authenticast

old guard

2015-05-19T04:36:00.002-07:00

flats

2014-10-05T15:18:00.000-07:00

seven year war

2014-10-04T03:32:00.001-07:00

kar

2014-10-02T09:06:00.001-07:00

sudan

2014-10-01T02:32:00.000-07:00

flats but are they authenticast

2012-09-21T07:03:00.002-07:00

russian winter

2012-07-04T08:04:00.000-07:00

Napoleon's Grande Armée of 610,000 men invaded Russia, heading towards Moscow, in 1812. The Russian army retreated before the French and again burnt their crops and villages, denying the enemy their use. Napoleon's army was ultimately reduced to 100,000. His army suffered further, even more disastrous losses on the retreat from Moscow. According to an American military study, the main body of Napoleon's Grande Armée, initially at least 378,000 strong, "diminished by half during the first eight weeks of his invasion, before the major battle of the campaign. This decrease was partly due to garrisoning supply centres, but disease, desertions, and casualties sustained in various minor actions caused thousands of losses. At Borodino on 7 September 1812—the only major engagement fought in Russia—Napoleon could muster no more than 135,000 troops and he lost at least 30,000 of them to gain a narrow and pyrrhic victory almost 600 miles inside hostile territory. The sequels were his uncontested and self-defeating occupation of Moscow and his humiliating retreat, which began on 19 October, before the first severe frosts later that month and the first snow on 5 November."

During WWII the only cold winter was in 1941-1942,and the Wehrmacht lacked necessary supplies, such as winter uniforms, due to the many delays in the German army's movements. Hitler's plans for Operation Barbarossa also miscarried before the onset of severe winter weather: he was so confident of a quick victory that he did not prepare for even the possibility of winter warfare in Russia. Yet his eastern army suffered more than 734,000 casualties (about 23% of its average strength of 3,200,000) during the first five months of the invasion. On 27 November 1941, General Eduard Wagner,

the Quartermaster General of the German Army, reported that

"We are at the end of our resources in both personnel and materiel. We are about to be confronted with the dangers of deep winter

french march to the nile

2012-07-03T11:28:00.092-07:00

The Fashoda Incident or "Fashoda Crisis" (1898) was the climax of imperial territorial disputes between Britainand France in Eastern Africa. A French expedition to Fashoda on the White Nile sought to gain control of the Nile River and thereby force Britain out of Egypt. The British held firm as Britain and France were on the verge of war. It ended in a diplomatic victory for the British. It gave rise to the 'Fashoda syndrome' in French foreign policy, or seeking to assert French influence in areas which might be becoming susceptible to British influence.During the late 19th century, Africa was rapidly being occupied by European colonial powers. This period in African history is usually called the Scramble for Africa. The two principal powers involved in this scramble were Britain and France, along with Germany, Belgium, Italy, Portugal, and Spain.

The French thrust into the African interior was mainly from the continent's Atlantic coast (modern Senegal) eastward, through the Sahel along the southern border of the Sahara, a territory covering modern Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Chad. Their ultimate goal was to have an uninterrupted link between the Niger River and the Nile, hence controlling all trade to and from the Sahel region, by virtue of their existing control over the caravan routes through the Sahara. France also had an outpost near the mouth of the Red Sea in Djibouti (French Somaliland), which could serve as an eastern anchor to a belt of French territory across the continent.below fashoda

The British, on the other hand, wanted to link their possessions in Southern Africa (modern South Africa, Botswana, Malawi, Lesotho, Zimbabwe, and Zambia), with their territories in East Africa (modern Kenya), and these two areas with the Nile basin. Sudan (which in those days included modern South Sudan and Uganda) was the key to the fulfilment of these ambitions, especially since Egypt was already under British control. This 'red line' (i.e. a proposed railway, see Cape-Cairo railway) through Africa was made most famous by Englishman and South African political force Cecil Rhodes, who wanted Africa "painted [British] Red".

When one draws a line from Cape Town to Cairo (Rhodes' dream) and another line from Dakar to French Somaliland (now Djibouti) by the Red Sea in the Horn (the French ambition), these two lines intersect in eastern South Sudan near the town of Fashoda (present-day Kodok), explaining its strategic importance. The French east-west axis and the British north-south axis could not co-exist; the nation that could occupy and hold the crossing of the two axes would be the only one able to proceed with its plan.

Fashoda was also bound up in the Egyptian Question – a long running dispute between the United Kingdom and France over the legality of the British occupation of Egypt. Since 1882 many French politicians, particularly those of the parti colonial, had come to regret France’s decision not to join with Britain in occupying the country. They hoped to force Britain to leave, and thought that a colonial outpost on the Upper Nile could serve as a base for French gunboats. These in turn were expected to make the British abandon Egypt. Another proposed scheme involved a massive dam, cutting off the Nile’s water supply and forcing the British out. These ideas were highly impractical, but they succeeded in frightening many British officials.A French force of just 120 tirailleurs soldiers and 12 French officers (Captain Marcel Joseph Germain - Captain Albert Baratier - CaptainCharles Mangin - Captain Victor Emmanuel Largeau - Lieutenant Félix Fouqué - teacher Dyé - Doctor Jules Emily Major - Warrant Officer De Prat - Sergeant George Dat - Sergeant Bernard - Sergeant Venail - the military interpreter Landerouin) set out from Brazzaville in a borrowed Belgian steamer, under Major Jean-Baptiste Marchand with orders to secure the area around Fashoda, and make it a French protectorate. They steamed up the Ubangi River to its head of navigation and then overland through jungle and scrub to the deserts of Sudan. They travelled across Sudan to the Nile River. They were to be met there by two expeditions coming from the east acrossEthiopia, one of which, from Djibouti, was led by Christian de Bonchamps, veteran of the Stairs ExpeditionThe Stairs Expedition to Katanga of 1891−1892 Stairs was the winner in a race between two imperial powers to claim Katanga, a vast mineral-rich territory in Central Africa for civilization, during which a local chief, (Mwenda Msiri) was killed.Msiri's favourite wife, the Portuguese-Angolan Maria de Fonseca, who died a grisly death at the hand of Msiri's adopted son and successor. It is notable for the fact that Stairs, the leader of one side, actually held a commission in the army of the other.
This 'scramble for Katanga' was a prime example of the colonial Scramble for Africa, and one of the most dramatic incidents of that period. to Katanga.

After an epic 14-month trek across the heart of Africa the Marchand Expedition arrived on 10 July 1898, but the de Bonchamps Expedition failed to make it after being ordered by the Ethiopians to halt, and then suffering accidents in the Baro Gorge. On 18 September, a powerful flotilla of British gunboats arrived at the isolated Fashoda fort, led by Sir Herbert Kitchener and including Lieutenant-Colonel (later General) Horace Smith-Dorrien. As the commander of the Anglo-Egyptian army that had just defeated the forces of the Mahdi at the Battle of Omdurman, he was in the process of reconquering the Sudan in the name of the Egyptian Khedive. Both sides were polite but insisted on their right to Fashoda.

News of the meeting was relayed to Paris and London, where it inflamed the imperial pride of both nations. Widespread popular outrage followed, each side accusing the other of naked expansionism and aggression. The crisis continued throughout September and October, and both nations began to mobilise their fleets in preparation for war.In naval terms, the situation was heavily in the United Kingdom’s favour, a fact that French deputies acknowledged in the aftermath of the crisis. Though the French force was larger, the British had them outgunned. The French army was far larger than the British one, but there was little it would have been able to do against Britain without efficient naval support.

This fact was undoubtedly an important one to Théophile Delcassé, the newly appointed French foreign minister. He saw no advantage in a colonial war with the British, especially since he was keen to gain their friendship in case of any future conflict with Germany. He therefore pressed hard for a peaceful resolution of the crisis. The reopening of the Dreyfus Affair had done much to distract French public opinion from events in the Sudan and with people increasingly questioning the wisdom of a war over such a remote part of Africa, the French government quietly ordered its soldiers to withdraw on 3 November.n March 1899, the French and British agreed that the source of the Nile and the Congo rivers should mark the frontier between their spheres of influence.

The Fashoda incident was the last serious colonial dispute between Britain and France, and its classic diplomatic solution is considered by most historians to be the precursor of the Entente Cordiale.
stairs expedition

On one side of the race was the Congo Free State (CFS), Belgian King Leopold II's instrument for private colonisation in Central Africa. On the other was the company chartered by the British government to maketreaties with African chiefs, the British South Africa Company (BSAC) of Cecil Rhodes, who mixed a determined approach to gaining mineral concessions with a vision for British imperial development spanning the continent.

Caught between them, and attempting to play one off against the other, was Msiri, the big chief of Garanganze orKatanga, a tribal land not yet claimed by a European power, and larger than many European countries in acreage. Msiri, like many African chiefs, had started as a slave trader, and had used superior weapons obtained by trading ivory, copper and slaves, to conquer and subjugate neighbouring tribes, taking many of them as slaves for resale. By the time of the Stairs Expedition, Msiri was the unchallenged despot of the area. Like the newcomers, he had plenty of cunning and strategic sense, but this time he was the one with the inferior military technology (as well as being totally opposed to the British concept of abolitionismAt the 1884–5 Berlin Conference and related bilateral negotiations between Britain and Belgium, the land west and north of the Luapula River−Lake Mweru system (Katanga) was allocated to the CFS while the land to the east and south was allocated to Britain and the BSAC. However the agreements included a Principle of Effectivity under which each colonial power had to set up an effective presence in the territory—by obtaining treaties from local tribal chiefs, flying their flag, and setting up an administration and police force to keep order—to confirm the claim. If they did not, a rival could come in and do so, thereby 'legally' taking over the territory in the eyes of the civilized powers
In 1890 neither colonial power had treaties or an effective presence in Katanga, and as reports came of gold and copper being found in Katanga, the stage was set for a race between the BSAC and CFS.

Treaties obtained from local chiefs in Africa were not aimed at having them accept their subjugation − superior force did that (just as it had for the chiefs themselves, earlier) − but were solely to impress on rival colonial powers that they had the means to convince their own populations of the justice of any military action they might have to take to defend their claim to civilize the area, and that was all that mattered. The idea of democracy was spreading in Europe all throughout the nineteenth century, and, increasingly, governments were required to take account of public opinion. Public opinion in Europe could be a powerful motivator of colonial actions, as the Fashoda Incident a few years later demonstrated.Previous expeditions

First off the mark was Rhodes who sent Alfred Sharpe from Nyasaland in 1890, backed up by Joseph Thomson coming from the south, but Sharpe failed to persuade Msiri, and Thomson didn't make it to Msiri's capital at Bunkeya. Sharpe's reports were complacently dismissive about the likelihood of their rivals having any success, and he said that once the 60-year-old Msiri was gone, Katanga would be theirs.In this case it would probably have become part of Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, with which it shares strong cultural and ethnic links.

Leopold responded in 1891 by sending two expeditions, and Sharpe's view seemed to be borne out. The Paul Le Marinel expedition only managed to obtain a vaguely worded letter (the Le Marinel letter) from Msiri agreeing to CFS agents having a presence in Katanga,Africans of the 1891–2 Stairs Expedition. The men with rifles are most likely to be askaris, the others are porters, the man in the jacket is probably a nyampara (supervisor or chief). In the background at left are sections of two small boats which they carried for crossing rivers. Next to them, middle background are bales of cloth used for bartering for food and permission to cross chiefs' territories. Note the stack of rifles at right. The askaris were armed with 'Fusils Gras'. Other firearms may be officers' weapons being carried by porters.Personnel but nothing more. This expedition was hampered by an accident when the gunpowder it was bringing for Msiri blew up, killing several men and damaging some of the other gifts being brought to sweeten the deal. A Belgian officer from the expedition, Legat, stayed behind with a group of askaris at a boma on the Lufoi River about 40 km from Bunkeya to keep an eye on Msiri. (Msiri later accused Legat of actually having kept the supplies lost in the explosion for himself).

Le Marinel was followed by the Delcommune Expedition, which tried to persuade Msiri on the basis of the Le Marinel letter to accept the CFS flag and Leopold's sovereignty. It also failed, and moved off to the south to explore Katanga's mineral resources.Preparations and outward journey

Belgium was short of people with tropical experience but Leopold was adept at recruiting other European nationalities for his schemes. Central Africa was a wild frontier attracting mercenaries for hire. At the recommendation of British-American explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had already acted for Leopold in the Congo, the 27 years old Swahili speaking
Captain William Stairs was appointed to lead the expedition, on the basis of his experience on the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition on which he had become Stanley's second in command. He had a reputation of someone who would obey orders and get the job done. That previous expedition had been marked by violence and brutality against any Africans who stood in its way as well as against its own African members. Canadian born at a time when it was part of the British Empire, Stairs had been educated partly in Britain and had joined a British regiment. He was considered to be and considered himself English or British.

Stairs' second-in-command was the only Belgian on the expedition, Captain Omer Bodson, who had already served the CFS in the Congo, and had had some contact with the Emin Pasha Relief expedition's controversial 'rear column'. Third in command was the Marquis Christian de Bonchamps, a French adventurer and hunter. There were two other whites: Joseph Moloney, the expedition doctor and also something of an adventurer, had previous African experience as a medical officer in the Boer War, and on an expedition in Morocco; and Robinson, the carpenter and fixer.

Unlike Sharpe, Stairs was not at all complacent about being in a race, and thought it likely that Joseph Thomson would be sent to negotiate with Msiri for the BSAC before they could get there.

The expedition hired 400 Africans, consisting of four or five Zanzibari 'chiefs' or supervisors including Hamadi bin Malum and Massoudi, about 100 askaris or African soldiers, a number of cooks and personal servants for the whites, and the rest, the majority, were porters or 'pagazis'. Most were from Zanzibar, some were fromMombasa, 40 were hired later in Tabora, Msiri's birthplace.
At Bunkeya the expedition also had use of eight tough Dahomeyan askari stationed at Legat's boma on the Lufoi who knew Bunkeya well.

The expedition's askaris were armed with 200 'Fusil Gras' rifles (a standard French army weapon of the time)while the officers each had several weapons including Winchester repeating rifles. Msiri's army had muskets, and needed gunpowder.Orders and objectives

Stairs' orders were to take Katanga with or without Msiri's agreement. If they found a BSAC expedition had beaten them and had a treaty with Msiri they should await further orders. If they obtained a treaty and a BSAC expedition arrived, they should ask it to withdraw and use force to make them comply if necessary. Moloney and Stairs were quite prepared for this eventuality. They were aware that in 1890, Cecil Rhodes had seizedManicaland in the face of Portuguese claims by sending an armed unit under Frederick Selous to occupy the territory and force the Portuguese to withdraw.

Having taken Katanga they should then await the arrival of a second CFS column, the Bia Expedition led by two Belgian officers, which was coming down from the Congo River in the north to meet them.Route and journey

The island of Zanzibar was the expedition's base, as it was for most ventures into Central Africa. They left Zanzibar on June 27, 1891. The preferred route was via the Zambezi and Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi) but Harry Johnston, British Commissioner in Nyasaland who had acted for Rhodes by sending Sharpe on his failed mission to Msiri, advised that military action he was taking against slave traders made that route unsafe. Instead they crossed German East Africa from Zanzibar, marching 1050 km during the dry season to Lake Tanganyika through country with potentially hostile tribes and slave traders. They crossed the lake by boat, then marched 550 km to Bunkeya as extreme heat and humidity indicated the build-up to the rainy season which then brought chilling rain, mosquitoes and insanitary condition

Averaging 13.3 km per day, it took them 120 days' marching spread over five months (with rest days and delays).The journey included extremes of thick forest, swamps and desolate stony plains. It also included beautiful landscapes, fertile woodland and game-rich grasslands. In one afternoon, Bodson shot a dozen antelope; on another occasion, the men feasted on hippopotamus until they could not move.

The officers had donkeys to ride on, but these died after crossing Lake Tanganyika. The expedition was not attacked by hostile tribes or raiders as were weaker caravans going to Lake Tanganyika that year.

As they approached Bunkeya, they found the land affected by famine and strife, with a number of burnt and deserted villages. Moloney attributed this to Msiri's tyranny, other accounts suggested that some of the Wasanga chiefs Msiri had forcibly subjugated were taking advantage of the arrival of European powers in the land to rebel against his 30-year rule and, at the age of 60, Msiri was perceived as near the end of his time

Some accounts say that the Delcommune Expedition, still in the south of Katanga but out of contact with Stairs, was fomenting revolt among Msiri's subject tribes. Bonchamps noted that as Msiri's main army of 5000 warriors had gone south led by one 'Loukoukou' to put down a rebellion by a subject tribe, he was less belligerent, at least on the surface.

On being told by some local people that there were three Europeans in Bunkeya, for a time the expedition thought that Thomson had beaten them. They sent one of their chiefs ahead to ask Msiri for an audience, and he returned with a letter from one of the Europeans, Dan Crawford — they were Plymouth Brethren missionaries. Near Bunkeya they were met by Legat, the officer from the Le Marinel expedition with his elite Dahomeyan askari. There was no news of the Bia Expedition.^[30]^[31]

[edit]Msiri

Msiri's capital at Bunkeya consisted of a very large boma surrounded by numerous villages spread over an area several kilometres across. The expedition was directed to set up camp within a few hundred metres of the boma. Heads and skulls of Msiri's enemies and victims were mounted on the palisades and on poles at the front. Moloney and Bonchamps referred to these as examples of Msiri's barbarity, and later found it necessary to treat Msiri's own head in the same way, in order to impress his former slaves and warriors.

After the traditional three-day wait before one can see an African big chief, Msiri received them courteously on 17 December 1891. Gifts were presented and negotiations started. Both sides feigned the possibility of future compliance with the other's demands. Msiri wanted gunpowder and removal of Legat, Stairs wanted to fly the CFS flag over Bunkeya. Stairs seemed to think that the Le Marinel letter indicated Msiri's acquiescence, but it was vague, and Msiri repudiated any such interpretation.

During a stand-off in the negotiations, Msiri used a technique to spy on Stairs' camp which the latter only discovered later, shown in the illustration, Msiri's spies.

Of Msiri's physical presence, Joseph Moloney wrote: "In his prime, Msiri, must have looked the ideal of a warrior-king; he was by no means contemptible in his decline… there was a sphinx-like impenetrability about his expression… his demeanour was thoroughly regal".

On December 19, Stairs realised that Msiri's intention was to delay as long as possible and play the CFS and BSAC off against each other
Concern was growing that Thomson might appear at any time, or that the 5000 warriors would return from the south, so Bonchamps proposed capturing Msiri when he went out at night relatively unguarded to see his favourite wife, Maria de Fonseca, and holding him hostage.
Stairs rejected the idea partly because the three British missionaries were not under the expedition's protection at that time, and Stairs felt they were in effect hostages who would be killed in retaliation. He decided instead on an ultimatum: he told Msiri to sign a treaty and hold a ceremony of blood brotherhood with him the next day, and that he would fly the CFS flag without his consent, which he proceeded to do.

Msiri's response was to leave in the night for Munema, a fortified village outside Bunkeya. The next day, December 20, finding him gone, Stairs sent Bodson and Bonchamps with 100 askari to bring Msiri back to him under arrest.

[edit]The killing of Msiri

At Munema Bodson and Bonchamps found a large guarded stockade surrounding a hundred huts and a maze of narrow alleys, with Msiri somewhere inside. Despite Bonchamps' protests about the danger, Bodson decided to go inside with just ten askari including a Dahomeyan and Hamadi-bin-Malum to find Msiri, while Bonchamps and the remaining askari waited outside. Bodson would fire his revolver if he needed assistance

Bodson found Msiri sitting in front of a large hut with 300 men in the background, many armed with muskets. Bodson told Msiri he had come to take him to Stairs, and Msiri did not reply but became angry, rose and put his hand on his sword (a gift brought by Stairs). Bodson drew his revolver and shot Msiri three times, and one of Msiri's men — his son Masuka — fired his musket hitting Bodson in the abdomen and spinal column. The Dahomeyan askari shot and killed Masuka, and in the general firing Hamadi was hit in the ankle.

Bonchamps and the remaining askari ran to the sound, and chaos took over. Most of Msiri's men fled, the askaris shot at anything, and then started looting. It took nearly an hour for Moloney to arrive with reinforcements. He and Bonchamps restored order among the askaris and, under sporadic fire from Msiri's men under the command of his adopted son Mukanda-Bantu and brothers, Chukako and Lukuku, retreated with Bodson and the other wounded, and Msiri's body, to prevent his men pretending to the populace that he was still alive. They took up a defensive position on a hill near their camp where Stairs had been waiting

This account of the killing was attributed by Moloney to a verbal report by Hamadi, while Bonchamps wrote that the injured Bodson gave him the same account before he died in the night. Stairs wrote a letter to Arnot with the same details of the attempted arrest at Munema, but also said that Msiri's men had 'cocked their guns' when Bodson confronted Msiri

[edit]A barbaric act

On the hill to which they retreated, according to Bonchamps but not mentioned by Moloney, the expedition cut off Msiri's head and hoisted it on a palisade in plain view, to show the people their king was dead. Bonchamps, who had written about the disgust of seeing how Msiri had put heads of his enemies on poles outside his boma, admitted this was
barbaric, but claimed it was a necessary lesson aimed at those who had attacked the expedition 'without provocation'.

Munema was littered with bodies and the expedition's askaris carried out a general massacre. Dan Crawford wrote: "The population completely dispersed. No one dared walk openly abroad. The paths became lined with corpses, some of whom had died of starvation and some of the universal mistrust which keeps spears on the quiver".

[edit]Aftermath

The expedition quickly strengthened their defences but were not attacked in retaliation. Msiri's brothers and Mukanda-Bantu sent messages the next day asking for the body to bury, and Stairs agreed to release it. Msiri's head is not mentioned again by Bonchamps, Garanganze sources say they buried a body without a head.
After the burial, negotiations re-opened and included Maria de Fonseca (later executed by Mukanda-Bantu in horrible fashion for 'betrayal') and her brother, Msiri's Portuguese-Angolan trading partner, Coimbra.

The expedition's weaponry and askaris had proved their superiority over muskets and Msiri's people were more interested in the succession than revenge.
Stairs backed Mukanda-Bantu to succeed Msiri, but as chief of a reduced territory, and he restored the Wasanga chiefs overthrown by Msiri 30 years before. Mukanda-Bantu signed the treaties, and the restored Wasanga chiefs were very happy to do so too. Msiri's brothers were unhappy with the sub-chieftainships they were given and refused to sign up, until threatened with the same fate as Msiri.
By early January 1892 the expedition had the papers sufficient to convince their British rivals that they now had Katanga

During that January though, the food ran out and none was left in the district — already affected by famine, the population took what little there was with them when they fled. The rainy season brought malaria and dysentery, all four surviving officers fell sick, and floods cut Bunkeya off from the game-rich plains to the north where they might have hunted. Moloney recovered first and took charge of the expedition's task of building a more permanent fort and trying to find food. 76 of the expedition's askaris and porters died that month of dysentery and starvation. Stairs had severe fevers, and in his delirium he imagined Thomson had arrived, and yelled for his revolver with which to repel the BSAC man; Moloney had wisely taken it from him.

At the end of the January the new season's crop of maize was ready for harvest, and this saved the expedition. Then the delayed Bia Expedition of about 350 men arrived from the CFS in the north.

[]Return journey

As Captain Stairs, the Marquis Bonchamps and Robinson were still incapacitated, it was agreed that Captain Bia would take over the consolidation of Congo Free State control of Katanga, and the Stairs expedition would return by the originally-planned route via Lake Nyasa and the Zambezi.

As they left carrying the sick officers in hammocks they experienced some harassment and raids by natives ruled by Lukuku, and the march was exceptionally hard owing to the heavy rains at the end of the wet season (as well as to the continuing illness and weakness of expedition members). Bonchamps had recovered by the time they reached Lake Tanganyika and was put in charge by Stairs, who had not fully recovered. This caused some friction between Bonchamps and Moloney and there are some contradictions between their accounts.

From the north end of Lake Nyasa onwards the route was by steamer, except for a march of about 150 km around the rapids on the Shire River. Here the route took them pastZomba and Blantyre, headquarters of the British Commissioner for Central Africa, none other than Alfred Sharpe, the BSAC agent whom they had beaten in the race. They met but the conversation has not been recorded.^[52]

On a second steamer down the Zambezi, Stairs, who seemed to have recovered, suddenly took sick again and died on June 3, 1892 of haematuric fever, a severe form of malaria, before they reached Chinde, a river transport base, where he was buried in the European cemetery.^[53]

The expedition reached Zanzibar a year after their departure. Of 400 Africans on the expedition to leave Tabora, only 189 reached Zanzibar, most of the other 211 had died, a few had absconded.^[ Bonchamps, Moloney and Robinson reached Europe barely two weeks after sailing from Zanzibar, and just over 14 months after having left Paris and London on the expedition.

[edit]Consequences

On his return to London, Moloney learned that Thomson had not tried to reach Katanga again. The British Government had quietly ordered him not to go.

The expedition had only survived through the strength and endurance of the Zanzibari porters and askaris, as well as the tendency of a loyal core of them, epitomised by Hamadi bin Malum, to come to the rescue when mutiny, treachery, robbery or some other disaster threatened.Leopold and the Belgian Congo

The expedition was regarded by the Belgians as a complete success. Leopold used his influence and that of the British directors he had appointed to his companies to gain acceptance of the treaties signed to place Katanga securely in Leopold's realm, adding about half a million square kilometres to it (16 times the area of Belgium). Keeping it separate from the CFS, Leopold delegated the administration of Katanga to another of his companies, which set up on the northern and western shores of Lake Mweru. This meant it was not associated with the Red Rubber problems of CFS rule in the rest of the Congo. The Katanga company's main achievement was helping to stamp out the slave trade, but it did little in the rest of the territory until after 1900. Katanga remained affected by instability and conflict, as various chieftainships struggled to fill the vacuum left by Msiri's death.

Katanga and the Congo were both taken over by the Belgian government in 1908 in response to the international outcry over the brutality of Leopold's CFS, and were merged in 1910 as the Belgian Congo, but the legacy of the previous separation was a tendency of Katanga to secede.

The Belgian Congo administration with its policy of direct rule did nothing to prepare the country for independence in 1960 and within a few years Congo and Katanga became such bywords for strife and chaos that the Mobutu regime, in a futile effort to improve its image, changed the names to Zaire and Shaba respectively (since reverted).

Cecil Rhodes got over any disappointment at losing the scramble for Katanga by doing what he did best − he invested in mineral prospecting and mining in Katanga. When the British in the Rhodesian territories realised in the 1920s the extent of Katanga's mineral wealth, which was more than the equal of Northern Rhodesia's own Copperbelt, the most polite epithet for Captain Stairs was 'mercenary', and some regarded him as a traitor to the British Empire.

The population in and around Bunkeya numbered 60−80 000 but most dispersed in the disorder. The Belgians forcibly moved Mukanda-Bantu and about 10,000 of his people to the Lufoi River where they continued the chieftainship under the title 'Mwami Mwenda' in honour of Msiri. They eventually returned to Bunkeya where today Mwami Mwenda VIII is the reigning chief of about 20,000 Yeke/Garanganze peopleThe Garanganze or Yeke people (also 'Bayeke') of Katanga in DR Congo established the Yeke Kingdom under the warrior-king Msiri who dominated the southern part of Central Africa from 1850 to 1891 and controlled the trade route between Angola and Zanzibar from his capital at Bunkeya.

Msiri and his people were originally Nyamwezi traders from the around Tabora who migrated to Katanga to reach the source of copper, ivory and slaves to trade. They took over and merged with a Wasanga chieftainship and established a powerful base by conquering neighbouring tribes.

In 1891 Msiri was killed by the Stairs Expedition sent by King Leopold II of Belgium to take possession of Katanga for his Congo Free State. Many of the Yeke dispersed, with some settling in the Luapula valley and western shores of Lake Mweru around the Garanganze Missions of the Plymouth Brethren led by Dan Crawford. Others who had been regarded as Yeke were re-absorbed back into the Wasanga ethnic group. Consequently the Yeke or Garanganze today number only about 20,000 and speak Kisanga and Swahili, the Yeke language (Kiyeke) being used only for ceremonial occasion

Dan Crawford moved to the Luapula-Lake Mweru valley and set up two missions to which many Garanganze people gravitated.^[27]The DR Congo-Zambia border

The Stairs Expedition confirmed that the border between Belgian and British colonies would lie along the Zambezi-Congo watershed, the Luapula River, Lake Mweru and an arbitrary line drawn between Mweru and Lake Tanganyika. This divided culturally and ethnically similar people such as the Kazembe-Lunda and created the Congo Pedicle, an example of the arbitrary nature of colonial borders.

[edit]Msiri's head: a curse and a mysterIn the traditional belief systems of the Garanganze people, as with other Central and Southern African cultures, illness and disease are not caused by pathogens but by magic and supernatural forces.The sickness suffered by Stairs and the expedition members was attributed by them to Msiri's spirit and his people taking revenge, and a rumour took hold that Stairs had kept Msiri's head and it cursed and killed all who carried it.The Mwami Mwenda chieftainships' history says that the expedition fled with Msiri's head intending to present it to Leopold, but 'Mukanda-Bantu and his men' caught and 'killed all the Belgians' and the head was buried 'under a hill of stones' in what is now Zambia.

Another account says that when Stairs died he had with him Msiri's head in a can of kerosene, but there is no mention of it in Moloney's or Bonchamps' journals. The whereabouts of Msiri's skull remains a mystery today.

real American

2012-07-02T08:22:00.001-07:00

german far east marines

2012-07-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

indian army

2012-06-23T03:56:00.001-07:00

swede army

2012-06-23T03:54:00.001-07:00

kings african rifles

2012-05-28T03:52:00.001-07:00

indians

2012-05-27T08:30:00.002-07:00

swedish grenadier

2012-05-27T02:35:00.000-07:00

comets to the attack 1939

2012-05-26T17:29:00.001-07:00

On 10 May 1940 the Germans invaded Holland and Belgium. French and British forces rushed into Belgium to meet them. However they were driving into a trap. German panzer tanks advanced through the forest called the Ardennes in Southeast Belgium behind the allied forces.

At first the French Commander in Chief, Gamelin did not realise what was happening. At first he thought the attack through the Ardennes was merely a subsidiary attack and the main attack was coming through North Belgium. By the time he realised the truth it was too late. The German panzers were advancing behind the allied forces in Belgium threatening to cut them off. On 20 May 1940 the Germans reached the sea at Abbeville. On 24 May they reached Boulogne and on 26 May Calais. The allied forces in Belgium would now have to be evacuated by sea.

The German tanks could have reached Dunkirk before the British however on 26 May Hitler ordered the advance to halt for two days. It is not clear why he did that. Perhaps he was afraid the advance was going too far too fast and might be cut off. He also seems to have thought the Luftwaffe could finish off the British.

He was wrong. From 28 May to 4 June 1940 some allied troops were evacuated by sea in 'Operation Dynamo'. Yet the soldiers had to leave most of their equipment behind and not all of them got away. Some 40,000 French soldiers were captured.

Although the evacuation through Dunkirk was a great achievement it was also a great military defeat. Winston Churchill had become prime minister of Britain on 10 May 1940 and he wisely warned that 'wars are not won by evacuations'.

Meanwhile the Germans began the conquest of France. They began a new offensive on 5 June 1940. They captured Paris on 14 June 1940 and France capitulated on 21 June.

unknown authenticast

2012-05-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

football

2012-05-19T11:19:00.001-07:00

WW1 Cavalry

2012-01-11T06:53:00.000-08:00

When the war broke out in Western Europe in August 1914, both Britain and Germany had a cavalry force that each numbered about 100,000 men. Such a number of men would have needed a significant number of horses but probably all senior military personnel at this time believed in the supremacy of the cavalry attack. In August 1914, no-one could have contemplated the horrors of trench warfare - hence why the cavalry regiments reigned supreme. In fact, in Great Britain the cavalry regiments would have been seen as the senior regiments in the British Army, along with the Guards regiments, and very many senior army positions were held by cavalry officers.

However, the cavalry charge seen near Mons was practically the last seen in the war. Trench warfare made such charges not only impractical but impossible. A cavalry charge was essentially from a bygone military era and machine guns, trench complexes and barbed wire made such charges all but impossible. However, some cavalry charges did occur despite the obvious reasons as to why they should not. In March 1918, the British launched a cavalry charge at the Germans. By the Spring of 1918, the war had become more fluid but despite this, out of 150 horses used in the charge only 4 survived. The rest were cut down by German machine gun fire.

However, though a cavalry charge was no longer a viable military tactic, horses were still invaluable as a way of transporting materials to the front. Military vehicles, as with any mechanised vehicles of the time, were relatively new inventions and prone to problems. Horses, along with mules, were reliable forms of transport and compared to a lorry needed little upkeep.

british colonial 1918 india

2011-11-28T10:07:00.001-08:00

trapper

2011-10-07T09:17:00.001-07:00

The Mystery of the Swiss Guards

2011-09-20T15:09:00.000-07:00

Authenticast / South African Engineers, comprising: 6 x Swiss Papal Guards Service Dress, 6 x Swiss Papal Guards Parade Dress & 3 x Dismounted Italian Carabiniers in Parade DressAuthenticast /
It was a glorious day in Umbria in 1998. The present writer was travelling to Orvieto from Rome in a crowded train when his attention was suddenly drawn to the headline in the Italian national daily newspaper, La Repubblica, announcing in huge type: ‘Morte in Vaticano,’ and inside, ‘Sangue in Vaticano’.

It was not until the evening of the 5th of May that it became clear that it was not the pope who had been murdered. Nevertheless, “the worst blood bath in more than a century” had occurred in the heart of Vatican City on the previous day.

As with most Vatican cover ups, it took years for the cracks to appear in the carefully fashioned story. John Follain, The Sunday Times correspondent for Vatican affairs, has thrown new light on this cruel episode in his book City of Secrets 2003. It must be said that Follain rejects the idea that John Paul I was murdered, and he may therefore be giving the Vatican more credit than it deserves in this instance too, but his work is otherwise first class.
Three bodies

Around 9pm on the 4th May, in the heart of Vatican City, a triple murder was discovered in the flat of the commander of the Swiss Guard Alois Estermann. Estermann’s wife, “former model” Gladys Meza Romero, was the first to be discovered. She had been shot. Further inside, in the sitting room, Estermann was found shot through the cheek and neck. Nearby, Lance Corporal Cedric Tornay was slumped over the gun which had killed all three. He appeared to have put the gun in his mouth and discharged the contents of his cranium backwards. There seemed no reason to seek for any further explanation; simply that Tornay murdered his Commander and his Commander’s wife who, unfortunately, was present, before taking his own life.
The Swiss Guard

The Swiss Guard are basically Swiss mercenaries paid to defend the pope and the Vatican. Just before the Reformation, St Peters’ Chair was occupied by a warring priest Julius II who used regularly to charge into battle clad in full armour. Since the rest of the monarchs of Europe were well pleased with their Swiss mercenaries, Julius naturally wanted some too. He acquired 150 in 1506. Two are shown in a fresco by Raphael who was pressed into glorifying Julius military exploits. The fresco can still be seen in Julius apartments where the guards are portrayed kneeling by the papal throne, which, at the first sign of trouble, the guards are supposed to grab with the pope still sitting in it, and run.

Today, the Swiss Guard, or more correctly the Cohors Pedestris Helvetiorum, are the pope’s only army. The main papal army was overthrown with the papal states in 1870. The Palatine and Noble guard were disbanded by Paul VI in the liberalising Vatican Council II era. Besides the Swiss Guard, there is a domestic police force, the Vigilanza, and at the other end of the security spectrum, supplementing the general spying potential of every priest, hovers a shadowy secret service equivalent to the CIA or the KGB.

The Swiss Guard’s greatest defeat was during the Sack of Rome in 1527 when Clement VII escaped down his passata to the Castel St Angela leaving the guard to face terrible slaughter as St Peter’s was turned into a livery stables.

At the best of times the young men have easily become homesick to the heat and dirt of Rome which is in such contrast to the fresh air, mountain streams and forests of home. However, even a short undistinguished spell of service in the Swiss Guard has traditionally opened doors for a subsequent career back home.

Mme Baudet

Tornay’s mother, Muguette Baudet, who is extremely proud of her son and still greatly distressed by the treatment both she and her son received at the hands of the Vatican, released to the press a picture of him standing in front of the war memorial inside Vatican City, commemorating the Sack of Rome. The public have never seen this memorial, which consists of a graphic carved stone tableau of a soldier standing over two fallen figures. Below, a Latin inscription states that, “they fell gloriously … defending the papacy to the utmost”, and below this in capitals PATRIA – MEMOR, “always remembered in their homeland”. One suspects Mme Baudet is now less enthusiastic about the official Vatican newspaper photograph of her shaking hands with the pope, as her son, in full regalia, stood by on the day of his ceremonial swearing in.

Swearing in

The swearing in ceremony is not a difficult stage for recruits to reach. The historical complement of Swiss Guard was 150 from Julius II’s time onwards. But today, with the decline in respect for the papacy, the tendency of the young to travel, and the relative poverty of Italy compared with Switzerland making for low wages, the type of recruit tends to be more lowly. The unit’s size is therefore smaller. Eligible young men have to be 19-30 years old and of 174cm minimum height. They must be Swiss Roman Catholics from Romanist families. A note of recommendation from the parish priest completes their entry requirements. Most young Swiss men want an exciting stay in Rome and resent being tied down to their Vatican quarters with a lot of restrictions. So apart from zealous practising Romanists, the Vatican has to attract candidates as best it can. A pension on leaving is certainly a useful asset in pursuing a further career.

Protestant mother

Usually Tornay had a Protestant mother who had been forced by her husband to bring him up as a Romanist in the strongly Roman Catholic part of Switzerland where he was born, and which traditionally supplies many recruits. He was more interested in the military side of his career and such glamour as that would afford. Certainly the solemn oath he took to “serve the Supreme Pontiff John Paul II and his legitimate successors, and also devote myself to them with all my strength sacrificing my life to defend them if necessary,” does demand of each guard that they should be ready to protect the pope from bullets using their own body as a shield.

The risk of being in this situation is generally not thought high but Tornay who saw through the pettiness of the Vatican hierarchy and derided it in jest, certainly placed this military vow at the top of his own priorities.

Gone are the days when the commander was usually from one of the great Swiss aristocratic families. Estermann, the 32nd commander, was from an ordinary background.

The recruitment document reads rather like a brochure for an adventure holiday. “You are young, modern, lively, dynamic, athletic … Your ideal is a fascinating life … you are attracted by courageous acts … etc.” When the author once went to the private area of the Vatican, the accompanying Swiss guard in his bright yellow uniform, tailored in house, carrying his halberd, was a delightful professional young man. Open and genuine, his demeanour was in sharp contrast to the hard bitten Vatican hierarchy with their interdepartmental jealousies which left my access in doubt until the last minute. No doubt, had his order “no video” been transgressed, there would have been swift reaction.

This was very much the sort of description of Tornay given to Follain in the journalist’s exhaustive interviews with those who knew him, both in Rome and back in Switzerland. Furthermore it is most unlikely that a misfit would have gained the rank of Lance Corporal.

Cheap alcohol

Again, at the time of Vatican Council II, rifles were replaced by the historic halberds and breast plates, the main use of which was to charm pilgrims and tourists. But the assassination attempt on the pope in 1981 suddenly reversed this decline of the force into a sideshow. Once more there was an attempt to inject real fighting skill and discipline into a unit which in the late 60’s had become very dissolute. This had not been helped by the general student unrest of 1968 and the fact that alcohol was very much cheaper in the Vatican state supermarket than over the border in Italy. The state of the art Swiss pistol used by Tornay had only been introduced shortly before he joined.

‘Fit of madness’

By about midnight, Opus Dei press secretary Navarro Valls, with his imposing presence more riveting than that of many cardinals, had declared the act of Tornay to be a “fit of madness”. A post mortem subsequently showed a small tumour 4cm x 2.5cm in the frontal lobe of Tornay’s brain. This is an area of the brain which governs personality. There were also traces of cannabis derivatives in his system. The Vatican hastily seized upon both these facts as corroborative evidence to service their “fit of madness” theory. On this basis Navarro Valls confidently elevated his brain storm theory to a “moral certainty”.

And the circumstances in the hours prior to the slaughter could not have been more appropriate for a crime of sudden anger. At midday on 4th May 1998, Estermann, was appointed commander of the unit with the usual ceremony. Tornay was about to leave the guard and return home. He had every expectation of receiving the coveted benemerenti medal for three years service. His colleagues also expected him to get the award as he had after all become a Lance Corporal. The same day he discovered quite casually from friends that his name was not on the posted list for the medal. Only Estermann could be responsible for his being denied the honour. He at once embarked on a course of frenetic activity now accurately pieced together by Follain, trying to contact anyone and everyone of importance concerning the medal and his failure to get the award. When this did not yield results he apparently committed the murders in a fit of pique. Not able then to face the consequences, he killed himself. The Vatican was set fair to bury this scandal with ease.

Rumours begin to circulate

But the following year rumours began to leak out that there was more to this than met the eye. Had Estermann been a spy in the Vatican for the Stasi, the East German secret police before the collapse of Communism? Certainly such espionage went on in both camps. Was Estermann a sodomite? Was there a third gunman? The Vatican stuck to its version and denied the infuriated Italian police access on grounds that the Vatican was extra-territorial. A copy of the lengthy Vatican Bolletino 55/99 released on the 8th February 1999 lies before the author and stands firm for the “fit of madness” explanation.

The New York Times reported ten days later under the headline, “Vatican murder mystery stubbornly fixates Rome,” that the, “closure of the Vatican’s investigation into the murder of a Swiss Guard commander by one of his junior officers last week has done nothing to stop new cycles of rumour and speculation”.

The story would not go away. The Baudet family hired top lawyers that the Vatican could not ignore.

On 7th August 2002 the Catholic Word News Service reported the capitulation: “The Swiss Guard killings returned to the headlines when Luc Brossolet said that the Vatican’s judicial system is marked by secrecy, silence, and abuse. Brossolet and Jacques Verges are high-profile lawyers who have been hired by the Tornay family to press for a further investigation of the deaths. The Vatican today issued a statement revealing that the petition brought by Verges and Brossolet is being examined by the Vatican tribunal. This is a major setback to Rome. However, the statement continued: ‘The offensive statements directed against the Holy See, Vatican City State, and its judicial bodies are totally unacceptable, in addition to lacking any foundation.”

The same article showed that the Vatican still stood by Bolletino 55/99, “After a 9- month investigation of the deaths, Judge Gianluigi Marrone of the Vatican Tribunal .. …. found no evidence to support a series of sensational charges that had been aired in the Italian media, suggesting that the killings might have been linked to drug traffic, homosexual affairs, or other scandals …”

the first tommys in france

2011-09-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

The place, according to a jokingly chalked board, is "somewhere in France". The time is the winter of 1915 and the spring and summer of 1916. Hundreds of thousands of British and Empire soldiers, are preparing for The Big Push, the biggest British offensive of the 1914-18 war to date.

A local French photographer, almost certainly an amateur, possibly a farmer, has offered to take pictures for a few francs. Soldiers have queued to have a photograph taken to send back to their

anxious but proud families in Britain or Australia or New Zealand.

Sometimes, the Tommies are snapped individually in front of the same battered door or in a pear and apple orchard. Sometimes they are photographed on horseback or in groups of comrades. A pretty six-year-old girl – the photographer's daughter? – occasionally stands with the soldiers or sits on their knees: a reminder of their families, of human tenderness and of a time forgotten

M. GARDIN AND M. ZANARDI

A local French photographer, almost certainly an amateur, possibly a farmer, has offered to take pictures for a few francs. Soldiers have queued to have a photograph taken to send back to their anxious but proud families in Britain or Australia or New Zealand.

Many of the British soldiers are wearing rough sheepskins over their battle-dress: a tell-tale sign of the great overcoat shortage of the winter of 1915. The sheepskin-clad "Tommies" look, bizarrely, like ancient warriors or Greek or Yugoslav partisans.

Within a few months – or days, most probably – many of the soldiers were dead. The "somewhere in France" where these pictures were taken was a village called Warloy-Baillon in the département of the Somme. Ten miles to the east was the front line from which the British Army launched the most murderous battle of that, or any, war, which lasted from 1 July to late November 1916 and killed an estimated 1,000,000 British empire, French and German soldiers.

More than 90 years later, at least 400 glass photographic plates preserving the images were found in the loft of a barn at Warloy-Baillon and cast out as rubbish. In recent months, the plates, some in perfect condition, some badly damaged, have been lovingly assembled and their images printed, scanned and digitally restored by two Frenchmen.

Together, they form a poignant record of the British army on the eve of, or during, the battle of the Somme: the smiling, the scared, the scruffy, the smart, the formal, the jokey, the short, the tall, the young and the old. There is even an image of a 1914-18 war phenomenon which was rarely photographed and scarcely ever mentioned: a black Tommy in artillery uniform, with two white comrades.

The Independent Magazine publishes a large selection of the images here for the first time. More of the collection, including a few images of French civilians and soldiers, and possibly the photographer and his family, can be seen on The Independent website.

Who are these British and British Empire soldiers? Who was the photographer? Who was the little girl? From internal evidence in the pictures it is possible to identify the period and some of the military units – The Northumberland Fusiliers, the Tramways' Battalion of the Glasgow Highlanders, the Royal Leicestershire Regiment, the Royal Army Service Corps, the Royal Flying Corps, the Royal Engineers, a few Australians, a South African, a lone New Zealander.

The identity of the soldiers is, and may always remain, a mystery. They are, in a sense, a photographic parallel to the 400 unknown British and Australian soldiers now being excavated from eight mass graves near Fromelles, 50 miles to the north. Including the figures in the group photos, well over 400 unknown Tommy faces come back to us through the mists of time and battle.

Most First World War photographs show smart soldiers before leaving home for the front or exhausted soldiers during or just after combat. Here we see the clear and often modern-looking features of soldiers at rest, either before – or in some cases, it seems – just after fighting in the trenches to the east.

Many of the images show medical orderlies. Warloy-Baillon was the site of a large hospital, taken over by the British Army. Other soldiers were evidently photographed while in reserve, or engaged in behind-the-line tasks, or after recovering from minor wounds.

There are several gems. Who is the "black Tommy"? There was already a small black community in Britain in 1914 – in Cardiff, in Liverpool and in the North East. Black men are known to have volunteered and fought in the trenches, but very few photographs of them exist.

Who, also, is the giant of a British soldier, possibly as much as seven feet tall, sitting in front of two standard-sized comrades? Who was the Tommy who asked the photographer to take a picture of his back, which has been elaborately tattooed with the faces of the British royal family? Why is one group of soldiers holding a large rag doll?

The survival of the images is owed to two local men: Bernard Gardin, aged 60, a photography enthusiast; and Dominique Zanardi, 49, proprietor of the "Tommy" café at Pozières, a village in the heart of the Somme battlefields.

M. Gardin was given a batch of about 270 glass plates by someone who knew of his hobby. He approached M. Zanardi, who has a collection of Great War memorabilia, including a football dug up 12 years ago inside a British soldier's rucksack. M. Zanardi, it turned out, already had 130 similar plates which he had gathered from other local people.

"About three years ago, someone bought a barn near Warloy-Baillon," M. Zanardi said. "They found the glass plates in the loft and just threw them out as rubbish. Many of them were picked up and taken away by passers-by. I started collecting them and had reached over 100 when M. Gardin turned up with this great batch of 270. They must also, originally, have come from the same source. There may be many more out there which we have not yet been found."

M. Gardin and M. Zanardi have had prints made, at their own expense, from the original plates. M. Gardin describes these as "9 x 12 centimetre glass plates, of the kind used at the time by amateur photographers. A professional would have used a camera with bigger plates, 18 centimetres x 24."

Amateur or not, the quality of many of the images turned out to be excellent. Some plates, however, had been damaged. M. Gardin scanned the prints into a computer and set about digitally restoring the images. "If it's just a question of filling in a wall or part of a uniform, it's quite easy," he said. "Faces, and especially eyes, are very tricky."

Prints of more than 100 of the unknown soldiers have now been framed and exhibited in M. Zanardi's café in Pozières. Others will join them when they are ready.

M. Zanardi's attempts to identify the photographer and the images of French civilians, and a handful of French soldiers, have got nowhere. "My belief is that he lived close to the barn where the plates were found," he said. "He may have been a farmer. The plates were just stacked up after he printed photographs from them and then forgotten for more than 90 years."

M. Gardin told me: "We think that they form an important, and moving, historical record. Our motive in restoring them was not financial. It was a tribute to all the British soldiers who fought here and also to an unknown photographer."

Identical copies of these images must have been sent home to mothers and wives and sweethearts in late 1915 and the first half of 1916. Will someone out there recognise their Great Grandad or their Great Uncle Bill?

there was no war
the second week of our holiday in France and it was spent in the Northwest in Eppe Sauvage. We had chosen this place because this was 'strategic' compared to both Ypres in Belgium and the Somme region in France. En route to our first destination in the same region we pass Le Tommy Bar. An eatery that is known among many Britons, but I mostly know from the television series. A great opportunity to visit this famous bar. Although I knew that in this bar were many from the First World War memorabilia on display, it was mainly the garden that made the visit worth it.

English Breakfast in France.

Food and drinks.

As said in 'Le Tommy Bar' you can order typical English dishes. We ordered fish and chips and a fried egg with chips and English sausages served. Not exactly a healthy meal but certainly tasty. It also gave the necessary energy to the rest of the day things to do in the burning heat of 34 degrees. The meals were about nine euro’s per plate and therefore not really cheap.

Museum

While an unhealthy meal on is nice, we naturally came to the museum "Le Tommy Bar '. The entrance to Le Tommy Bar 'is adorned with dolls in soldier's uniform. Inside, the walls hung with authentic serial photographs of predominantly British soldiers. Various artworks depicting scenes from World War are on display at Le Tommy Bar '. After we finished eating, were beckoned by the owner that we could see the garden. Although the garden door was an entrance fee of € 3.50, we were 'free' inside. A visit to this garden is for the fan is very worthwhile. There are in fact, in about thirty meters long, one German and one British trench imitated. Dolls in original uniforms give a picture of life in the trenches. Also there is a German howitzer and there are several other attributes such as helmets, bullet (sleeves) and guns.

Conclusion.

Le Tommy Bar 'has nothing to offer to those genes that are not fan of typical of English cuisine and which have no interest in the First World War. However, those which are fn of fish and chips and who are interested in the First World can indulge in "Le Tommy Bar '. I myself was pleasantly surprised by the open air in the garden where we are free to enter the church. Tommy Le Bar is the ideal mix of restaurant and museum and allowed up a visit to the Somme region hardly overslaan.

Adres:
Le Tommy Bar
80300 Pozière

authenticast foreign legion

2011-09-18T13:43:00.003-07:00

GREEKS . AUTHENTICAST AND HILL

2011-09-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

Authenticast/Comet, comprising: From [The Brigadiers] Set 51 - Greek Infantry - 6 x Other Ranks charging & John Hill & Co, Greek Evzones [Rare Pre War Issue with Red Jackets], comprising: 4 x Evzones marching at the Slope.otherwise .