF/AFP/Getty Images

As it happened hour by hour:

Introduction

The largest seaborne invasion in history was confirmed for June 6 1944 after
Group Captain James Stagg, chief meteorologist for the RAF, told Gen
Eisenhower, Allied Supreme Commander, that weather conditions would be
favourable. The decision was taken at Southwick House near Portsmouth,
Advance Command Post of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
(SHAEF).


6,939 vessels – 1,213 warships, 4,126 landing craft, 736 ancillary craft and
864 merchant vessels – gathered in “Area Z” south of the Isle of Wight, in
preparation for landings at five Normandy beaches, along 50 miles of the
coast – Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword.


Operation Fortitude, a painstaking campaign of deception involving the setting
up of a fake First US Army Group under General George Patton, has worked –
the Germans have been deceived into thinking a Normandy invasion will be
merely a diversion for a real attack at Pas-de-Calais, and that Norway will
be invaded next.





^{D-Day weather map / RAF Group Captain James Stagg (Geoff Robinson / PA)}



00.00 (midnight, Double British Summer Time): Operation Titanic – part
of Operation Fortitude – begins, designed to distract German
anti-paratrooper units while the real landings take place.


RAF aircraft drop hundreds of dummy paratroopers across Seine-Maritime,
Calvados, Manche. An SAS team parachutes in to the Cotentin peninsula and
lands five miles west of Saint-Lô. Lieutenant Norman Poole becomes the first
man to jump over Normandy. They install amplifiers to play combat noises,
mortar explosions and the sound of soldiers cursing.


00.10 The first “pathfinders” jump over Normandy. They are in advance
of the airborne assault and will mark drop zones for paratroopers and
landing paths for gliders.


00.16 Six Horsa gliders are dropped above Cabourg. Major John Howard
commands 180 men whose objective is to capture two bridges, code-named Ham
and Jam – the Bénouville Bridge over the Caen Canal (Ham) and the Ranville
Bridge (Jam) over the river Orne. Staff Sgt Jim Wallwork pilots lead glider.


The Pont de Bénouville will later be renamed Pegasus Bridge after the emblem
of the British airborne forces, and the Pont de Ranville renamed Horsa
Bridge.



They must be captured to secure the eastward route for troops landing at Sword
beach and to prevent German tanks coming west from Calais.




^{Gliders landed at Pont de Bénouville (PA)}



Major John Howard:





We were coming in at 90 mph on touchdown. I suppose that really was the
most exhilarating moment of my life. I could see the bridge tower 50 yards
from where I was standing. Above all, the tremendous thing there was that
there was no firing at all. We had complete surprise, we had caught old
Jerry with his pants down.

D-Day photos still haunting 74 years after invasion

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/d-day-photos-still-haunting-70-years-after-invasion-2014-06-05?siteid=rss&rss=1



On June 6, 1944, 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory,” according to the U.S. Army website about D-Day. More than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft supported the D-Day invasion. The cost was high — more than 9,000 allied soldiers were killed or wounded — but more than 100,000 soldiers began the march across Europe that led to the liberation of France and marked the turning point in the Western theater of World War II. Friday marks the 70th anniversary of D-Day, still one of the world's most gut-wrenching and consequential battles. At left, a Catholic chaplain conducts services on a pier for the first D-Day assault troops in Weymouth, England. See more of the extraordinary images from D-Day.




This photograph, credited to Chief Photographer’s Mate Robert F. Sargent, is titled “Into the Jaws of Death — U.S. Troops wading through water and Nazi gunfire.” It has been captioned: Landing craft from the U.S. Coast Guard-manned USS Samuel Chase disembark troops of Company E, 16th Infantry, 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) wading onto the Fox Green section of Omaha Beach on the morning of June 6, 1944. American soldiers encountered the newly formed German 352nd Division when landing. During the initial landing, two-thirds of Company E became casualties.

D-Day landings: Operation Overlord in numbers

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/06/d-day-landings-operation-overlord-in-numbers2/






On June 6, 1944 Allied forces invaded Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. The largest seaborne invasion in history, the operation began the invasion of German-occupied western Europe and contributed to an Allied victory in the war.

Above: British soldiers land in Normandy.


The Allied commander and US general Dwight D Eisenhower gives instructions to paratroopers June 6, 1944 in England at the beginning of D-Day landing operations in Normandy.

On D-Day, the Allies landed around 156,000 troops in Normandy. The American forces landed numbered 73,000: 23,250 on Utah Beach, 34,250 on Omaha Beach, and 15,500 airborne troops. In the British and Canadian sector, 83,115 troops were landed (61,715 of them British): 24,970 on Gold Beach, 21,400 on Juno Beach, 28,845 on Sword Beach, and 7900 airborne troops.

Above: Canadian soldiers from 9th Brigade land with their bicycles at Juno Beach in Bernieres-sur-Mer.

First World War: Bolshevik and artistic revolution in Russia

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-02/register/first-world-war-bolshevik-and-artistic-revolution-in-russia-3m9t3d979

Initially dismissed as ‘trivial matters’, the arts soon became a vehicle for political advantage in the new Soviet Union

Michael Tillotson

Soviet soldiers reenact the storming of the Winter Palace ten years to the day after it happened

When one looks at any illustration of the storming of St Petersburg’s Winter Palace in October 1917 — and there are many, varying from those based on the original photographs to more dramatic representations — one might ask: “Where were the artists, ballerinas, poets, sopranos and writers on that historic evening?” The answer is “cheering on the mob”, either actually or in their hearts.
The Bolshevik-led revolution struck Russia in the middle of the so-called Silver Age, in which the artistic avant-garde were producing work in an iconoclastic surge, ridiculing the bourgeois and forecasting a new society of realism and “the people”. Unsurprisingly this phenomenon was seized upon by the Bolsheviks as a public relations vehicle for the propagation of their aims, principles and programmes.

First World War: Newly arrived and green, the Americans still proved a force to be reckoned with

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-02/register/first-world-war-newly-arrived-and-green-the-americans-still-proved-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with-5xxl9qrzf

While arguments raged as to how the US could help win the war, troops bound for France first had to face the feared German U-boats

Allan Mallinson

A painting of the Zeebrugge Raid by John de Lacy, depicting the landing at the Mole by HMS Vindictive

“I am going to get the men to France if they have to swim,” he had promised, and the US army’s chief of staff, General Peyton C March, would balk at nothing in his determination to strengthen the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). Troopships sailed into the Atlantic filled to overflowing, with three men, sleeping in shifts, sharing the same bunk, tiers of which reached the overhead (ceiling). Under March’s leadership, from May until the armistice in November, the War Department dispatched more than a million and a half men to France.

John Julius Norwich

Сумно як - я лише за кілька днів до його смерті закінчив читати його останню книгу... (і інші мені подобалися)


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/past-six-days/2018-06-02/register/john-julius-norwich-obituary-zwfmqq3gd

Easygoing and aristocratic historian and author who had a vibrant and textured private life

John Julius Norwich at his London home in 2008. The historian was scrupulously congenial and self-deprecating

The omens were favourable from the start. He was the only child of the society beauty Lady Diana Cooper and the highly accomplished diplomat, politician and philanderer Alfred Duff Cooper — good looks, brains and roguish charm were his by inheritance.
For a youthful John Julius Cooper (who would go on to be known as John Julius Norwich) this inheritance extended to exposure to a quite extraordinary line-up of the good and the great. When he met the diminutive, effeminate-voiced HG Wells — whose Russian mistress was on his arm — he wondered what women saw in him, and decided that it must be the honey smell of his breath.
He also had an encounter with Hilaire Belloc, helping him on with his cloak, only to discover that its pockets were full of flasks of alcohol. And as a 16-year-old in 1946 he watched Charles de Gaulle drop cigarette ash on to his half-eaten apple pie and, assuming that the general had had his fill, asked if he could finish it. “I said that it would be an honour for me to eat his cigarette ash — an appalling piece of over-the-top flattery, which I blush to recall.”

100 Years Ago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/war-pictures-by-mr-orpen-and-mr-nash-2k8cwqmfs

may 25, 1918

War pictures by Mr Orpen and Mr Nash

Mr William Orpen, ARA, has been to the war, and many will go to Messrs Agnew’s Gallery to see how he has adjusted himself to it. As a matter of fact, he has adjusted the war to himself. He can always find a formula for anything; and even for the war he has found formulae such as he used to find for Irish scenes, for fashionable ladies, for anything he chose to paint. He has merely applied an old formulae to a new subject. There is the falling bomb, with a Goya formula. It was real when Goya used it; but it is not real in Mr Orpen’s hands. He gives us horror, in his “Dead Germans in a Trench”. The Censor has passed this, though he would not pass a picture by Mr Nevinson of a dead Englishman, his aim being apparently to persuade us that only Germans die in this war. On the whole we feel that Mr Orpen has remained too much a master of himself and his theme. We wish the theme had sometimes mastered him.

Mr Paul Nash, who has also been to the war, and whose war pictures are at the Leicester Galleries, has adjusted himself to it much more. He is usually a romantic artist: in these works his romance has turned to irony. This is a beautiful and wonderful world, he seems to say; and see what man has made of it. See also how even man’s insanity cannot rob the tortured and battered earth of its beauty. In many of his drawings he has been struck by the strange, unaccountable beauty of the meaningless shapes of things so tortured and battered. They make an abstract music of their own, like that abstract music of form that the cubist tries to make for himself. Mr Nash has not had to make it; it was there for him to see; utter chaos, as of a world dead for a million years, frozen and without atmosphere, and yet beautiful to frightened human eyes. You feel that it has been seen with frightened eyes, frightened at the inhumanity of it. It is waste — the waste of worlds, of ages, which looks as if it had been made by some indifferent will of Nature. Then we remember that it has been made by man in his babyish will to power. That is the effect these drawings have on us. Like all good drawings of the war, they might be used in the propaganda of a league of peace. They might appal even a Junker, if he were not too stupid to think of anything but the word of command.

The German offensive of 1918, 5

The German offensive of 1918, 5

This week's chapter examines the reinforcements from England, troops recalled from other theatres of war, British reorganisation, minor actions in May on Somme and Lys fronts, the Aisne reached, enemy across the Vesle, Soissons and Fere-en-Tardenois taken, Germans again on the Marne, the offensive checked, German attack in the Matz valley, enemy progress and check, Americans at Cantigny, air fighting in May

The advanced troops of the Germans pushed on with doubled speed to gain the Marne. The line laid down for the advancfl on May 28 had been reached within four and twenty hours

 

The resumption of the battle

The supreme purpose of the Germans is to smash the Allied Armies, and we believe their aim is foredoomed to failure https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-resumption-of-the-battle-6z0g0980x?utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=newsletter_118&utm_medium=email&utm_content=118_30.05.2018%20Offensive%205%20(1)&CMP=TNLEmail_118918_3451206_118 May 28, 1918 After a pause which has lasted for nearly a month the Germans yesterday morning resumed attacks on an extensive scale in France and Flanders. Their assault in the north was delivered in the Ypres salient, on a front of five miles between Locre and Voormezeele. The southern attack was comparatively unexpected, and marked an extension of the battle area, being made on the heights of the Aisne, north-east of Soissons, and in the more open country between Berry-au-Bac and Reims. The operation in the south was by far the more important of the two, for the enemy seem to have joined issue in this region on a front of over thirty miles. They have left no gap in the actual battle-line. In effect they have extended their offensive as far as Reims, and have begun, as they sometimes do, on the two extreme flanks. However formidable the attack on the Aisne may prove to be, the point of greatest menace is still to be found before Amiens. Although the precise purpose of the enemy has still to be disclosed, we may take it as reasonably certain that the addition of another thirty miles to the battlefront does not imply any abandonment of the thrust at Amiens and the Somme estuary, or of the coincident threat to the Channel ports. On the other hand, it may imply an intention to menace Paris more directly. There is one point which should always be borne in mind in the discussions of the enemy’s intentions which are now so prevalent. It is natural that much should be said about the desire of the Germans to gain this city or that, and all of us are inclined to read into the German movements aspirations to gain a particular piece of coast, or a river line, or a great centre of communications. Yet one of the best of the German military writers quite correctly remarked the other day that all these purposes were comparatively subordinate. “Our objective,” he insisted, “is solely the smashing of the enemy’s forces.” This is a truism, no doubt, but it is necessary to remember it constantly when we are drawn into the topographical speculations which are inseparable from the present great operations in the West. The supreme purpose of the Germans is to smash the Allied Armies, and we believe their aim is foredoomed to failure.