wargamemen

trail

2015-05-31T08:15:00.001-07:00

In 1867, beneath a bluff a few miles from Carlsbad, New Mexico, two Texas cattlemen—one of them a trail-hardened 52 year old, the other a 23-year-old roughneck—were fighting for their lives, surrounded by a marauding party of Comanches.

If recorded at all, such an event would have been no more than a blip on the historical calendar of the American West, but this one—and its aftermath—turned out to be one of the most amazing examples of courage, loyalty and sheer grit in all the annals of the frontier.

Kentucky-born Oliver Loving was a remarkable cattleman-entrepreneur who, in 1858, partnered John Durkee in taking a herd from Palo Pinto Countyin Texas to Chicago, Illinois, the very first such drive on the historical record. In 1859, he blazed another trail to Denver via Pueblo, Colorado, and throughout the Civil War, he supplied the Confederacy with beef. In 1866, he teamed up with a 30-year-old cattleman named Charles Goodnight, well over 20 years his junior.

They put together a herd of 2,000 and blazed a new trail up the Pecos River into New Mexico and on to Denver, Colorado. The following year, they started another herd west over the same route, striking the Pecos the latter part of June. About 100 miles upriver, Loving traveled ahead of the herd on horseback in order to bid on the contracts, which were to be let in July.

Because Loving was impatient, even reckless, Goodnight not only insisted he be accompanied by one of Goodnight’s top men, Arkansas-born herder Bill Wilson, a who had already lost an arm somewhere in his 20-odd years, but also made Loving promise to ride only by night. After only two nights, however, Loving—who detested night riding—talked Wilson into changing tactics so they could proceed by daylight.

Loving probably didn’t have to work too hard: by all accounts—including this one—Wilson was a man ready to ride any river, with many stories spun about him. He was said (unreliably) to hold off a posse after one of his brothers, George, shot a sheriff in Palo Pinto County. The matter of his lost arm is also a moveable feast: it may have been bitten off by a mean horse before Wilson was five years old, or it may have been congenital. Another story claims a hay baler ripped it off, which would be historically inconsistent, since the injury happened before the 1860s.

Crossing the plain in broad daylight, the two riders, visible for miles, were spotted by a Comanche raiding party that came thundering after them. The cowmen made a four-mile run for the Pecos, spurring their horses over an incline and down to a sand dune at the foot of a bluff, where it formed a shallow cave open to view only from across the river. As the Comanches surrounded them, Loving and Wilson readied themselves for a fight to the death.

Fighting For Their Lives

Wilson was armed with a revolving six-shot rifle and saddle holsters as well as his own cap-and-ball six-shooter, while Loving had pistols and a Henry rifle. The Comanches—Wilson estimated that they numbered several hundred—swarmed down the bluffs around them, but the first one who fired at the cowboys from across the river got shot by Loving, after which no others tried to open the ball.

Late in the evening, the drovers heard someone call from the bluff in Spanish. Realizing it could be a trap, but with the situation bordering on the hopeless, Wilson took a chance and stepped up on the dune to parley, with Loving behind him, Henry rifle in hand, his holsters across his arm. As Wilson stepped into view, Indians hidden in a clump of carrizo, or cane, opened fire, with one of their bullets smashing through Loving’s wrist and ploughing into his side. Wilson hastily fell back into the ditch, giving his attention to Loving. After staunching the bleeding, they readied themselves for a siege.

“The Comanches shot their arrows high into the air to make them fall at a sharp angle into the ditch, while Wilson and Loving hugged close to the low but perpendicular wall of the washout, and the arrows either stuck in the sand above them or passed over their backs into the other bank,” Goodnight told J. Evetts Haley in the 1920s. He would share the cowman’s life story in his 1936 book.

Next, Goodnight recalled, the Comanches tried bombarding their quarry with gravel, but that didn’t work either.

The evening wore into dusk; weak from loss of blood, Loving was racked with pain and fever. Wilson managed to get to the river and brought back a bootful of water for the suffering man, but Loving’s condition worsened, and he implored Wilson to escape, if possible, and carry the story of his fate downriver to Goodnight and to his family. “I’ll stand the Comanches off the best I can,” he told Wilson, “but rather than be taken and tortured to death, I will shoot myself and fall into the river. If the Indians leave me and I find strength enough to travel, I’ll head downstream a couple of miles and hide.”

Wilson agreed to make the attempt. They calculated carefully; if he could hold out for a day and a half, he would have a good chance of meeting the advancing Goodnight.

“He spread their five six-shooters and Goodnight’s rifle by Loving’s sound arm, but took the Henry and its metallic cartridges, which would be unaffected by water, for to escape by the river was his only chance,” Goodnight said. “When the moon went down, he told Loving goodbye, moved to the mouth of the gully, and divesting himself of his clothing, hid his clothes in one place, and his knife, which dropped from his pocket, in another, all beneath the water. He pulled off everything but his hat, drawers and undershirt, which he hoped would protect him from the sun, and slipped into the treacherous stream.”

A Swim For Survival

The river was quite sandy and difficult to swim in, Wilson recalled, “so I had to pull off all of my clothes except my hat, shirt and breeches.”

He nearly drowned, trying to hold on to the rifle with his one hand, so he “leaned it up against the bank of the river, under the water, where the Comanches would not find it,” Wilson said. “Then I went down the river about a hundred yards, and saw an Indian sitting on his horse out in the river, with the water almost over the horse’s back. He was sitting there splashing the water with his foot, just playing. I got under some smart weeds and drifted by until I got far enough below the Indian where I could get out. Then I made a three days’ march barefooted. Everything in that country had stickers in it. On my way I picked up the small end of a tepee pole which I used for a walking stick.”

On the last night of his slow and painful journey, he was followed by wolves all night. “I would give out, just like a horse, and lay down in the road and drop off to sleep and when I would awaken the wolves would he all around me, snapping and snarling. I would take up that stick, knock the wolves away, get started again and the wolves would follow behind. I kept that up until daylight, when the wolves quit me,” Wilson recalled. “About 12 o’clock on that last day, I crossed a little mountain and knew the boys ought to be right in there somewhere with the cattle. I found a little place, a sort of cave, that afforded protection from the sun, and I could go no further [sic]. After a short time the boys came along with the cattle and found me.”

During their earlier drive to Denver, Loving and Goodnight had discovered a valley about two miles long and a mile wide close to the New Mexico line, near the upper end of which were some gravel hills; in one of them, a cave extended back 10 or 15 feet, which they marked as a splendid hiding place for Comanches planning a surprise attack.

“[I] was…watching carefully for Indians,” Goodnight remembered, “suspecting they might be behind the hill, [when] I saw a man come out of the cave and go back into it.”

Goodnight gave orders for the herd to be held and for the men to be ready for a fight. When Wilson came out of the cave, a quarter of a mile away, and gave the old frontier signal, ‘Come here,’ Goodnight said he “knew positively that it was Wilson, and…I immediately put the horse down to full speed and went to him. For a few moments he seemed unable to talk, probably overwhelmed with emotion, knowing his life was saved at last.”

With what was left of his underwear, saturated with red sediment from the river, Wilson was the “most terrible object I ever saw,” Goodnight said. “His eyes were wild and bloodshot, his feet were swollen beyond all reason, and every step he took left blood in the track. I inquired about Loving, but he could scarcely make a reply, and what he did mutter was entirely unintelligible. I put him on my horse and got him to the herd as soon as possible…I tore up a blanket, wet it, wrapped his feet to remove the fever and then made him a light gruel of meal, which I gave him at intervals for about an hour. By then he was perfectly himself. I asked him for particulars and he told me in detail of the trip and the attack by the Indians.

“When Wilson finished his story, I decided to start immediately.… We rode the rest of the evening and all that night. It not only rained, but it rained torrents, and was so dark at times we were forced to halt. When I reached the place where Wilson told me he had left the trail, I recognized it easily from his description, although the plains were unmarked, or would have appeared so to the untrained. Besides his description, the place was distinguished by the fact that a bunch of Comanches had again come out of the mountains and passed over the same trail they had taken when chasing the two men. Their tracks seemed as fresh as ours, and we supposed they were under the bluffs still trying to get Mr. Loving…[but] when we got to the top of the bluff, there was not an Indian in sight.

“In a moment, I found where Mr. Loving had been in the ditch, which was now half filled with stones, and its banks perforated with probably a hundred arrow shafts, though the Indians had gathered the arrow[head]s before leaving. I knew they had not got him, as there was ample evidence that they had been hunting for him everywhere. We searched down the river…but…no tracks could be found. I believed he had carried out his threat; that he had shot himself and floated down the river, the torrent obliterating all traces. After dark the party sadly made its way back to the herd and again took the trail.”

But Loving was not dead.

Loving’s Courageous Crossing

After Wilson left, the Comanches had continued to shower Loving’s position with rocks, and they tunneled through the dune to within a few feet of where he lay, but lacked the courage to get closer. Racked with hunger and the fever of his wounds, he somehow managed to keep his attackers at bay, but few men could endure a shot-shattered wrist and three foodless days and sleepless nights without collapse. In spite of his age, however, Loving was blessed with an iron constitution. When no help showed up, he followed Wilson’s lead. On the third night, he crawled into the water and started upstream, instead of downstream, hoping to reach the trail crossing [present-day Carlsbad] about six miles above, where some passerby might help him.

“At last he gained the crossing and lay down in the shade…about four feet above the water,” Goodnight told Haley. “He attempted to shoot some birds that came into the trees, but the river had soaked his powder and caps, and the guns were useless. He tried to eat his buckskin gloves, but could not kindle a fire to parch them to a crisp, and again settled back to wait. For two days and nights he stayed there, too weak to move, but satisfying his thirst by tying his handkerchief to a stick and dipping it in the river below. On the third day his superb endurance broke and he sank into a stupor.

“Three Mexicans and a German boy, in a wagon drawn by three yoke of oxen, passing through on their way to Texas, stopped at the crossing to prepare their dinner. The boy…found Loving, apparently asleep.… He was taken to the wagon, where the Mexicans prepared him some atole, similar to our corn meal mush...after which he offered them $250 to take him to Sumner, about 150 miles away.”

Meanwhile Goodnight’s herd kept moving north. “About two weeks after this,” Wilson said, “we met a party coming from Fort Sumner, and they told us Loving was at Fort Sumner. The bullet which had penetrated his side did not prove fatal, and the next night after I had left him, he got into the river and drifted by the Indians as I had done, crawled out and lay in the weeds all the next day. The following night he made his way to the road where it struck the river, hoping to find somebody traveling that way. He remained there for five days, being without anything to eat for seven days. Finally some Mexicans came along and he hired them to take him to Fort Sumner.”

Some 30 miles from Fort Sumner, a courier brought Goodnight the news that although Loving was alive, gangrene had set in and his arm needed to be amputated. “Loving did not want the operation performed unless I was there,” Goodnight said, “as he feared he might not survive it.... The old doctor was in Santa Fe…and the young doctor put me off from day to day with various excuses.... Fortunately I found him at the hospital alone, and told him briefly and in no uncertain words that I presumed he was putting me off because we were rebels, and that he must now operate or make wounds on me.”

The doctor performed the amputation, and Loving seemed to be doing well. Just to be on the safe side, Goodnight paid a man (reportedly Winfield Scott Moore) $500 to ride to Las Vegas and bring back Dr. John H. Shout; they arrived two days later only to find out that Loving had suffered a relapse. “In spite of neglect, starvation and punishment he lived for 22 days, perfectly rational to the last, [when] his mind turned back to Texas,” Goodnight recalled, “and at last he said, ‘I regret to have to be laid away in a foreign country.’ I assured him that he need have no fears, that I would see his remains were laid in the cemetery at home [in Weatherford, Texas]. He felt that this would be impossible, but I told him it would be done.”

Loving died on September 25, 1867, and his body was temporarily buried in a simple wooden casket at Fort Sumner. Four months later, Goodnight returned.

Riding Shotgun Over a Tin Casket

Transporting the remains of his friend back to Texas would be a daunting task, but the cattleman was determined to keep his promise. Gathering scattered oil cans from about the fort, his cowboys beat them out, soldered them together and made an immense tin casket. Inside this, they placed the rough, wooden one, several inches of powdered charcoal packed around it, sealed the tin lid and crated the whole in lumber. They lifted a wagon bed from its bolsters and carefully loaded the sarcophagus on to it. On February 8, 1868, with six big mules strung out in harness, the rough-hewn cowmen from Texas rode ahead and behind the strangest and most affecting funeral cavalcade in the history of the cow country, bringing Oliver Loving home. “The Pecos—the graveyard of the cowman’s hopes,” Goodnight humanized the bleak terrain.

“Down the relentless Pecos and across the implacable Plains, the [388-mile] journey was singularly peaceful,” Goodnight told Haley. “Through miles of grazing buffaloes, they approached the Cross Timbers, reached the settlements and at last delivered the body to the Masonic Lodge at Weatherford, Texas, where it was buried [in Greenwood Cemetery] with fraternal honors.”

http://www.yesterdish.com/2014/01/01/great-beef-and-macaroni-casserole/

The most legendary culinary job in all of American history is probably the cattle drive cook, or “cookie.” While kids looked up to cowboys, cowboys looked up to the cook. You’d never know it from the way Hollywood has portrayed the wagon cook, which is either as an unreliable flake or a feeble old man, and always as subservient to the cowhands.

The reality was exactly the opposite. The wagon cook was usually one of the toughest men on the drive. He had to wake up hours before the cowhands to make breakfast and stayed up later to secure the chuck wagon (chuck being a slang word for food, like chow). When the herd was being driven from location to location, he rode ahead on the wagon to set up a meal at the next stop, facing any dangers–human, animal, or environmental–either alone or with minimal support.

A Cookie not only maintained all of the food for the drive; as he had one of the few wagons on the ride, he kept many of the tools, much of the ammunition, and all of the money to be distributed along the way. He’d also have whatever medical supplies came along for the ride and was expected to know how to use them.

And it didn’t hurt if he knew how to cook, too.

The cook held the success or failure of the drive in his hands. But because of the diverse skill-sets required, it was a tricky job to fill, and one that commanded a salary that hovered around double the salary of the other cowboys on the ride. A Cookie would be second in command to the trail boss, and even the trail boss had to maintain a degree of deference to his Cookie’s decisions.

(A trail boss was in charge of a wagon cook in the same way that a restaurant patron is in charge of his waiter. Imagine the results of upsetting the waiter at a meal, then imagine this is the only restaurant in town, the waiter gets to order for you, and you have to eat three meals a day for sixteen weeks. Under these circumstances, you would rapidly come to discover the value of being extremely polite in issuing directives.)

The wagon cook was the Renaissance man of the cattle drive, and the chuck wagon was his workshop. At least, after it was invented in 1866 by Charles Goodnight.

If you’ve studied any amount of cowboy (or Texas) history, you’ve probably read about Charles Goodnight. For lack of a better descriptor, he was a real-life composite of every character John Wayne ever played: rugged, quiet, hard-working, impossibly accomplished, and basically decent, despite rough edges and a preference for justice over the rule of law.

He was born in Illinois on March 5, 1836, the day before the fall of the Alamo. His family moved to Texas when he was nine, just before Texas was granted statehood. (Yes, I know Wikipedia says he arrived in 1846. I don’t know what to tell you. My sources say 1845.)

Before the Civil War, he worked as a cowboy, fought Comanche in a town militia, and became a Texas Ranger. When war broke out, he enlisted in the Confederate army.

(While some people called him “Colonel,” it was most likely an honorific. There’s no evidence he achieved a rank any higher than private in anything I’ve been able to find.)

To accomplish this ride, Goodnight decided there was a better way to carry provisions than what he’d been accustomed to. Before the chuck wagon, trail food was whatever a cowboy could fit in his saddlebags, which tended to mean a lot of jerky and dry biscuits for the 12 to 16 week trip.

To improve life on the trail, Goodnight created the chuck box, a tall collection of shelves and drawers covered by a hinged piece of wood. The shelves and drawers would carry dry provisions. When loaded on the back of a wagon, the hinged cover folded down and legs folded out to form a table upon which the wagon cook could prepare meals.

Digression: this ain’t the Oregon Trail

When you ask an average American to name a covered wagon, you’re likely to get one answer–the famous, massive Conestoga wagon, the used by pioneers going West in the 18th and early 19th centuries. That’s not a chuck wagon. Apart from being separated by about 50 years, a Conestoga wagon could carry up to eight tons. The category of wagons used as chuck wagons tended to max out around one ton.

In short, chuck wagons have more in common with red Radio Flyer wagons than they do with Conestoga wagons.

The original chuck wagon was a U.S. Army Civil War surplus wagon built by Indiana’s Studebaker Brothers Manufacturing Company, better known for manufacturing cars from 1905 to the mid-1960s. The inside of the wagon was used for storage, and while the chuck box was the focal point of the wagon, its entire function was converted to logistics and support for the cattle drive. Kindling would be suspended on a tarp underneath the wagon; water would be kept in barrels carried alongside; cupboards toward the front would carry tools for fixing everything from a horse’s shoes to a human’s bite.

A water-resistant cloth would be stretched over the top of the wagon to protect the provisions inside. When making camp, this would typically be peeled off for easy access to the contents of the wagon; in some configurations, it could be peeled back from the front bows and supported with legs behind the wagon to become a lean-to awning over the food preparation area. And when it was in this configuration, it was, in essence, the beating heart of the camp, the position around which all other decisions were made.

The wagon needed its own fire, so a flat, dry, and clear section of land would be required. That part was typically easy. But then, the entry of the camp had to be far enough from the chuck wagon that no dust would be kicked up and enter the food. No horses could be hitched too near the wagon (let alone to it) in case something spooked them and the wagon was spoiled.

But once all of those requirements were satisfied, the food produced from the wagon would be whatever could be made from things carried along the trial. All of that said… what didthe Cookie have at his disposal?

Cornmeal, coffee, lard, tobacco, dried beans, dried beef and salt pork were omnipresent essentials–if any of them wasn’t available, the drive would likely wait to stock them before moving onward. If white flour was available, that’d be stocked, too, along with a sourdough starter; this tended to be more common on the Western portions of the trail and less common in Texas. Dried raisins, dates, and prunes would be around, along with “airtights”–canned goods, most frequently tomatoes.

Along the way, cowboys would sometimes happen upon game birds or rabbits, but it wasn’t a priority and there wasn’t a great deal of organized hunting going on. If a town was available, other than restocking the wagon, the most frequently obtained “treats” tended to be milk, buttermilk, spices, and beef.

(Another strange assumption people make is that there was a lot of beef on cattle drives. There was dried beef, it’s true, but it’s not like anyone was butchering a calf along the trail. This was almost entirely because of the extra time it would take–actually, in the early years of drives, a calf born en route was killed and left just to avoid having it slow down the herd. Eventually, Goodnight developed a wagon specifically to carry the calves to market.)

By the way, Charles Goodnight had a long life after this invention, and would ultimately come to outlive it. He became an employee and partner in the JA Ranch, the first ranch in the Texas panhandle, which at one point covered over a million acres, before starting his own ranch. He’d use some of his wealth to start a school, Goodnight College, which would close in 1916, and the now-abandoned town of Goodnight, Texas was named after him.

After his wife’s death in April 1926, he took ill. He’d been corresponding with Corrine Goodnight, a distant cousin who was a nurse in her 20s, which started because they noticed they had the same name. She came to take care of him. In March of 1927–two years before he died–Charles Goodnight expressed the desire that Corinne inherit his estate, so the 91-year-old Charles married the 27-year-old Corinne, giving her the improbable name of Corinne Goodnight Goodnight, which sounds more like a Bond girl than a deeply religious nurse.

So, given all of this information, how does this recipe fit in?

Looking at the recipe on this card, very few of these items were available to a chuck wagon. In fact, one of them in particular didn’t even exist in the States until there weren’t any wagon trails: corn chips.

By the end of the 19th century, long-distance cattle drives were unnecessary; enough rail had been laid that move cattle by railroad was cheaper and easier. Meanwhile, corn chips made from fried masa (which we’ve talked about a lot, most recently in the post forYesterdish’s Hot Tamales) entered the U.S. market in 1932, when San Antonio’s Elmer Doolin bought a local recipe for the snacks from Mexico-born Gustavo Olquin, who called them little fried things, or fritas. Doolin named his company the Frito Corporation… but that’s another story.Tamales are a Christmastime tradition in Mexico and in the Latino community here in the U.S., where friends and families will gather together in a tamalada, a tamal-making party.

(By the way, I’ll likely use both tamal andtamale to refer to these items in the singular. While tamal is technically correct and the word tamale emerged because English doesn’t pluralize the same way Spanish does, I’ve heard tamale for too many years for it to sound strange to me.)

A tamalada is a lot like a cookie-decorating party; it distributes a labor-intensive job among a group of friends and family in a way that makes it seem like it’s not work at all. Children learn the family traditions and secret recipes while aunts and uncles comment on how big they’re getting. It’s also an exceptionally old tradition.

These are only suggested fillings. If a diversity of fillings was good enough for the Aztecs, then it’s good enough for me.

We talked about the Aztecs and the process of making nixtamalized corn in the recipe fortortillas from Ceres, California. If you need a refresher on nixtamalization, read that, first; if not, let’s move on. The Aztecs were making various types of tamales at least as far back as 5,000 B.C., which was when they started cultivating corn.

While nixtamalization made the corn easier to eat and more nutritious–which is important for a culture that relies on its warriors for survival–warriors couldn’t very well just stop in the jungle and start the elaborate process of making nixtamal (the Aztec word for the processed corn, which, semi-obviously, the process was named after).

Instead, the nixtamal would be wrapped in a corn husk (or banana leaf or avocado leaf), tied shut, and then could be heated in the coals of the fire or eaten on the go. From that basic framework, the Aztecs produced a diversity of tamales. By using a variety of meats, vegetables, fruits, and nuts, tamales could be energy bars, protein bars, or even granola bars of a sort, depending on what the maker thought was required at a given time.

In Mexico, that diversity still exists. In Veracruz, tamales are made with pork, fresh corn, and an aromatic called hoja santa, or sacred leaf,which tastes sort of like a mixture of tarragon and nutmeg. In Sinaloa, there’s a variety with sweet beans and pineapple. And in Michoacan, they make an iteration called corundas, which are unfilled nixtamal wrapped in green corn leaves to make a triangular shape that resembles onigiri, Japanese rice balls.

Chuck Wagon Casserole

1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup diced green pepper
1 can (6 oz.) tomato paste
1/2 cup water
1 Tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
2 cups (1 lb. can) drained lima beans
2 cups (1 lb. can) pork and beans

In a large skillet, brown ground beef. Add celery, onion, and green pepper; cook until vegetables are tender; drain. Add tomato paste, water, chili powder, salt, paprika, and beans. Simmer while preparing topping; see below.

Transfer hot meat mixture to casserole, if desired. Place biscuits around edge of fry pan or casserole, sealed edge facing center, on hot meat mixture. Bake in a 425 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until biscuits are golden brown.

Topping

5 ounces American or Cheddar cheese, cut into 10 half-inch cubes
1 can (8 oz.) buttermilk or country style biscuits
2 tablespoons milk
2 cups corn chips, crushed

Separate biscuit dough into 10 biscuits. Place a cheese cube in the middle of each biscuit; fold in half; firmly press edges to seal. Dip biscuits in milk and coat both sides with crushed corn chips.When the Spaniards came to the New World in the 1500's, they brought along cattle -- live cattle. A live cow would remain in eating condition a lot longer than one cut up into portions and stowed in the hold of a slow ship.

Naturally, over the years a few of the cows and a bull or two escaped from captivity and adapted to the conditions of the South Texas brush country. Eventually they became the famous Longhorns. They were mean, lean and could live off discarded cardboard boxes.

Long before the Civil War, residents of Texas were making cattle drives into Louisiana, especially New Orleans. This was much against the law, but a man has to feed his family. After the Civil War, the folks up north developed a preference for beef over the pigs they had been eating since they came here. The Texans, quick to realize that a few bucks could be made, started thinking about getting cows up north. There were no railroads or interstate highways, so the best way to get a cow to the railhead in Abilene, Kansas was to let her walk. Thus began the storied cattle drives.

The trail drive cowboys were just as tough as the cows they prodded along, but even a tough cowboy has to eat once in a while. The first trail drives were pretty basic affairs. Each cowboy was in charge of bringing his own breakfast, dinner and supper. The menu wasn't fancy; most of the cowboys brought some salt, some coffee and a sack of either pone or hard biscuits. If some wild game was found along the way, it did not go to waste.

When the demand for beef on the hoof grew much larger, the ranchers soon found they could attract a lot better class of cowboy if they fed them a decent fare. It was impractical for each rider to carry his own supplies, so a wagon was employed. The first wagons on the trail were just wagons that hauled the food and provided a place to haul the cowboys' bedding and associated tack.Charles Goodnight, one of the leaders of the trail drive era is given credit for designing the chuck wagon in its present form. Mr. Goodnight added heavy-duty running gear to the wagon and built a cook's cabinet on the rear. The cabinet had many compartments for holding various things needed for cooking, as well as a fold-down door that served as the cook's work table.

The chuck wagon cook was second in command on the trail drive. In his domain, which was the wagon and a 60-foot radius around it, he was the boss, and no one crossed him. It was said that if a chuck wagon cook was not fractious, he just had not been cooking long enough.

The cooks also served as doctors, gravediggers (if their doctoring didn't take) and equipment repairmen. This could include anything from shoeing a horse to sewing up a cowboy's ripped jeans. It was not a specialized job. The cook was so important to the success of the trail drive that he was paid more than the regular cowboy, and the boss would tolerate behavior that would have sent an ordinary hand packing. When the cowboys were well fed and comfortable, they worked a lot better than they did if their needs were not satisfied. The most important thing that came from the chuck wagon and the cook was coffee. The cowboys could manage most any situation if there was enough strong, black coffee.

Chuck Wagon Food

The cowboys could manage most any situation if there was enough strong, black coffee.The first trail coffee came as green coffee beans that had to be roasted before they could be ground and made into coffee. In 1865, John and Charles Arbuckle, who were grocers in Pittsburgh, patented a process for roasting coffee beans and treating the roasted beans with a mix of egg white and sugar to preserve freshness. The coffee made from these pre-roasted beans was an immediate success and is still available today. The usual coffee formula on the trail was one handful of ground coffee per cup of water. It was often called "six shooter coffee", as it was strong enough to float a six shooter.

Next on the list of trail essentials was a constant supply of sourdough biscuits. The cowboys preferred biscuits to bread in loaves. The cook guarded his sourdough crock zealously. It contained yeast -- a living thing that required warmth and feeding. On cold nights, the cook would sleep with his sourdough crock to keep it warm.

Beans made up a large portion of the cowboy's diet. Usually they were pinto beans, and occasionally a red bean would slip in. The beans were originally known as frijoles. Soon frijoles came to mean any beans. Beans were a favorite with all as they were cheap, easy to transport, they kept well in the dried state and were filling. The cook added a bit of salt pork to make them flavorfulBean cooking has not changed over the years. The night before cooking, the beans are picked through to remove any rocks or other debris. They soak overnight and then go on slow fire until they are tender. This usually took three to four hours. They could be and would be served morning, noon or night.

Given coffee, sourdough and beans, the cowboy could survive and work, but for maximum performance there had to be more in his diet.

The subject of the type and amount of meat in the cowboy's diet is open for discussion. The whole operation was centered around a couple of thousand prime beeves on the hoof. I doubt there were fresh steaks every day, but when it did occur, the killing would take place in the evening so the meat could cool in the night air. The next morning, the supply of beef would be wrapped in insulating material such as the cowboys' bedrolls to keep it cool. The next evening, it would be unwrapped and cooled again. The meat still didn't keep very well. As it began to age, it was used in stew or chili.

The better chuck wagon cooks would prepare treats for their cowboys as often as required. Sometimes the treats were just to build good relations between the wagon cook and the wranglers, and sometimes to reward a particular wrangler or wranglers for a good deed.

We are about out of space for this month. Tune in next month for Part Two of "Cooking for Cowboys" when we will have more cattle drive lore and maybe some authentic recipes from the Old West.

wargames dying

2015-05-20T07:41:00.000-07:00

So is the Wargaming Convention dying? as discussed by Gary Mitchell in Wargames Soldiers and Strategy 77.
On first reading of the article, I thought I would be annoyed, remembering the ire that Paddy Griffiths article Against Toy Soldiers caused me. However I think with age you tend to take a step back and attempt to be more mature in your response, that is if you can be actually bothered to make a response.
On re reading the article Gary had some good points in the brief. We all accept that the hobby is graying rapidly, we all accept that younger would be wargamers are quite thin on the ground and we all understand that we need to attract younger wargamers if we would like the hobby to continue after our collective demise.
The wargames convention is one area where there is a need for a rethink as it is probably the best way to reach the younger public, short of going into schools.
The ideas put forward by Gary were all pretty much commonsense, some should be a given, other ideas are merely experimental.
I think we have all griped and banged on about shows and what makes them good and what makes others frankly crap, but for me wargames shows have always been something to look forward to, but then I think I have a very childish gene.
When reading the article what surprised me was my reaction to what Gary suggested about doing away with the 'demonstration game', instead of anger I actually started to agree with what he was saying, but in a more qualified way.
Now I have been putting on demonstration games since John and I took our first game to a show at Whitley Bay in the early 1980's. It even got a mention in the Miniature Wargames magazine of that year, fame indeed and I have always thought we were attempting to put something back into the hobby from that early start. But to be honest were we deluding ourselves.
As the shows continued our ambitions grew until John and I were bringing mega games to the shows, ie a one to one unit representation [ in 6mm] of the Battle of Blenheim, the Battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo etc. All took a considerable amount of effort, a great deal of research, [this was before the internet] and time and money [ both of which were in short supply]
Were there new would be wargamers banging on the doors of the show to see these games? I dont think so.
However as I have got older, and hopefully wiser, what I did find when we were putting on games was that wargamers and sometimes their children would be regular attenders at our table and we would talk about the game and the hobby, and the table and basically anything to do with the hobby. So much so that in the last few years we rarely get to actually play the damn game.
So for me demonstration games have to be at Wargames shows, purely because if they are done well, they inspire, and encourage wargamers to excel in their painting and modelling skills and also gain information.

[ A blast from the past, my re enactment of the Battle of Aspern Essling ]

For me I think Gary got this suggestion a tad wrong. I know what he was actually alluding to, it was the unfriendly backs to the public, as the public stand next to the table hoping to find someone who will actually speak to them but are usually ignored.
So what Gary should have actually suggested was that any wargamer who was making the effort to put on a demonstration game should also make the effort to talk in a friendly and non condescending way to the public, basically like 'the nutter on the bus'.
Of course this is very difficult for some people, who lets be frank have trouble engaging in conversation with their mother who they probably still live with, but if one is prepared to put on a game, for God sake talk while you're stood there.
As I write this post, an idea has been forming in my head as to how to get the younger element interested in wargaming, and the theme that keeps coming back is, what was I interested in when I was a teenager? and the answer was girls. So the solution to me is easy, each table, trader, etc hire one very pretty girl to stand next to their exhibit, looking bemused, handing out freebies, God we would be fighting off the teenagers then, and probably a lot of older wargamers to.
Anyway to get back to reality, how can we, the current wargamers make certain that this hobby continues in its current recognisable form.
A toughie this, given the trend that is modern day youth.
I think we just have to be relaxed about it to a certain extent, plenty of children seem to be sharing a basic wargaming experience with their parents and from this will come some sort of continuation.
I think the trend to allow children and partners to get into shows for free should continue, anything that is free has got to be good. The current trend for short, easy to play games is probably a good thing in that it allows younger people to engage in a form of wargaming, however I think they should have a very strong historical bias which would encourage the players to want to read and research their game and actually make it more relevant.
Wargames clubs have a responsibility, and need to encourage teens to attend their clubs even if its just to play Warhammer etc. It is still a start. However once they do attend, older club members need to talk to them, otherwise the club is just small groups of people who never mix. I think this happens now and needs to be addressed [ mind this is coming from a wargamer who has never joined a club]
I think the idea Gary put forward about craft stalls etc, is a non starter, and unless there is a martial slant to it, is frankly ridiculous. I know of a least one show that attempted to get model train enthusiasts to put on a table etc at a show, but it didnt really work.
Lets be right, anything that is not of a wargaming nature at least has to have some relevance to the wargamer and the potential new recruit.
One should also consider what exactly young people do with their time and how they think. Now thats a difficult one for me as I avoid young people like the plague, merely because we have nothing in common, but there are lots of wargaming parents, and wargamers that actually converse with these groups, so please say what exactly floats their boats and use this knowledge.
[ It cant be just texts, sextexts and ennui]
One thing that I always thought would make a good participation game and would be impactive to the younger would be wargamer was the Harry Potter series of books. There must be a decent participation game in that series, and everyone knows of the books and films.Perhaps a Quiditch game similar to Blood Bowl. [Just a thought]
Talking of which television and new films are always areas where young people have an interest, so perhaps this is an area again where we could make inroads into catching their attention. That terrible film Fury is a case in point, also the Transformers series.

[ A blast from the past, my re enactment of the Battle of Aspern Essling ]

The biggest problem that wargaming in general has [ at least for me] is the lack of a governing body. Now before everyone starts demanding my burning, what I actually mean is that to have a uniform approach, there would be a need for a body to make certain that all shows and clubs were singing from the same song sheet. This is never going to happen, and I must admit it is only in respect of a corporate response to the greying hobby that I would welcome a governing body.
I suppose a second best response would be for some club to stage a new type of show, aimed at attracting new wargamers which became a huge success.
Success would invariably be copied and the hobby could then grow. So wargaming is in a bit of a quandry, how do we survive in sufficient numbers and in a form that would be recognisable.
All answers on a postcard please, to the Central Wargaming Governing Body.

the mahdi

2015-05-20T07:36:00.000-07:00

sepoys

2015-05-19T04:27:00.001-07:00

The term "sepoy" or "sipāhi" is derived from the Persian word "sipāh" meaning "army". In its most common application Sepoy was the term used in the British Indian Army, and earlier in that of the British East India Company, for an infantry private (a cavalry trooper was a Sowar).

A painting showing a Sowar (Sepoy), 6th Madras Light Cavalry of British India. Circa 1845.The term sepoy came into use in the forces of the British East India Company in the eighteenth century, where it was one of many, such as peons, gentoos, mestees and topassess used for various categories of native soldiers. Initially it referred to Hindu or Muslim soldiers without regular uniform or discipline. It later generically referred to all native soldiers in the service of the European powers in India.

Sepoys in British serviceInitially the British recruited sepoys from the local communities in the Madras and Bombay Presidencies, the emphasis being on recruits having adequate physique and being of sufficient caste. In the Bengal Army however, recuitment was only amongst high caste Brahman and Rajput communities of erstwhile Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Recruitment was done locally by battalions or regiments often from the same community, village and even family. The commanding officer of a battalion became a form of substitute for the village chief or "gaon bura". He was the "mai-baap" or the "father and mother" of the sepoys making up the "paltan" (unit). There were many family and community ties amongst the troops and numerous instances where family members enlisted in the same battalion or regiment. The "izzat" or honour of the unit was represented by the regimental colours; the new sepoy having to swear an oath in front of them on enlistment. These colours were stored in honour in the quarter guard and frequently paraded before the men. They formed a rallying point in battle. The oath of fealty by the sepoy was given to the East India Company and included a pledge of faithfulness to the salt that one has eaten

The salary of the sepoys employed by the East India Company, while not substantially greater than that paid by the rulers of Indian states, was usually paid regularly. Advances could be given and family allotments from pay due were permitted when the troops served abroad. There was a commisariat and regular rations were provided. Weapons, clothing and ammunition were provided centrally, in contrast to the soldiers of local kings whose pay was often in arrears. In addition local rulers usually expected their sepoys to arm themselves and to sustain themselves through plunder.

This combination of factors led to the development of a sense of shared honour and ethos amongst the well drilled and disciplined Indian soldiery who formed the key to the success of European feats of arms in India and abroad.

Following the Indian Rebellion of 1857 the surviving East India Company regiments were merged into a new Indian Army under the direct control of the British Crown. The designation of "sepoy" was retained for Indian soldiers below the rank of Lance-naik, except in cavalry and rifle regiments where the equivalent ranks were "sowar" or "rifleman".

Following the formation of the French East India Company (Compagnie des Indes) in 1719, companies of Indian sepoys (cipayes) were raised to augment the French and Swiss mercenary troops available. By 1720 the sepoys in French service numbered about 10,000.[3] Although much reduced in numbers after their decisive defeat in India at the Battle of Wandewash in 1760, the France continued to maintain a Military Corps of Indian Sepoys (corps militaire des cipayes de l'Inde) in Pondicherry (now Puducherry) until it was disbanded and replaced by a locally recruited gendarmerie in 1898.[4]

Sepoys in Portugese service
Sepoys were also recruited in Portuguese India. Some Portuguese sepoys were later sent to serve in other territories of the Portuguese Empire, especially those in Africa. The term "sipaio" (sepoy) was also applied by the Portuguese to African soldiers and African rural police officers.

[edit] Other useagesThe same Persian word has reached English via another route in the form of Spahi. Zipaio, the Basque version of the word, is used by leftist Basque nationalists as an insult for members of the Basque Police,[5] implying that they are not a national police but servants of a foreign occupier.

AMerican army in Mexico

2015-05-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

The United States had two armies during the 19th century. The first, a standing army commonly referred to as the U.S. Army, had been authorized by the Congress in 1789. Designated the regular army, this force was composed of officers commissioned by Congress and enlisted men who joined for a five year period. In 1792, Congress created a second army intended as an auxiliary to the regulars called the militia. One major difference between the regulars and militia was the first was a national force while the second was the armies of the various states. Congress stipulated three instances when the militia could be called into federal service: to execute the laws of the United States, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions. This two-tiered arrangement formed the basis of the American military establishment during the Mexican War.

The U.S. Army was unprepared for war. While Congress had authorized a strength of 8,613 men and officers, the actual number of soldiers in uniform was fewer than 5,500. Many of the regimental commanders had entered the service before the War of 1812 and were too elderly and infirm for active duty. Companies were far below their authorized strength of forty-two privates with many carrying only half that number on their rolls. Reacting to the poor state of the army once war broke out, Congress increased the number of privates within individual companies to one hundred. It also created a company of the U.S. Engineers as well a new regiment of U.S. Mounted Rifles. These measures turned out be stopgaps at best.

The presence of a large number of graduates from the United States Military Academy worked in favor of the U.S. Army. These officers, mostly lieutenants and captains, formed a tight knit corps whose leadership ability and training helped offset the initial shortage of manpower. Historians point out that their ranks included men such as George G. Meade, Ulysses S. Grant, George B. McClellan, P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, Joseph E. Johnston, and Robert E. Lee, officers who later went on to command the great armies of the Civil War.

The militia system had already proven unreliable by the time of the Mexican War and had undergone substantial revision. Two issues emerged during the War of 1812 that demonstrated its flaws. First, many states prohibited their troops from participating in military operations on foreign soil. Second, by law a militiaman could only serve for a period of ninety days, meaning that recruiting, training, and marshaling occupied most of a unit's time with little left over for campaigning. As a solution to this problem, Congress created a subclass of militia called volunteers who were not confined by these two restrictions. On May 13, 1846, Congress authorized President Polk to raise 50,000 12-month volunteers.

Although both composed a part of the American Army, regulars and volunteers were notably different. Observers noted little interaction between officers and men, with each occupying a clearly defined station within the military establishment. Most Americans avoided enlisting in the regulars, guaranteeing that a high percentage of privates, corporals, and sergeants were foreign born. The combination of aristocratic officers and foreign "hirelings" made many Americans suspicious of the regulars. After all, what American citizen would settle for $7 a month as an army private unless forced to by dire circumstance? The volunteer, on the other hand, seemed to fit the spirit of the young republic because he was a citizen-soldier. Politics entered into the system as most volunteers elected their own officers. Volunteer units were raised locally, allowing friends, neighbors, and relatives to serve together. Although nominally under federal authority, volunteers maintained strong ties to their home states. The democratic nature of the volunteers meant that discipline in this corps was more lax than in the regulars.

More troops were needed as the war progressed. In November 1846, Congress issued an additional call for volunteers after realizing that most of the one year men would leave at the expiration of their terms. This second wave of volunteers was enlisted for the duration of the war. On February 11, 1847, Congress created ten additional regiments of regulars to serve for the period of the war. In all, 26,922 regulars and 73,260 volunteers served at some point during the Mexican War.

The combat elements were the same for both the regulars and the volunteers. The majority of troops were raised and trained as infantry and armed with flintlock muskets. The regulars maintained two regiments of light cavalry called dragoons with a third created for the war. Several regiments of mounted volunteers were raised that served mainly with Taylor's Army of Occupation and Kearny's Army of the West. Artillery formed the third branch of service. Just prior to the outbreak of the war, the army equipped several companies as "flying artillery" in which each cannoneer had his own mount. The innovation meant that the unit could gallop around the battlefield, bringing its guns to bear wherever they were most needed. This style of artillery was instrumental in several U.S. victories.

Readers who like military history will find the battles and leaders of the Mexican War extremely interesting. The American military is fascinating, too, because it reveals much about society in the Age of Jackson. Several works are recommended to those who want to learn more about the American Army in the Mexican War. John Porter Bloom's 1953 Emory University Ph.D. dissertation, "With the American Army in Mexico, 1846-1848," remains an outstanding study of the American soldier in Mexico. More accessible to most readers will be James M. McCaffrey's Army of Manifest Destiny: The American Soldier in the Mexican War, 1846-1848. A more recent work which examines the army is Richard Bruce Winders' "Mr. Polk's Army: The American Military Experience in the Mexican War." Also recommended are the many volumes of published letters and diaries that place the war on a personal level, giving the reader a "soldier's eye view" of the war.

revoultion

2015-05-13T00:15:00.001-07:00

last charge

2015-05-11T08:15:00.001-07:00

This is a French cuirass, a breastplate worn as body armour by French cavalry. The hole is from a British cannonball that smashed through the unlucky soldier’s chest.

Yet as the British would discover, even these armoured troopers were by no means invincible as this breastplate brings home with shocking force.

The bulk of Napoleon’s heavy cavalry was made up of the twelve regiments of Cuirassiers, but the elite of the arm, in their own eyes at least, were the men of the two regiments of Carabiniers. With a lineage running back to 1679, the Carabiniers had only been given cuirasses in 1809. Unlike the cuirassiers, their armour was gilded with brass rather than being of polished iron, and their old blue uniforms were changed for white. Both regiments served with distinction throughout the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1815 were brigaded together under Général de Brigade Blanchard as part of Général de Division Kellermann’s III Corps de Cavalerie.

Riding in the ranks of the 2eme Carabiniers was 23-year-old trooper François-Antoine Fauveau. A recent recruit, Fauveau’s height of 1.79 metres gave him the ideal stature for a heavy cavalry regiment. These, after all, were intended to be big men on big horses, riding down the enemy by the weight of their charge. The young man’s service papers also record that he had a long, freckled face with a large forehead, blue eyes, aquiline nose, and a small mouth.

During the afternoon of June 18th, the Carabiniers, along with the rest of the French heavy cavalry, were thrown repeatedly against the squares of allied infantry on the ridge forming the centre-right of Wellington’s line. As the cavalry charged, allied gunners kept them under fire until the last moment before dashing for the safety of their supporting infantry, and it was from one of their guns that Fauveau received his death-wound. Although impressive to look at, and capable of turning a sword-stroke or a pistol ball, no cuirass could deflect a cannon shot.
There is, however, a twist to the tale. Family legend has it that when his call-up papers arrived, François-Antoine was on the point of getting married, so his brother joined up, and died, in his place. Yet whoever was wearing it on June 18th, this cuirass serves to emphasise the brutality of Napoleonic warfare at a most personal level

peninsular

2015-05-06T00:08:00.002-07:00

By the year 1808 France had achieved domination over the great majority of continental Europe. Through victories at Ulm (1805), Austerlitz (1805), Jena-Auerstädt (1806) and Friedland (1807) her armies had successively eliminated Austria, Prussia and Russia as military opponents. Britain alone had withstood the power of France, achieving security against invasion through Nelson's victory over the combined French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar (1805).The tide began to turn in 1808 when Napoleon created a new enemy by usurping the Spanish throne in favour of his brother Joseph. The Spanish uprising that followed encouraged Britain to send an expeditionary force to the Iberian Peninsula. The ensuing war was to play a major part in Napoleon's downfall.The War: Consolidation, 1808-1811
The road to war began in the autumn of 1807 when Napoleon moved French troops through Spain to invade Portugal. After feeding more than 100,000 troops into Spain under the pretext of supporting the invasion, Napoleon deposed the existing Spanish monarch in April 1808 in order to place his own brother Joseph on the throne. Although the ensuing Spanish uprising can hardly have come as a surprise to Napoleon, he failed to see that the revolt could never be completely suppressed.Britain now had a new ally in Spain and in August 1808 landed an expeditionary force under the command of Lt.-Gen. Sir Arthur Wellesley at the mouth of the Mondego river in Portugal. Moving south towards Lisbon, Wellesley defeated Delaborde at Roliçaon 17th August before turning to the mouth of the Maceira river to protect the landing of reinforcements. On 21st August, Wellesley's position around Vimeiro Hill was attacked from the east by Junot. The Battle of Vimeiro was the first occasion on which Napoleonic offensive tactics combining skirmishers, columns and supporting artillery fire failed against the British infantry line and Wellesley's defensive skills. Junot was defeated, though an opportunity to inflict further damage on the French was lost as the out-ranked Wellesley was replaced first by Burrard and then by Dalrymple. Wellesley's victory was still sufficient to persuade the French to evacuate Portugal as part of a controversial agreement which became known as the Convention of Sintra.The departure of Dalrymple, Burrard and Wellesley to face criticism of the Convention in Britain left Sir John Moore in command of a British army of 30,000 in Portugal. The scale of the war in the Peninsula escalated as a Spanish victory over Dupont at Bailén

Casa de Postas where Dupont surrendered.

in July was answered by Napoleon's arrival in Spain at the head of 200,000 veteran troops. Moore struck towards Burgos and the northern flank of Napoleon's army, succeeding in drawing French forces away from southern Spain before being forced to retreat westwards. The retreat ended in the evacuation by sea of Moore's army at La Coruña in January 1809, and in the loss of Moore's own life. Napoleon meanwhile had transferred command of the pursuit to Soult and returned to Paris, never again to lead an army in the Peninsula.
In April 1809 Wellesley, freed from criticism over the Convention of Sintra, returned to Portugal and assumed command of all British-Portuguese forces. Immediately, he implemented three innovations in army organization: the infantry were for the first time divided into autonomous divisions, each infantry brigade was provided with at least one company of riflemen, and - to mutual benefit - one battalion of Portuguese infantry was placed in each of five British brigades.
After defeating Soult at Porto on 12th May, Wellesley crossed the border into Spain, joined forces with the Spanish general Cuesta, and marched eastwards. On 27th-28th July, French armies under Joseph attacked the allies north of Talavera. The British-Portuguese lines held throughout the Battle of Talavera, finally compelling Joseph to abandon the battlefield. The victory had, however, been costly and, with Soult threatening to cut the road to Portugal, Wellesley was forced to fall back.The latter months of 1809 saw Spanish armies crushed first at Ocaña and then at Alba de Tormes, while Wellesley, now Viscount Wellington of Talavera, concentrated on building defences astride the roads into Portugal and began construction work on the Lines of Torres Vedras, a deep defensive system protecting Lisbon.The value of Wellington's preparations was proved in the following year when Masséna led a French army through Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida in a fresh attempt to re-take Portugal. Despite being repulsed on 27th September 1810 in his attacks against Wellington's position on the ridge at Buçaco, Masséna was able to force Wellington to seek safety behind the Lines of Torres Vedras. Masséna had no chance of breaking through with the forces at his disposal, and a stand-off ensued until a lack of supplies and the imminent arrival of British reinforcements in the spring of 1811 led Masséna to fall back.
With one French army under Soult checked by Graham's victory at Barrosa on 5th March 1811, Wellington was able to push Masséna out of Portugal. Counter-attacks at Fuentes de Oñoroon 3rd and 5th May 1811 were repulsed after desperate struggles in the streets of the village. Masséna, having failed to re-take Portugal, was replaced by Marmont. A further bloody battle took place at Albuera on 16th May as Soult's move north was intercepted by a combined British-Portuguese-Spanish force under Beresford. Although Beresford's handling of the battle - in which the French made the largest single infantry attack of the War - attracted much criticism, Soult was finally forced to retreat. French armies continued to threaten Wellington throughout the latter months of 1811, but at no time were able to catch him at a disadvantage. The turning point of the war had been reached.
The War: Attack, 1812-1814
On 8th January 1812 Wellington began to advance through Spain. Ciudad Rodrigo fell on 19th January followed, after a costly assault, by Badajoz on 6th April. Wellington's ability to push on eastwards in the face of an enemy that was numerically far superior was made possible by Spanish regular and guerrilla forces pinning down French armies elsewhere in Spain. On 17th June, Wellington entered Salamanca with only Marmont's army in the vicinity.
The two armies shadowed each other over the next few weeks until Marmont attempted to out-flank Wellington on 22nd July. Wellington seized the opportunity to attack and in the ensuingBattle of Salamanca won a crushing victory. Wellington entered Madrid on 6th August and penetrated as far as Burgos before being forced to withdraw to Salamanca and then to Ciudad Rodrigo when threatened by a combined French force under Soult, Joseph and Suchet.
Over the winter of 1812/1813 events moved further in Wellington's favour. Napoleon's invasion of Russia in June 1812 had ended in disaster, and by March 1813 French armies in east Europe were falling back to the Elbe river. With Prussia re-entering the war against France on 16th March, Napoleon was unable to spare fresh troops for the Peninsula as he prepared to counter-attack in the east. At the same time reinforcements continued to be fed into Wellington's army.
The difficulties facing the French commanders, Joseph and Jourdan, mounted as their armies became increasingly pinned down by allied regular and guerrilla forces. In May 1813 Wellington returned to the offensive, striking northwards towards Burgos without allowing the French armies the chance to concentrate. From Burgos, Wellington outflanked Joseph by wheeling through the mountains to the north. Joseph finally took up a defensive position in the valley of the Zadorra river, only to see his forces routed on 21st June in the Battle of Vitoria.
Vitoria essentially sealed Napoleon's fate. News of Wellington's victory not only rallied the Prussian-Russian alliance after defeats by Napoleon at Lützen and Bautzen, but contributed towards Austria's decision in August to re-enter the war against France.
By mid-July, Wellington had reached the Pyrenees while Joseph and Jourdan had been replaced by Soult. Although a counter-offensive by Soult was briefly successful at Maya and Roncesvalles, Wellington's victory at Sorauren on 28th July restored the initiative to the allies.
On 7th October Wellington crossed the Bidassoa into France; on 10th November the French defences along the line of the Nivelle were broken. Soult counter-attacked again on 10th December after Wellington had crossed the Nive. Fighting continued over four days before the allied army under Hill's command forced Soult back to the outskirts of Bayonne. In the meantime, the continental allies were closing in on the French border from the east following victories at Dennewitz in September and Leipzig in October.
On 27th February 1814, having succeeded in drawing Soult away from Bayonne, Wellington attacked and defeated the French Marshal at Orthez. Although the resolve of the continental allies was again tested by Napoleon's vigorous defence of France, Paris was entered by the allies on 31st March. The last battle of the Peninsular War was fought on 10th April as Wellington cleared the French from the Calvinet Ridge overlooking the city of Toulouse. On 12th April, news reached Wellington of Napoleon's abdication. After six years, the Peninsular War was over.
An Appraisal
It can well be argued that the seeds of Napoleon's defeat and abdication in 1814 were sown by the Emperor himself six years earlier when he usurped the Spanish throne for his brother Joseph and, in so doing, alienated the Spanish nation.
The myth of French invincibility in battle was soon exposed by the defeats of Dupont and Junot at Bailén and Vimeiro in 1808. Despite the withdrawal from La Coruña, Britain - through her navy's domination of the seas - was able to take advantage of an alliance with Portugal and Spain to gain a foothold on Continental Europe. By 1810-1811, 300,000 French troops had been sucked into the Peninsula, and yet only 70,000 could be spared to confront Wellington; the remainder were pinned down elsewhere by the threat of local insurrections and the actions of guerrillas. With the French unable to concentrate their forces against the British-Portuguese army, Wellington was able to move on to the offensive.
Although the outcome of Napoleon's 1812 invasion of Russia may not have been decided by events in the Peninsula, the course of the 1813 German campaign almost certainly was. Not only was the absence of some 200,000 French troops still locked into the Peninsula pivotal, but also Wellington's crushing victory at Vitoria served to rally the Prussian-Russian alliance that was wavering after setbacks at Lützen and Bautzen.
Napoleon is said to have exclaimed that it was absurd "que quarante mille Anglais gâtent toutes les affaires d'Espagne." Alongside their Portuguese and Spanish allies they surely accomplished considerably more.

the goths march to death

2015-05-05T23:45:00.002-07:00

The summer and fall of 376, tens of thousands of displaced Goths and other tribes arrived on the Danube River, on the border of the Roman Empire, requesting asylum from the Huns. Fritigern, a leader of the Thervingi, appealed to the Roman emperor Valens to be allowed to settle with his people on the south bank of the Danube, where they hoped to find refuge from the Huns, who lacked the ability to cross the wide river in force. Valens permitted this, and even helped the Goths cross the river, probably at the fortress of Durostorum (modern Silistra), Bulgaria.

Valens promised the Goths farming land, grain rations, and protection under the Roman armies as foederati. His major reasons for quickly accepting the Goths into Roman territory were to increase the size of his army, and to gain a new tax base to increase his treasury.

The selection of Goths that were allowed to cross the Danube was unforgiving: the weak, old, and sickly were left on the far bank to fend for themselves against the Huns.The ones that crossed were supposed to have their weapons confiscated;however, the Romans in charge accepted bribes to allow the Goths to retain their weapons.The Huns were a nomadic group of people who are known to have lived in Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia between the 1st century AD and the 7th century. They were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part of Scythia at the time; the Huns' arrival is associated with the migration westward of a Scythian people, the Alans.(The Alans, or the Alani, occasionally termed Alauni or Halani or Yancai were an Iraniannomadic pastoral people of antiquity.

The Alans are first mentioned by Chinese authors in the 1st century BC as living near the Aral Sea as vassals of the Kangju under the name of Yancai, and were later mentioned by Romanauthors in the 1st century AD.At the time they settled the region north of the Black Sea, and frequently raided the Parthian Empire and the Caucasian provinces of the Roman Empire.

Upon the Hunnic defeat of the Goths on the Pontic Steppe around 375 AD, many of the Alans migrated westwards along with other Germanic tribes. They crossed the Rhine in 406 AD along with the Vandals and Suebi, settling in Orléans and Valence. Around 409 AD they joined the Vandals and Suebi in the crossing of the Pyrenees into the Iberian Peninsula, settling inLusitania and Carthaginiensis.The Iberian Alans were soundly defeated by the Visigoths 418 AD, and subsequently surrendered their authority to the Hasdingi Vandals. In 428 AD, the Vandals and Alans crossed the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa, where they founded apowerful kingdom which lasted until its conquest by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I in the 6th century AD.

The Alans who remained under Hunnic rule are said to be the ancestors of the modern Ossetians.

The Alans spoke an Eastern Iranian language which derived from Scytho-Sarmatian and which in turn evolved into modern Ossetian. They were first mentioned as Hunnoi by Tacitus. In 91 AD, the Huns were said to be living near the Caspian Sea and by about 150 AD had migrated southeast into the Caucasus.) By 370 AD, the Huns had established a vast, if short-lived, dominion in Europe

With so many people in such a small area, famine struck the Goths, and Rome was unable to supply them with either the food they were promised or the land; they herded the Goths into a temporary holding area surrounded by an armed Roman garrison. There was only enough grain left for the Roman garrison, and so they simply let the Goths starve. The Romans provided a grim alternative: the trade of slaves (often children and young women) for dog meat. When Fritigern appealed to Valens for help, he was told that his people would find food and trade in the markets of the distant city of Marcianople. Having no alternative, some of the Goths trekked south in a death march, losing the sickly and old along the path.When they finally reached Marcianople's gates, they were barred by the city's military garrison and denied entry; to add insult to injury, the Romans unsuccessfully tried to assassinate the Goth leaders during a banquet. Open revolt began. The main body of Goths spent the rest of 376 and early 377 near the Danube plundering food from the immediate region. Roman garrisons were able to defend isolated forts but most of the country was vulnerable to Gothic plunder.In late winter 377 war began in earnest and would last for six years before peace would be restored in 382. The remaining Goths moved south from the Danube to Marcianople, and next appeared near Adrianople. The Roman response was to send a force under Valens to meet and defeat the Goths. In 378 Valens moved north from Constantinople and was defeated (and himself killed) at the Battle of Adrianople (378) (modern Edirne). The victory gave the Goths freedom to roam at will, plundering throughout Thrace for the rest of 378. In 379 the Goths met only light Roman resistance and advanced north-west into Dacia, plundering that region.In 380 the Goths divided into Terving and Greuthung armies, in part because of the difficulty of keeping such a large number supplied. The Greuthungi moved north into Pannonia where they were defeated by western emperor Gratian.

( Latin: Flavius Gratianus Augustus; 18 April/23 May 359 – 25 August 383) was Roman emperorfrom 375 to 383. The eldest son of Valentinian I, during his youth Gratian accompanied his father on several campaigns along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Upon the death of Valentinian in 375, Gratian's brother Valentinian II was declared emperor by his father's soldiers. In 378, Gratian's generals won a decisive victory over the Lentienses, a branch of the Alamanni, at the Battle of Argentovaria. Gratian subsequently led a campaign across the Rhine, the last emperor to do so, and attacked the Lentienses, forcing the tribe to surrender. That same year, his uncle Valens was killed in the Battle of Adrianople against the Goths – making Gratian essentially ruler of the entire Roman Empire. He favoured Christianity over traditional Roman religion, refusing the divine attributes of the Emperors and removing theAltar of Victory from the Roman Senate.)Gratian was the son of Emperor Valentinian by Marina Severa, and was born at Sirmium (now Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia) in Pannonia. He was named after his grandfather Gratian the Elder. Gratian was first married to Flavia Maxima Constantia, daughter of Constantius II. His second wife was Laeta. Both marriages remained childless. His stepmother was Empress Justina and his paternal half siblings were Emperor Valentinian II, Galla and Justa.

On 4 August 367 he received from his father the title of Augustus. On the death of Valentinian (17 November 375), the troops in Pannonia proclaimed his infant son (by a second wife Justina) emperor under the title of Valentinian II.

Gratian acquiesced in their choice; reserving for himself the administration of theGallic provinces, he handed over Italy, Illyricum and Africa to Valentinian and his mother, who fixed their residence at Mediolanum. The division, however, was merely nominal, and the real authority remained in the hands of Gratian.

Gratian's general Mallobaudes, a king of the Franks, and Naniemus, completely defeated the Lentienses, the southernmost branch of the Alamanni, in May 378 at the Battle of Argentovaria. Upon receiving news of the victory, Gratian personally led a campaign across the Upper Rhine into the territory of the Lentienses. After initial trouble facing the Lentienses on high ground, Gratian blockaded the enemy instead and received their surrender. The Lentienses were forced to supply young men to be levied into the Roman army, while the remainder were allowed to return home. Later that year, Valens met his death in theBattle of Adrianople on 9 August. Valens refused to wait for Gratian and his army to arrive and assist in defeating the host of Goths, Alans and Huns; as a result, two-thirds of the eastern Roman army were killed as well.

In the same year, the government of the Eastern Empire devolved upon Gratian, but feeling himself unable to resist unaided the incursions of the barbarians, he promoted Theodosius I on 19 January 379 to govern that portion of the Empire. Gratianus and Theodosius then cleared the Illyricum of barbarians in the Gothic War (376-382).

For some years Gratian governed the Empire with energy and success but gradually sank into indolence, occupying himself chiefly with the pleasures of the chase, and became a tool in the hands of the Frankish general Merobaudes and bishop St. Ambrose of Milan.

By taking into his personal service a body of Alans, and appearing in public in the dress of a Scythian warrior, after the disaster of the Battle of Adrianople, he aroused the contempt and resentment of his Roman troops. A Roman general named Magnus Maximus took advantage of this feeling to raise the standard of revolt in Britain and invaded Gaul with a large army. Gratian, who was then in Paris, being deserted by his troops, fled to Lyon. There, through the treachery of the governor, Gratian was delivered over to one of the rebel generals, Andragathius, and assassinated on 25 August 383.

The reign of Gratian forms an important epoch in ecclesiastical history, since during that period Nicene Christianity for the first time became dominant throughout the empire.

Gratian also published an edict that all their subjects should profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria (i.e., the Nicene faith). The move was mainly thrust at the various beliefs that had arisen out of Arianism, but smaller dissident sects, such as the Macedonians, were also prohibited.

Gratian, under the influence of his chief advisor the Bishop of Milan Ambrose, took active steps to repress Pagan worship.
This brought to an end a period of widespread, if unofficial, religious tolerance that had existed since the time of Julian. "In the long truce between the hostile camps", writes historian Samuel Dill "the pagan, the sceptic, even the formal, the lukewarm Christian, may have come to dream of a mutual toleration which would leave the ancient forms undisturbed but such men, living in a world of literary and antiquarian illusions, know little of the inner forces of the new Christian movement."

In 382, Gratian appropriated the income of the Pagan priests and Vestal Virgins, forbade legacies of real property to them and abolished other privileges belonging to the Vestals and to the pontiffs. He confiscated the personal possessions of the colleges of Pagan priests, which also lost all their privileges and immunities. Gratian declared that all of the Pagan temples and shrines were to be confiscated by the government and that their revenues were to be joined to the property of the royal treasury.

He ordered another removal of the Altar of Victory from the Senate House at Rome, despite protests of the pagan members of the Senate, and confiscated its revenues. Pagan Senators responded by sending an appeal to Gratian, reminding him that he was still the Pontifex Maximus and that it was his duty to see that the Pagan rites were properly performed. They appealed to Gratian to restore the Altar of Victory and the rights and privileges of the Vestal Virgins and priestly colleges. Gratian, at the urging of Ambrose, did not grant an audience to the Pagan Senators. In response to being reminded by the Pagans that he was still the head of the ancestral religion, Gratian refused to wear the insignia of the Pontifex Maximus as unbefitting a Christian, renouncing the title and office of Pontifex Maximus under the influence of Ambrose, declaring that it was unsuitable for a Christian to hold this office. Gratian was quickly faced with a revolt from Magnus Maximus to the throne because he was more sympathetic to the Pagan cause.

Notwithstanding his actions, Gratian was still deified after his death.

The Tervingi under Fritigern moved south and east to Macedonia, where they took "protection money" from towns and cities rather than sacking them outright. In 381, forces of the western Empire drove the Goths back to Thrace, where finally in 382, peace was made on October 3.By the end of the war, the Goths had killed a Roman emperor, destroyed a Roman army and laid waste large tracts of the Roman Balkans, much of which never recovered. The Roman Empire had for the first time negotiated a peace settlement with an autonomous barbarian tribe inside the borders of the Empire, a situation that a generation before would have been unthinkable.The lesson was not lost on other tribes, as well as the Goths themselves, who would not remain peaceful for long. Within a hundred years the Western Empire would collapse under the pressure of continued invasions as the Empire was carved up into barbarian kingdoms.

harris

2015-05-03T15:09:00.001-07:00

All soldiers are sold unpainted unless you ask first.

toy soldiers are painted (these are the garibaldi series.

a compendium of the soldiers I have for sale at the moment all designed by myself and made in the u.k. These pieces are based on a tale told by RIFLEMAN Harris. all pieces are 10.00 and build into a set of 7 pieces.Apart from these I have Terence Hill character from french foreign Legion film MARCH OR DIE firing machine gun plus US/Mexican war 8 figures here plus Garibaldi in naples. all sets come in wooden boxes and we are the best value of any company.Post 10 per cent or cost. To the USA its just 5% at the moment as a way of enticing our USA friends.You may purchase any of the soldiers here in kit form.

The Recollections of Rifleman Harris is a memoir published in 1848 of the experiences of an enlisted soldier in the 95th Regiment of Foot in the British Army during the Napoleonic Wars. The eponymous soldier was Benjamin Randell Harris, a private who joined the regiment in 1803 and served in many of the early campaigns in the Peninsula War. In the mid-1830s, Harris was working as acobbler in London when he met an acquaintance, Captain Henry Curling, who asked him to dictate an account of his experiences of army life. This account was then held by Curling until 1848, when he succeeded in getting the manuscript published, preserving one of the very few surviving accounts of military service in this era from a private soldier.The account begins with a description of Harris’ recruitment in the army via the militia and the 66th Regiment of Foot in Stalbridge, from where he was sent on garrison duty to Ireland and joined the 95th Rifles. The account reveals many details of army life in the period, including a graphic depiction of an execution by firing squad and a description of the actions and progress of a recruiting party through Ireland, which reveals the endemic alcoholism and religious rivalry which Ireland and the army of the time was subject to. Harris notes particular difficulty in separating Catholic and Protestant Irish recruits.

Harris was sent to Denmark in 1807, where he participated in the campaign which surrounded the bombardment of Copenhagen, including seeing his first fighting near Køgeand observing Congreve rockets in action for the first time. Harris also recounts further experiences of drunkenness and ill-discipline amongst the largely inexperienced soldiery. He also served in 1808 with several men who had participated in the South American expedition of 1807, and offers comment and anecdotes on that campaign and the subsequent trial of General John Whitelocke, whom Harris holds in contempt.

In the summer of 1808 Harris was dispatched to Portugal to participate in the opening actions of the Peninsula War, seeing action in the opening skirmish at Óbidos and subsequently the Battle of Rolica, where Harris’ unit was heavily engaged and Harris offers a vivid description of the engagement, at which a number of his close friends were killed. This is followed by a description of the Battle of Vimeiro where he was again heavily engaged and follows the army on the ensuing march to Salamanca and the clash with the French at Sahagún. This is followed by a graphic depiction of the horrific march northwards during the Galician campaign culminating in the Battle of Corunna. Harris and his regiment were amongst the final troops evacuated from the beaches, and they returned to England where Harris served in recruitment and training positions, thus providing readers with a rare insight into rural Georgian England from a lower class perspective.

From England Harris and the 95th were sent to Walcheren to participate in the catastrophic Walcheren Expedition. The narrator acutely demonstrates the squalid conditions and indecisive generalship which led to the ensuing disaster in the marshy land and high summer of Holland. Harris himself fell ill from the ague which killed two thirds of the expeditionary force, and thus also provides an insight into the medical care and treatments available to soldiers during the Georgian period, a disease from which he never fully recovered. For the next three years, despite determined efforts to rejoin his unit in Spain, Harris was unable to participate in the wars due to his recurring malarial fevers. During this period of inactivity and ill-health at the depot in Hythe, Harris recounts many stories told to him by his comrades and contemporaries of their service on the Peninsula, including tales of the Siege of Badajoz and the Siege of San Sebastian.

In 1813 and 1814, Harris was attached to the 8th Veteran's Battalion based in London, having been rejected from foreign service by the Duke of Wellington, who decreed no survivors of Walcheren were to serve in his army as none were fit for marching or fighting. There he served alongside several detachments of French deserters, again witnessing the frequent brutal punishment of the day, when a man was given 700 lashes for desertion. Stricken with illness, he was unable to rejoin his regiment during the Hundred DaysCampaign and thus forfeited his pension. Nonetheless, Harris’ final words on the subject are very revealing. "I enjoyed life more whilst on active service than I have ever done since, and I look back on my time spent on the fields of the Peninsula as the only part worthy of remembr

The book is perhaps most important in the manner in which it provides the viewpoint of one of Wellington's foot soldiers at a time when so many were illiterate. Whilst many officers kept diaries or wrote memoirs of their service, ‘’The Recollections of Rifleman Harris’’ is rare because unlike the grand actions or great people recalled by his superiors, Harris mentions dozens of men whose history is no longer remembered and whose names would otherwise be lost, and records the details of daily ennui with interesting and colloquial prose. He describes medicine from a patients’ point of view, punishment from a friend of the victim's view and military life from the bottom up, giving otherwise unknown insight to the daily life of a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars, as well as a unique primary source to some of the British campaign.During Harris’ life the book was neither popular nor well-received critically, fading into obscurity for many years before being rediscovered in the early years of the twentieth century. The book has since been republished many times, with a number of commentaries, some rather poorly researched, even reporting Harris’ first name as John.
In more recent times a freshly researched volume by historian Eileen Hathaway has been published which removes many of the older mistakes and contains a foreword by the authorBernard Cornwell, who used the memoir as a source for his Sharpe series, even basing a minor character on Harris, albeit with a very different career. Likewise in the Sharpe TV series, the actor Jason Salkey played a rifleman very loosely based on Benjamin Harris. Salkey later recorded an audiobook version of The Recollections of Rifleman Harris.

ALAMO

2015-05-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

owen glendower

2015-05-01T09:55:00.000-07:00

2nd Empire

2015-05-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

2015-04-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

walker Bulldog

Hasegawa Valentine

http://www.thoroughbredmodels.com/EagleTens.htm

2015-04-30T04:56:00.001-07:00

sand pebbles

2015-04-30T04:55:00.000-07:00

battle at governolo

2015-04-27T05:25:00.000-07:00

According to the tradition, the frazione of Governolo was the seat of the meeting between Pope Leo I and Attila in 452. Also in Governolo the condottiero Giovanni dalle Bande Nere was shot by a cannonball in 1526, later dying out of the wounds received.Giovanni was born in the Northern Italian town of Forlì to Giovanni de' Medici (also known as il Popolano) and Caterina Sforza, one of the most famous women of the Italian Renaissance.

From an early age, he demonstrated great interest and ability in physical activity, especially the martial arts of the age: horse riding, sword-fighting, etc. He committed his first murder at the age of 12, and was twice banished from the city of Florence for his unruly behavior, including involvement in the rape of a sixteen-year-old boy, Giovanni being about thirteen at the time.He had a son,Cosimo (1519–1574), who went on to become Grand Duke of Florence.

As a symbol of mourning for the death of Pope Leo X (December 1, 1521), Giovanni added black stripes to his insignia, whence comes his nickname, Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (or Giovanni of the Black Bands). In August 1523 he was hired by the Imperial army, and in January 1524 he defeated the French and the Swiss at Caprino Bergamasco. In the same year another Medici, Giulio di Giuliano, became Pope, and took the name of Clement VII. The new Pope paid all of Giovanni's debt, but in exchange ordered him to switch to the French side of the ongoing conflict. He did not take part in the battle of Pavia, but was soon severely wounded in a skirmish and later had to move toVenice to recuperate from his wounds.Giovanni became a condottiero, or mercenary military captain, in the employ of Pope Leo X(Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici) and on March 5, 1516 led the war against Francesco Maria I della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. He thenceforth formed a company of his own, mounted on light horses and specializing in fast but devastating skirmishing tactics and ambushes. In 1520 he defeated several rebel barons in the Marche. The following year Leo X allied with Emperor Charles V against King Francis I of France
to regain Milan, Parma and Piacenza; Giovanni was called in under the command of Prospero Colonna, defeating the French at Vaprio d'Adda in November.

In 1526 the War of the League of Cognac broke out. The League's captain general, Francesco Maria I della Rovere, abandoned Milan in the face of the overwhelming superiority of the Imperial army led by Georg von Frundsberg. Giovanni was able to defeat theLandsknechts rearguard at the confluence of the Mincio with the Po River.

On the evening of November 25 he was hit by a shot from a falconet in a battle near Governolo.According to a contemporary account by Luigi Guicciardini, the ball shattered his right leg above the knee and he had to be carried to San Nicolò Po, near Bagnolo San Vito, where no doctor could be found. He was taken to Aloisio Gonzaga's palace, marquis of Castel Goffredo, in Mantua, where the surgeon Abramo, who had cared for him two years earlier, amputated his leg. To perform the operation Abramo asked for 10 men to hold down the stricken condottiero.

Pietro Aretino, eyewitness to the event, recalled in a letter to Francesco Albizi:

'Not even twenty' Giovanni said smiling 'could hold me', and he took a candle in his hand, so that he could make light onto himself, I ran away, and shutting my ears I heard only two voices, and then calling, and when I reached him he told me: 'I am healed', and turning all around he greatly rejoiced.

Despite the surgery Giovanni de' Medici died five days later, supposedly of septicemia, on 30 November 1526.

Giovanni's body was exhumed in 2012 along with that of his wife to preserve the remains, which were damaged in the 1966 flood of the Arno river, and to ascertain the cause of his death.

Preliminary investigation revealed that his leg was amputated below the knee. No damage was found to the thigh, where the shot supposedly hit. The tibia and fibula, the bones of the lower leg, were found sawed off from the amputation. There was no damage to the femur.

It is now thought that de' Medici may have died of gangrene.

Giovanni's premature death metaphorically signaled the end of the age of the condottieri, as their mode of fighting (which emphasized armored knights on horseback) was rendered practically obsolete by the introduction of the mobile field cannon. He is therefore known as the last of the great Italian condottieri. His lasting reputation has been kept alive in part thanks to Pietro Aretino, the Renaissance author, satirist, playwright and "scourge of the princes", who was Giovanni's close friend and accompanied him on some of his exploits.

SS Charlemagne

2015-04-22T15:21:00.001-07:00

The 33rd Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS Charlemagne (1st French) and Charlemagne Regiment are collective names used for units of French volunteers in the Wehrmacht and later Waffen-SS during World War II. From estimates of 7,400 to 11,000 at its peak in 1944,[2] the strength of the division fell to just sixty men in May 1945.

They were one of the last German units to see action in a pitched battle during World War II, where they held central Berlin and the Führerbunker against the onslaught of Soviet infantry. Knowing that they would not survive should Germany be defeated, they were among the last to surrender in the brutal house-to-house and street-to-street fighting, during the final days of the Battle in Berlin.

Its crest is a representation of the dual empire of Charlemagne, which united the Franks in what would become France and Germany. The Imperial eagle on the left-side represents GermanyThe Charlemagne division was formed in 1944, combining troops serving in other French units of the German armed forces, as well as from the paramilitary Franc-Garde of the Milice. BELOW AIRFIX CONVERSIONS

Soldiers of the Légion des Volontaires Français, when still part of the WehrmachtLVF[edit]The original French unit in the German army was the Legion of French Volunteers Against Bolshevism (French: Légion des Volontaires Français contre le Bolchévisme, or LVF). The LVF was also known by its official German designation, the 638th Infantry Regiment (Infanterieregiment 638). The LVF was mainly made up of right-wing Frenchmen and French prisoners of war who preferred fighting to forced labor in Germany. The LVF

fought near Moscow in November 1941 as part of the 7th Infantry Division. In 1942 the men were assigned to anti-partisan duties in the Byelorussian SSR (Belarus). At the same time, another unit was formed in France, La Légion Tricolore (Tricolor Regiment) but this unit was absorbed into the LVF six months later.below WARRIOR

The LVF's French commander, Colonel Roger Labonne, was relieved in mid-1942, and the unit was attached to various German divisions until June 1943 when Colonel Edgar Puaud took command. The LVF fought well on the Ukraine front against the Soviets. In June 1944, hours before the LVF's planned departure to France, it was called into action when Army Group Centre's front crumpled under the Red Army's summer offensive. On 25 June, at the Bobr River, elements of the LVF under Major Bridoux fought for 48 hours against a Soviet assault. Attached to the 4th SS-Police Division and supported by Stukas and five Tiger I tanks, they checked a number of attacks in what is generally regarded as the LVF's most successful operation. Forty or more Soviet tanks were destroyed in front of the French position. Testimony to the ability of the LVF came from a Soviet communique which spoke of their forces being stopped by the sacrifice of "two French divisions"

Within a month, a new recruiting drive in Vichy France attracted 3,000 applicants, mostly members of collaborating militias and university students. This unit, the 8th SS Volunteer Sturmbrigade France was led by a former Foreign Legionnaire, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Marie Gamory-Dubourdeau. The 1st battalion, of about 1,000 men, was attached to SS Division Horst Wessel and sent to Galicia to fight the Soviet advance. In fierce fighting the battalion suffered heavy casualties.

Charlemagne[edit]In September 1944, a new unit, the Waffen-Grenadier-Brigade der SS "Charlemagne" (französische Nr.1), also known as the Französische Brigade der SS was formed out of the remnants of the LVF and French Sturmbrigade, both of which were disbanded. Joining them were French collaborators fleeing the Allied advance in the west, as well as Frenchmen from the German Navy, the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), the Organisation Todt, a construction unit and the Vichy French Milice. Some sources[which?] claim that the unit also included volunteers from some French colonies and Switzerland. SS-Brigadeführer Gustav Krukenberg took actual command with Puaud (now an SS-Oberführer), as nominal French commander.

The two main infantry regiments were Waffen-Grenadier Regiment der SS 57 and 58. Veterans of the Sturmbrigade were the nucleus of Regiment 57 and the LVF formed the core of Regiment 58. The LVF also manned the artillery battalion, the headquarters company and the engineer company. The reaction of the LVF to their transfer into the SS was mixed.

In early 1945, SS-Oberführer Puaud received assurance from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler that his men would not be sent to the western front, where they might have to fight fellow Frenchmen. He was also told that they would fight under the French flag and continue to have Catholic military chaplains. Himmler promised that France would regain its sovereignty after Germany's victory.

In February 1945, the unit was officially upgraded to a division and renamed 33. Waffen-Grenadier-Division der SS "Charlemagne". However, this division was severely undermanned with only 7,340 men. The Charlemagne Division was sent to fight the Red Army in Poland, but on 25 February it was attacked while deploying from the railhead at Hammerstein (present day Czarne) in Pomerania, by troops of the Soviet 1st Belorussian Front. Opposing the Frenchmen were four Red Army infantry divisions and two tank brigades. The lightly armed French troops had not re-equipped prior to their departure, and they had no radios and few maps. The only bright spot for the Frenchmen was that they managed to stop the tanks with Panzerfausts (a type of one man anti-tank weapon).

On the night of 3 March, the Charlemagne survivors were sent to defend the nearby town of Körlin with orders to "hold at all costs". At noon the next day, a strong Red Army force hit Körlin from the southwest. The French fought back desperately and were able to hold their positions throughout the day. The Division was ordered to immediately withdraw to the west, to avoid being trapped, and was broken into three battlegroups (Kampfgruppen). Only the battlegroup commanded by Krukenberg survived, as they retreated to the Baltic coast, and were evacuated by sea to Denmark and later sent to Neustrelitz for refitting. Around 4,800 men had been lost, including SS-Oberführer Puaud.

waterloo revell and others

2015-04-20T04:31:00.002-07:00

http://www.revell.de/en/products/model-building/military-figures/figures-historical/id/02450.htmlThe 18 June 2015 hails the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon Bonaparte's last battle of took place near the village of Waterloo (located in present-day Belgium). The defeat of the French Troops led by Napoleon by the Allied Troops and their Prussian allies led to the end of the First French Empire. Napoleon himself was taken prisoner of war by the British and sent into exile on the Atlantic island of St. Helena where he eventually died. Even today, the term Waterloo is used to describe a crushing defeat or setback.

Established at the time of the English Restoration in the 17th century the Life Guards ranked as the best unit in the British Cavalry. Blue was the traditional colour of the Prussian Infantry uniform. A Regiment of Prussian infantry consisted of two Musketeer and one Fusilier Battalions to which two Grenadier Companies were added. The Grenadiers of the Old Guard represented the elite of the Napoleonic infantry. Formed from selected soldiers who were better equipped and paid than regular infantry, they were always loyal to the Emperor.The First World War also referred to by historians as the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century was waged from 1914 to 1918. The German Army's advance into France at the beginning of the war was soon halted and from thence onwards the battle of the trenches decided the run of events on the Western Front. Great Britain stood at the side of its ally France. The end of the war was sealed with the Armistice on 11th November 1918.

- Four German infantry
- Four French infantrymen
- Four British infantrymen
- Equipment and clothing corresponding to the year 1914
- Wide range of accessories such as guns and equipment allowing individual customising of figures
- Authentic poses
- Finely detailed facial features
- Realistic clothing

colt

2015-04-19T15:16:00.000-07:00

There is a very well known scene, for example, in the film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly where Blondie (played by Clint Eastwood) loads a breech-loading Colt 1851 Navy Revolver.
The film is set in 1862, during the American Civil War, but this is not an anachronism since the Smith & Wesson metallic cartridge conversion of the Navy or other Colt revolvers did indeed exist all along the American Civil War.
Colt's Manufacturing Company (CMC, formerly Colt's Patent Firearms Manufacturing Company) is a United States firearmsmanufacturer, founded in 1855 by Samuel Colt. It is the successor corporation to Colt's earlier firearms-making efforts since 1836. Colt is known for the engineering, production, and marketing of firearms, most especially between the 1850s and World War I, when it was a dominating force in its industry and a seminal influence on manufacturing technology. Colt's earliest designs played a major role in the popularization of the revolver and the shift away from earlier single-shot pistols. Although Samuel Colt did not invent the revolver concept, his designs resulted in the first very successful ones.

The most famous Colt products include the Colt Walker, made 1847 in the facilities of Eli Whitney Jr., the Single Action Army or Peacemaker, and the Colt Python. John Browning worked for Colt for a time, and came up with a design for a semiautomatic pistol, which debuted as the Colt M1900 pistol and eventually evolved into the Colt M1911 pistol. Though they did not develop it, for a long time Colt was primarily responsible for all AR-15 and M16 rifle production, as well as many derivatives of those firearms. The most successful and famous of these are numerous M16 carbines, including the Colt Commando family, and the M4 carbine.

In 2002, Colt Defense was split off from Colt's Manufacturing Company. Colt Manufacturing Company now serves the civilian market, while Colt Defense serves the law enforcement, military, and private security markets worldwide. The two companies remained in the same West Hartford, CT location however, even cross-licensing certain merchandise, before reuniting in 2013.Samuel Colt received a British patent on his improved design for a revolver in 1835,^[2] and two U.S. patents in 1836, one on February 25 (later numbered U.S. Patent 9430X) and another on August 29 (U.S. Patent 1,304). That same year, he founded his first corporation for its manufacture, the Patent Arms Manufacturing Company of Paterson, New Jersey, Colt's Patent.
The first firearm manufactured at the new Paterson plant, however, was the Colt First Model Ring Lever rifle beginning in 1837. This was followed shortly thereafter in late 1837 by the introduction of the Colt Paterson.This corporation suffered quality problems in production. Making firearms with interchangeable parts was still rather new (it had reached commercial viability only about a decade before), and it was not yet easy to replicate across different factories. Interchangeability was not complete in the Paterson works, and traditional gunsmithing techniques did not fill the gap entirely there. The Colt Paterson revolver found patchy success and failure; some worked well, while others had problems. The United States Marine Corps and United States Army reported quality problems with these earliest Colt revolvers.
Production had ended at the New Jersey corporation by 1842.

Colt made another attempt at revolver production in 1846 and submitted a prototype to the US government. During the Mexican–American War (1846–1848), this prototype was seen by Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker who made some suggestions to Colt about making it in a larger caliber. Having no factory or machinery to produce the pistols, Samuel Colt collaborated with the Whitney armory of Whitneyville, Connecticut.
This armory was run by the family of Eli Whitney. Eli Whitney Jr (born 1820), the son of the cotton-gin-developer patriarch, was the head of the family armory and a successful arms maker and innovator of the era. Colt used a combination of renting the Whitney firm's facilities and subcontracting parts to the firm to continue his pursuit of revolver manufacture.

Colt's new revolvers found favor with Texan volunteers (the progenitors of later Texas Rangers cavalry groups), and they placed an order for 1,000 revolvers that became known as the Colt Walker, ensuring Colt's continuance in manufacturing revolvers In 1848, Colt was able to start again with a new business of his own, and 1855, he converted it into a corporation under the name of Colt's Patent Fire Arms Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut.

Colt's Armory from an 1857 engraving viewed from the East

Colt purchased a large tract of land beside the Connecticut River, where he built his first factory in 1848, a larger factory called the Colt Armory in 1855, a manor that he called Armsmear in 1856, and employee tenement housing.
He established a ten-hour day for employees, installed washing stations in the factory, mandated a one-hour lunch break, and built the Charter Oak Hall, a club where employees could enjoy games, newspapers, and discussion rooms. Colt ran his plant with a military-like discipline, he would fire workers for tardiness, sub-par work or even suggesting improvements to his designs.

In an attempt to attract skilled German workers to his plant, Colt built a village near the factory away from the tenements which he named Coltsville and modeled the homes after a village in Pottsdam. In an effort to stem the flooding from the river he planted German osiers, a type of willow tree in a 2-mile long dike. He subsequently built a factory to manufacture wicker furniture made from these trees.

The 1850s were a decade of phenomenal success for the new Colt corporation. Colt was the first to widely commercialize the total use of interchangeable parts throughout a product. It was a leader in assembly line practice. It was a major innovator and training ground in manufacturing technology in this decade (and several after).^[8] Soon after establishing his Hartford factory, Colt set out to establish a factory in Europe and chose London, England. He organized a large display of his firearms at the Great Exhibition of 1851 at Hyde Park, London and ingratiated himself by presenting cased engraved Colt revolvers to such appropriate officials as Britain’s Master General of the Ordnance.
At one exhibit Colt disassembled ten guns and reassembled ten guns using different parts from different guns. As the world’s leading proponent of mass production techniques, Colt went on to deliver a lecture on the subject to the Institute of Civil Engineers in London.
The membership rewarded his efforts by awarding him the Telford Gold Medal.

Colt's presence in the British market caused years of acrimony and lawsuits among British arms makers, who doubted the validity of Colt's British patent and the desirability of the American system of manufacturing.
It took many more years and a UK government commission before the point became universally accepted that such manufacture was possible and economical.
Colt opened his London plant on the River Thames at Pimlico and began production on January 1, 1853. http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol5/pp39-49
Many English people saw Colt’s advanced steampowered machinery as proof of America’s growing position as a leader in modern industrial production.
On a tour of the factory, Charles Dickens was so impressed with the facilities that he recorded his favorable comments of Colt's revolvers in an 1852 edition of Household Words.

Household Words was published every Saturday from March 1850 to May 1859.
Each number cost a mere tuppence, thereby ensuring a wide readership. The publication's first edition carried a section covering the paper's principles, entitled "A Preliminary Word":

Most significant, the Colt factory’s machines mass-produced interchangeable parts that could be easily and cheaply put together on assembly lines using standardized patterns and gauges by unskilled labor as opposed to England's top gunmakers.

In 1854 the British Admiralty ordered 4,000 Navy Model Colt revolvers.
In 1855 the British Army placed an order for 5,000 of these revolvers for army issue.
Despite a following order later in the year for an additional 9,000 revolvers, Colt failed to convince the British to adopt his revolver as the issue sidearm for the army.
Colt began to realize that British sales were failing to meet his expectations. Unable to justify the London factory’s expenses, Colt closed the London factory in 1856. Over the next few months his workmen crated and shipped the machinery and unassembled firearms back to America.

Though the U.S. was not directly involved in the Crimean War (1854–1856), Colt's weapons were used by both sides. In 1855 Colt unveiled new state-of-the-art armories in the Hartford and London factories stocked with the latest machine tools (some of which were of Colt's devising), many built by Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, who would found the original Pratt & Whitney toolbuilding firm a few years later. For example, the Lincoln miller debuted to industry at these armories.

Colt had set up libraries and educational programs within the plants for his employees.
Colt's armories in Hartford were seminal training grounds for several generations of toolmakers and other machinists, who had great influence in other manufacturing efforts of the next half century.
Prominent examples included F. Pratt and A. Whitney (as mentioned above); Henry Leland (who would end up at Cadillac and Lincoln); Edward Bullard Sr of the Bullard firm; and, through Pratt & Whitney, Worcester R. Warner andAmbrose Swasey (of Warner & Swasey).

In 1852 an employee of Colt's, Rollin White, came up with the idea of having the revolver cylinder bored through to accept metallic cartridges. He took this idea to Colt who flatly rejected it and ended up firing White within a few years.
Colt historian RL Wilson has described this as the major blunder of Sam Colt's professional life.
Rollin White left Colt's in December 1854 and registered a patent on April 3, 1855 in Hartford, Connecticut, as patent number 12,648: Improvement in Repeating Fire-arms.
On November 17, 1856 White signed an agreement with Smith & Wesson for the exclusive use of his patent. The contract stipulated that White would be paid 25 cents for every revolver, but that it was up to him to defend his patent against infringement as opposed to Smith & Wesson.

During the 1850s and 1860s, Rollin White had been permanently trying to keep control on his breech-loading system patent, bringing a lawsuit to any breech-loaded manufactured gun. He nevertheless obtained an advance against royalties for using his patent from Smith & Wesson, a company that not only introduced its first revolver in 1857 (Smith & Wesson Model 1, a rear-loader) but also started, as of 1858, to convert cap & ball percussion guns into rear-loaders, even with formerly Colt manufactured revolvers.
But the Colt's company itself was prevented by American laws from infringing the Rollin White patent and all along the 1850s and 1860s continued manufacturing percussion guns. In 1860 it produced a new revolver model for the United States Army. This Colt Army Model 1860 appeared just in time for the American Civil War.

1860–1865: American Civil War

Colt Navy (top) and Army Models from 1861 and 1860

The American Civil War was a boon to firearms manufacturers such as Colt's, and the company thrived during the conflict. Sam Colt had carefully developed contacts within the ordnance department signing the very first government contract for 25,000 rifles. Colt's Factory was described as "an industrial palace topped by a blue dome" and powered by a 250-horsepower steam engine. During the American Civil War Colt had 1,500 employees who produced 150,000 muskets and pistols a year. In 1861 and 1863 the company sold 107,000 of the Colt Army Model 1860, alone, with production reaching 200,500 by the end of the war in 1865.

During the war, Colt's was still prevented by the American laws from infringing Rollin White's patent. Nevertheless the war made a huge fortune for the company, allowing Sam Colt to become America's first manufacturing tycoon, but he did not live to see the end of it. He died of rheumatic fever on January 10, 1862, and his close friend and firearms engineer, Elisha K. Root, took over as Colt's company president. On February 4, 1864 a fire destroyed most of the factory including arms, machinery, plans, and factory records.
On September 1, 1865 Root died leaving the company in the hands of Samuel Colt's brother-in-law, Richard Jarvis.
The company's Vice-president was William B. Franklin, who recently left the Army at the end of the Civil War. With the Civil War over and no new military contracts Colt's Manufacturing had to lay off over 800 employees.

The company found itself in a precarious situation, the original revolver patents had expired and other companies could produce copies of his designs. Additionally, metallic cartridge revolvers had been gaining in popularity, but Colt could not produce any because of the Rollin White patent held by rival, Smith & Wesson. Likewise, Colt had been so protective of its own patents that other companies were unable to make revolvers similar to their design. As the Rollin White patent was nearing expiration, Colt moved toward developing a metallic cartridge revolver.

1865–1880s: Post–Civil War

Factory-engraved Colt SAA

Colt's first effort toward a metallic cartridge revolver was by conversion of existing percussion revolvers. The first of these conversions was patented on September 15, 1868 by Colt engineer, F. Alexander Thuer as patent number 82258. The Thuer conversion was made by milling off the rear of the receiver and replacing it with a breechplate containing six internal firing pins. The cartridges were loaded through the mouths of the chambers. Colt made 5000 of these but they were not well accepted. Colt found the mechanism so complex it included a spare percussion cylinder with each revolver.

Colt tasked its superintendent of engineering, Charles Richards, to come up with a solution. The Richards conversion was performed on the Colt 1860 Army revolver. The caliber was .44 Colt and the loading lever was replaced by an ejector rod. This conversion added a breechplate with a firing pin and a rear sight mounted on the breechplate. Cartridges were loaded into the cylinder one at a time via a loading gate. Colt manufactured 9000 of these revolvers between 1873 and 1878. In 1873, Colt performed the same conversion on the M1851 and M1861 revolvers for the US Navy in .38 rimfire.

Another of Colt's engineers, William Mason, improved this conversion by placing the rear sight on the hammer and, along with Richards, he was granted patents in 1871 to convert percussion revolvers into rear-loading metallic-cartridge revolvers. Those converted revolvers are identified as the "Richards-Mason conversion".
There were approximately 2100 Richards-Mason M1860 Army conversions made from 1877 to 1878 in a serial-number range 5800 to 7900.

Colt Deringers, at right 1st Model (1870 - 1890), at left 3rd Model (1875 - 1912)

In November 1865, Franklin had attempted to purchase a license to the Rollin White patent from competitor Smith & Wesson. White and Smith & Wesson would take no less than $1.1 million, but Franklin and Colt's directors decided it was too large an investment on a patent that would expire in 1868.
In the meantime, Colt turned its attention to manufacturing goods other than firearms, such as watches, sewing machines, typewriters and bicycles.
In 1868 Rollin White requested an extension to his patent, but the request was rejected. He then turned to the Congress, but the request was again rejected, this time by the Senate and on the initiative of President Ulysses Grant, in January 1870.
This led the patent to expire, allowing competitors to develop their own breech-loading guns and metallic cartridges. Following this, on that same year of 1870, Colt's bought the National Arms Company, a Brooklyn, New York company known for manufacturing derringers and for circumventing the Rollin White patent by utilizing a unique cartridge.
Colt continued to produce the.41 Short derringer after the acquisition, as an effort to help break into the metallic-cartridge gun market, but also introduced its own three Colt Derringer Models, all of them also chambered in a .41 rimfire unique cartridge. The last model to be in production, the third Colt Derringer, was not dropped until 1912.
The first metallic cartridge breech-loading weapons sold by Colt's were those Derringers, in 1870, that were formerly conceived by the National Arms Company, but Colt's also started developing its own rear-loading guns and cartridges.

In 1871, Colt's introduced its first revolver models using rear-loaded metallic cartridges: the .41 caliber Colt House Revolver
(also known as the Cloverleaf under its four-round cylinder configuration) and the .22 cal Colt Open Top Pocket Model Revolver. But Colt's wanted a more powerful practical handgun loaded with metallic cartridges so the company put forward William Mason, who in 1871 began work on Colt's first .44 caliber metallic-cartridge revolver: the Colt Model 1871-72 Open Top The company registered two patents for the Open Top, one in 1871, the other in 1872, the same patents mentioned in the markings of Colt Single Action Army revolvers, a nowadays legendary and long produced model, improved and based on the Open Top. Production of the Open Top started in 1872 and stopped in 1873 when the Single Action Army model started to be delivered to the US Army.
But the Open Top was already a completely new design. The parts, for example, would not interchange with the older percussion pistols. Mason moved the rear sight to the rear of the barrel as opposed to the hammer or the breechblock of the earlier efforts.
The caliber was .44 rimfire and it was submitted to the US Army for testing in 1872. The Army rejected the pistol and asked for a more powerful caliber with a stronger frame. Mason redesigned the frame to incorporate a topstrap, similar to the Remington revolvers, and placed the rear sight on the rear of the frame; he consulted with Richards on some other improvements. The first prototype of the new gun was still chambered in .44 rimfire, but the first model was in the newest caliber known as the .45 Colt. The revolver was chosen by the Army in 1872, with the first order, for 8000 revolvers, shipping in the summer of 1873:
The Colt Single Action Army or "Peacemaker", also known as the Colt Model 1873, was born. This revolver was one of the most prevalent firearms in the American West during the end of the 19th century and Colt still produces it, in six different calibers, two finishes and three barrel lengths.

In the new market of metallic cartridge rear-loading pocket revolvers, Colt's not only introduced its three Derringer Models (as of 1870) or the Colt House and the Open Top Pocket (the last two as of 1871) but also introduced in 1873 a subsequent design called its “New Line” revolver models, based on William Mason's patents.

After the success of the Colt Single Action Army and Colt's conversion of existing percussion revolvers to Richards-Mason conversions, Mason went on to design Colt's firstDouble-action revolver, the Colt M1877. Following this, he once again teamed up with Richards to produce a larger-framed version, the Colt M1878 Frontier. It was Colt's first large-frame, double-action revolver. It combined the front end of the Single Action Army revolver with a double-action, 6-shot frame mechanism. It was available commercially in numerous calibers.

The 1870s and 1880s provided sales opportunity to the Colt company via the spread of European-American society ever further westward across the continent, and the demand for firearms that it engendered in various ways. As white Americans displaced Indians from the Indian Territory, both sides were eager for firearms. On the white side, both the U.S. Army and civilians were customers of Colt. The Army carried Colt revolvers through the last of its Indian Wars. On the Indian side, Colt weapons were captured when possible, or bought from whoever was selling. Even among whites in towns where Indians had been vanquished, a thriving demand for guns existed, from the criminals to the police to self-defending civilians. Memoirs of Americans including Walter Chrysler and Jack Black speak of what it was like growing up in Western towns where most people had guns and open carry was common (such as in Kansas and Missouri, which were considered "out West" at the time—now considered the Old West).

1890

Colt finally left the "loading gate concept" for a swing-out cylinder on its revolvers with the Colt M1889 Navy revolver, which resembled the Colt M1878 and was based on another design by Mason. The model was produced for three years between 1889 and 1892, and eclipsed by the Colt M1892 chambered in .38 Long Colt. The M1892 was replaced by the New Service Double Action revolver in 1899. In caliber .45 Colt, the New Service was accepted by the U.S. Military as the Model 1909 .45 revolver. The New Service revolver was available in other calibers such as .38 Special and, later in the 20th century, .45 ACP (as the M1917 revolver) and .357 Magnum.

Under a contract with the U.S. Army, Colt Arms built the Model 1895 ten-barrel variant of the Gatling Gun, capable of firing 800-900 .30 Army rounds per minute, and used with great effect at the Battle of San Juan Hill.^[44] The M1895 Colt-Browning machine gun or "Potato Digger" was built by Colt. The Colt-Browning was one of the first gas-operated machine guns, originally invented by John Browning. It became the first automatic machine gun adopted by the United States and saw limited use by the U.S. Marine Corps at the invasion of Guantánamo Bay and by the 1st Volunteer Infantry in the Santiago campaign during the Spanish-American War. In 1901, Elizabeth Jarvis Colt sold the company to a group of outside investors based in New York and Boston.^[45]

1900–1920s

Model of 1911 Colt Pistol, U.S. Army, first year of production (1912)

A modern re-creation of the 1911 as it was in 1917 and a .25 Auto Vest Pocket Model of 1908 made in 1922

Colt-Thompson Model 1921 with Type C drum magazine

During World War I, Colt surpassed all previous production achievements. Prior to America's entry into the war, orders from Canada and the United Kingdom swelled the backlog of orders to three years. Colt hired 4,000 more workers, making a total of 10,000 employees—and its stock's price increased by 400%. By 1918, Colt had produced and sold 425,500 of the famous John Browning-designed M1911. Because the factory could not keep up with demand for this pistol, the US Military decided to accept Colt New Service revolvers in caliber .45 ACP, called the M1917 revolver, as a substitute weapon. Competing manufacturer Smith & Wesson made double-action revolvers in .45 ACP, which were accepted and issued by the U.S. military under the same name. Colt produced 151,700 revolvers during the war as well as 13,000 Maxim-Vickers machine guns and 10,000 Browning machine guns with an additional 100,000 under subcontract to other companies.

Since Auto-Ordnance had no tooling for production of the newly developed Thompson submachine gun, John T. Thompson, in August 1920, entered into contact with Colt's to manufacture 15,000 Thompson 1921 submachine guns. The contract was signed on August 18, 1920. Colt's tooled up and produced the 15,000 units between April, 1921 and March, 1922.

The stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression resulted in a slowing down of production for Colt. In anticipation of this, company presidents William C. Skinner and Samuel M. Stone implemented a diversification program similar to that done at the close of the American Civil War. Colt acquired contracts for business machines, calculators, dishwashers, motorcycles, and automobiles; all marketed under a name other than Colt. Samuel Stone acquired a firm which manufactured plastics and renamed it "Colt rock" as well as a company that manufactured electrical products. Colt weathered the financial crises of the time by cutting the work week, reducing salaries, and keeping more employees on the payroll than they needed. These measures kept the company in business but ate up the cash surplus they had acquired during the World War I years.

In 1935, after employees voted to disband a labor union, 1,000 workers went on strike for 13 weeks. Strikers became violent, attacking workers and detonating a bomb in front of company president Samuel M. Stone's house. The company set up a barracks, dining room, and recreation room for workers within the Colt Armory during the strike. On June 3, 1935 the National Recovery Administration ruled that the company was within its rights not to deal with the union and the strike ended. In the year following the strike, the factory was hit by a hurricane and flood. Many company shipping records and historical documents were lost as a result.

At the beginning of World War II, Colt ceased production of the Single Action Army revolver to devote more time to filling orders for the war.
During the war Colt manufactured over 629,000 M1911A1 pistols as well as a large number of M1917 water-cooled machineguns. The company had a workforce of 15,000 men and women in three factories and production ran on three shifts, 24 hours a day, and won the Army-Navy rating of "E" for excellence.
Colt ranked 99th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
However, the company was losing money every year due to mismanagement, an embittered workforce that had been stretched to its limits, and manufacturing methods which were becoming obsolete.

As the war ended and demand for military arms came to a halt, production literally ceased. Many long-time workers and engineers retired from the company and nothing was built from 1945 to 1947. Mismanagement of funds during the war had a serious impact as the 105-year-old firm faced possible bankruptcy. In September 1955 the board of directors voted to merge Colt with an upstart conglomerate called Penn-Texas, which had acquired Pratt & Whitney Machine Tool the same year. Also in 1955, Colt released one of the most famous revolvers in history, the Colt Python. In 1958 Penn-Texas merged with Fairbanks-Morse to form the Fairbanks-Whitney Corporation and in 1964 the conglomerate reorganized as Colt Industries. In 1956 Colt resumed production of the Single Action Army revolver and in 1961 began making commemorative versions of their classic models.

The 1960s were boom years for Colt with the escalation of the Vietnam War, Robert McNamara shutting down the Springfield Armory, and the U.S. Army's subsequent adoption of the M16, for which Colt held the production rights and would sell over 5 million units worldwide. Colt would capitalize on this with a range of AR-15 derivative carbines. They developed AR-15-based Squad Automatic Weapons, and the Colt SCAMP, an early PDW design. The Colt XM148 grenade launcher was created by Colt's design project engineer, http://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10167816

gun designer Karl R. Lewis. The May 1967 "Colt's Ink" newsletter announced that he had won a national competition for his selection and treatment of materials in the design. The newsletter stated in part "In only 47 days, he wrote the specifications, designed the launcher, drew all the original prints, and had a working model built". At the end of the 1970s, there was a program run by the Air Force to replace the M1911A1. The Beretta 92S won, but this was contested by the Army. The Army ran their own trials, leading eventually to the Beretta 92F being selected as the M9.

1980s–1990s

The 1980s were fairly good years for Colt, but the coming end of the Cold War would change all that. Colt had long left innovation in civilian firearms to their competitors, feeling that the handgun business could survive on their traditional revolver and M1911 designs. Instead, Colt focused on the military market, where they held the primary contracts for production of rifles for the US military. This strategy dramatically failed for Colt through a series of events in the 1980s. In 1984, the U.S. military standardized on the Beretta 92F.
This was not much of a loss for Colt's current business, as M1911A1 production had stopped in 1945. Meanwhile, the military rifle business was growing because the U.S. military had a major demand for more upgraded M16s, the M16A2 model had just been adopted and the Military needed hundreds of thousands of them.

In 1985, Colt's workers, members of the United Auto Workers went on strike for higher wages. This strike would ultimately last for five years, and was one of the longest running labor strikes in American history.
With replacement workers running production, the quality of Colt's firearms began to decline. Dissatisfied with Colt's production, in 1988 the U.S. military awarded the contract for future M16 production to Fabrique Nationale

Some criticized Colt's range of handgun products in the late 1980s as out of touch with the demands of the market, and their once-vaunted reputation for quality had suffered during the UAW strike. Colt's stable of double-action revolvers and single-action pistols was seen as old-fashioned by a marketplace that was captivated by the new generation of "wondernines" - high-capacity, 9x19mm Parabellum caliber handguns, as typified by the Glock 17. Realizing that the future of the company was at stake, labor and management agreed to end the strike in an arrangement that resulted in Colt being sold to a group of private investors, the State of Connecticut, and the UAW itself.

The new Colt first attempted to address some of the demands of the market with the production in 1989 of the Double Eagle, a double-action pistol heavily based on the M1911 design, which was seen as an attempt to "modernize" the classic Browning design. Colt followed this up in 1992 with the Colt All American 2000, which was unlike any other handgun Colt had produced before—being a polymer-framed, rotary-bolt, 9x19mm handgun with a magazine capacity of 15 rounds. It was designed by Reed Knight, with parts manufactured by outside vendors and assembled by Colt; its execution was disastrous.
Early models were plagued with inaccuracy and unreliability, and suffered from the poor publicity of a product recall.
The product launch failed and production of the All American 2000 ended in 1994. This series of events led to the company's Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1992.

(Chapter 11 is a chapter of Title 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code, which permits reorganization under the bankruptcy laws of the United States. Chapter 11 bankruptcy is available to every business, whether organized as a corporation, partnership or sole proprietorship, and to individuals, although it is most prominently used by corporate entities.
In contrast, Chapter 7 governs the process of a liquidation bankruptcy (although liquidation can go under this chapter), while Chapter 13 provides a reorganization process for the majority of private individuals.)

The 1990s brought the end of Cold War, which resulted in a large down turn for the entire defense industry. Colt was hit by this downturn, though it would be made worse later in the 1990s by a boycott by the shooting public in America.
In 1994, the assets of Colt were purchased by Zilkha & Co, a financial group owned by Donald Zilkha. It was speculated that Zilkha's financial backing of the company enabled Colt to begin winning back military contracts.
In fact during the time period it won only one contract, the M4 carbine.
However, the U.S. Military had been purchasing Colt Carbines for the past 30 years (See Colt Commando). During a 1998 Washington Post interview, CEO Ron Stewart stated that he would favor a federal permit system with training and testing for gun ownership. This led to a massive grass-roots boycott of Colt's products by gun stores and US gun owners.

Zilkha replaced Stewart with Steven Sliwa and focused the remainder of Colt's handgun design efforts into "smart guns," a concept favored politically, but that had little interest or support among handgun owners or Police Departments. This research never produced any meaningful results due to the limited technology at the time.
Colt announced the termination of its production of double action revolvers in October 1999.

The boycott of Colt gradually faded out after William M. Keys, a retired U.S. Marine Lt. General, took the helm of the company in 2002. Keys salvaged Colt's reputation and brought Colt from the brink of bankruptcy to an international leader in Defense production.
In 2010 Gerald R. Dinkel replaced Keys as CEO of Colt Defense LLC, while Keys remained on the Board of Directors for Colt Defense.

Colt has to compete with other companies that make M1911-style pistols such as Kimber and AR-15 rifles such as Bushmaster. Bushmaster has subsequently overtaken Colt in the number of AR-15s sold on the civilian market. Colt suffered a legal defeat in court when it sued Bushmaster for trademark infringement claiming that "M4" was a trademark that it owned. The judge ruled that since the term M4 is a generic designation that Colt does not specifically own, Colt had to pay monetary reimbursement to Bushmaster to recoup Bushmaster's legal fees. The M4 designation itself comes from the U.S. military designation system, whose terms are in the public domain.

Colt has entered in several US contracts with mixed results. For example, Colt had an entry in the Advanced Combat Rifle (ACR) program of the 1980s, but along with other contestants failed to replace the M16A2. Colt and many other makers entered the US trials for a new pistol in the 1980s, though the Beretta entry would win and become the M9 Pistol. The Colt OHWS handgun was beaten by H&K for what became the MK23 SOCOM, it was lighter than the H&K entry but lost in performance. Colt did not get to compete for the XM8 since it was not an open competition. Colt is a likely entrant in any competition for a new US service rifle. Current M16 rifles have been made primarily by FN USA since 1988. However, Colt remains the sole source for M4 carbines for the US military. Under their license agreement with Colt, the US military could not legally award second-source production contracts for the M4 until July 1, 2009.

In 2013, Colt Defense acquired Colt's Manufacturing, in part to protect a licensing agreement set to expire in 2014, where Colt's Manufacturing sold sporting rifles marketed to consumers that were manufactured by Colt Defense.

TALO-Wiley Clapp Concealed Carry Officer's 45. A hybrid with commander slide and barrel and alloy Officers Model Frame

Colt Mustang .380

King James

2015-04-18T11:52:00.002-07:00

During the Civil War James was taken prisoner by Fairfax (1646), but contrived to escape to Holland in 1648. Subsequently he served in the French army under Turenne, and in the Spanish under Condé, and was applauded by both commanders for his brilliant personal courage. Returning to England with King Charles II in 1660 he was appointed lord high admiral and warden of the Cinque Ports.
Samuel Pepys, who was secretary to the navy, has recorded the patient industry and unflinching probity of his naval administration.
His victory over the Dutch in 1665, and his drawn battle with De Ruyter in 1672, show that he was a good naval commander as well as an excellent administrator.
These achievements won him a reputation for high courage, which, until the close of 1688, was amply deserved. His private record was not as good as his public. In December 1660 he admitted to having contracted, under discreditable circumstances, a secret marriage with Anne Hyde (1637-1671), daughter of Lord Clarendon, in the previous September.Both before and after the marriage he seems to have been a libertine as unblushing though not so fastidious as Charles himself. In 1672 he made a public avowal of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Charles II had opposed this project, but in 1673 allowed him to marry the Catholic Mary of Modena as his second wife. Both houses of parliament, who viewed this union with abhorrence, now passed the Test Act, forbidding Catholics to hold office. In consequence of this James was forced to resign his posts. It was in vain that he married his daughter Mary to the Protestant Prince of Orange in 1677. Anti-Catholic feeling ran so high that, after the discovery of the Popish Plot, he found it wiser to retire to Brussels (1679), while Shaftesbury and the Whigs planned to exclude him from the succession. He was lord high commissioner of Scotland (1680-82), where he occupied himself in a severe persecution of the Covenanters. In 1684 Charles, having triumphed over the Exclusionists, restored James to the office of high admiral by use of his dispensing power.

James ascended the throne on the 16th of February 1685. The nation showed its loyalty by its firm adherence to him during the rebellions of Argyll in Scotland and Monmouth in England (1685). The savage reprisals on their suppression, especially the "Bloody Assizes" of Jeffreys, produced a revulsion of public feeling. James had promised to defend the existing Church and government, but the people now became suspicious. James was not a mere tyrant and bigot, as the popular imagination speedily assumed him to be. He was rather a mediocre but not altogether obtuse man, who mistook tributary streams for the main currents of national thought. Thus he greatly underrated the strength of the Establishment, and preposterously exaggerated that of Dissent and Catholicism. He perceived that opinion was seriously divided in the Established Church, and thought that a vigorous policy would soon prove effective. Hence he publicly celebrated Mass, prohibited preaching against Catholicism, and showed exceptional favor to renegades from the Establishment. By undue pressure he secured a decision of the judges, in the test case of Godden v. Hale (1687), by which he was allowed to dispense Catholics from the Test Act. Catholics were now admitted to the chief offices in the army, and to some important posts in the state, in virtue of the dispensing power of James. The judges had been intimidated or corrupted, and the royal promise to protect the Establishment violated. The army had been increased to 20,000 men and encamped at Hounslow Heath to overawe the capital. Public alarm was speedily manifested and suspicion to a high degree awakened. In 1687 James made a bid for the support of the Dissenters by advocating a system of joint toleration for Catholics and Dissenters. In April 1687 he published a Declaration of Indulgence -- exempting Catholics and Dissenters from penal statutes. He followed up this measure by dissolving parliament and attacking the universities. By an unscrupulous use of the dispensing power he introduced Dissenters and Catholics into all departments of state and into the municipal corporations, which were remodelled in their interests. Then in April 1688 he took the suicidal step of issuing a proclamation to force the clergy and bishops to read the Declaration in their pulpits, and thus personally advocate a measure they detested. Seven bishops refused, were indicted by James for libel, but acquitted amid the indescribable enthusiasm of the populace. Protestant nobles of England, enraged at the tolerant policy of James, had been in negotiation with William of Orange since 1687. The trial of the seven bishops, and the birth of a son to James, now induced them to send William a

Little ghost town

2015-04-18T01:37:00.003-07:00

Silver City is the queen of Idaho ghost towns. And while she may be a ghost town during the winter months, in the summer a combinatioon of weekend visitors and local residents make for a busy community.

During the late 1960's and early 1970's the Dave & Arvilla Mills family began hauling in historic local Kern Valley structures, (many of which were slated for destruction) to the present site in Bodfish. "Represented in this composite town are over twenty historic buildings (most not visible from Lake Isabella Blvd) from the mining camps of Keyesville, Whiskey Flat, old Isabella, Claraville, Hot Springs, Miracle, Southfork and other local frontier settlements" Silver City was closed for over 15 years until it was purchased by the Corlew family in 1990 and re-opened to the public shortly thereafter. Over the years it had fallen in disrepair and had been "modernized". The Corlew's have logged more than 20,000 man hours of loving restoration work on the site. Many people have donated labor and support (special thanks to Hal Brown and Don and Emily Diggles) and materials to the effort.

It is now operated as a museum to the Kern Valley's long and colorful history. Like Bodie Ghost Town in Northern California, Silver City has adopted a policy of ï¿½arrested decayï¿½. Corlew says, ï¿½We want to show how local gold outposts may have looked after the gold ran out and the miners moved on, we are not trying to make it look brand newï¿½. Visitors can go inside the original Isabella jail (gunslinger, Newt Walker was locked up here in 1905).Owner and local historian J. Paul Corlew is knowledgeable about other settlement sites nearby and will guide Ghost Town argonauts to these remnants of the "Kern Valley Diggin's" rich history.

Many believe that Silver City is haunted by spirits from that past and the site is listed in the ï¿½National Directory of Haunted Placesï¿½. Which brings to mind the question: Since most of the buildings were moved to the present site over a quarter of a century ago, did the ghost's move with the buildings or move in because it looked like home? Corlew, once a doubting Thomas, heard many stories over the years of poltergeist activity. But it was only after seven years of working on the site that he had his first conclusive sighting. ï¿½When you and two other people (all sober!) see a heavy miners lunch pail fly twelve feet across a room unaided you become a believer real quickï¿½, says Corlew. Others have reported bottles floating in the air and doors and windows opening and closing by themselves.

The infamous violin hanging in front of the general store sometimes seems to move by itself and many have heard the strings pluck as they walk by, according to Corlew. Reporter Kurt Rivera from Bakersfieldï¿½s Channel 17 News (TV) station called Silver City ï¿½The most haunted site in Kern Countyï¿½ after he and his television crew spent an eerie night in The Apalatea/Burlando house a few years back.Take a look at some of the many photos taken at Silver City by visitors and staff alike over the years and decide for yourself... apparition and orb photos.

In addition, check out Biography Channelï¿½s ï¿½My Ghost Storyï¿½ video which explores decades of alleged hauntings on site in a great 9 minute video available for download on demand see link below.

Now open year round: Open 7 days per week 10 AM-4 PM, 5 PM weekends, May 15th through September 14th. Open weekends only 10 AM-4 PM September 15th through May 14th. Often open other days by chance (and anytime by appointment)Open all major holidays except New Years Day, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day.

apache

2015-04-16T00:53:00.001-07:00

For two decades, Fort Bowie strategically controlled Apache Springs along the Butterfield Trail in the Arizona Territory in its conflict with the Chiricahuas. Gen. George Crook led his cavalry from Bowie and Fort Huachuca for ten months across the Southwest and into Mexico to find Geronimo and negotiate his first surrender in 1885-’86. At the time of European encounter, they, with their close kinsmen of the Tchihende and Ndendahe groups, were living in 15 million acres (61,000 km²) of territory in southwestern New Mexico and southeastern Arizona in the United States, and in northern Sonora and Chihuahua in Mexico. Today, only two tribes of the Chiricahua Apache located in the United States arefederally recognized: the Fort Sill Apache Tribe, located near Apache, Oklahoma; and the Chiricahua tribe located on theMescalero Apache reservation near Ruidoso, New Mexico.

Tsokanende (Chiricahua) Apache division was once led, since the beginning of the 18th century, by chiefs as Pisago Cabezon, Relles, Posito Moraga, Yrigollen, Tapilà, Teboca, Vivora, Miguel Narbona, Esquinaline, and finally Cochise (whose name was derived from the Apache word Cheis, meaning "having the quality of oak") and, after his death, his sons Tahzayand, later, Naiche, under the guardianship of Cochise's war chief Nahilzay, and the independent chiefs Chihuahua, Skinyaand Pionsenay; Tchihende (Mimbreño) people was led, during the same period, by chiefs as Juan Josè Compa, Fuerte a.k.a.Soldado Fiero, Mangas Coloradas, Cuchillo Negro, Delgadito, Ponce, Nana, Victorio, Loco, Mangus; Ndendahe Apache people, in the meanwhile, was led by Mahko, Mano Mocha, Coleto Amarillo, Luis, Laceres, Felipe, Natiza, Juh and Goyaałé(known to the Americans as Geronimo); after Victorio's death, Nana, Geronimo, Mangus (youngest Mangas Colaradas' son) and youngest Cochise's son Naiche were the last leaders of Central Apaches, and their mixed Apache group was the last to continue to resist U.S. government control of the American Southwest.

Several loosely affiliated bands of Apache came improperly to be usually known as the Chiricahuas. These included theChokonen (recte: Tsokanende), the Chihenne (recte: Tchihende), the Nednai (Nednhi) and Bedonkohe (recte, both of them together: Ndendahe). Today, all are commonly referred to as Chiricahua, but they were not historically a single band nor the same Apache division, being more correctly identified, all together, as "Central Apaches".

Many other bands and groups of Apachean language-speakers ranged over eastern Arizona and the American Southwest. The bands that are grouped under the Chiricahua term today had much history together: they intermarried and lived alongside each other, and they also occasionally fought with each other. They formed short-term as well as longer alliances that have caused scholars to classify them as one people.

The Apachean groups and the Navajo peoples were part of the Athabaskan migration into the North American continent from Asia, across the Bering Strait from Siberia.
As the people moved south and east into North America, groups splintered off and became differentiated by language and culture over time. Some anthropologists believe that the Apache and the Navajo were pushed south and west into what is now New Mexico and Arizona by pressure from other Great Plains Indians, such as the Comanche and Kiowa. Among the last of such splits were those that resulted in the formation of the different Apachean bands whom the later Europeans encountered: the southwestern Apache groups and the Navajo. Although both speaking forms of Southern Athabaskan, the Navajo and Apache have become culturally distinct.

From the beginning of EuropeanAmerican/Apache relations, there was conflict between them, as they competed for land and other resources, and had very different cultures. Their encounters were preceded by more than 100 years of Spanish colonial and Mexican incursions and settlement on the Apache lands.
The United States settlers were newcomers to the competition for land and resources in the Southwest, but they inherited its complex history, and brought their own attitudes with them about American Indians and how to use the land. By the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the US took on the responsibility to prevent and punish cross-border incursions by Apache who were raiding in Mexico.

The Apache viewed the United States colonists with ambivalence, and in some cases, enlisted them as allies in the early years against the Mexicans. In 1852, the US and some of the Chiricahua signed a treaty, but it had little lasting effect.
During the 1850s, American miners and settlers began moving into Chiricahua territory, beginning encroachment that had been renewed in the migration to the Southwest of the previous two decades.

This forced the Apachean people to change their lives as nomads, free on the land. The US Army defeated them and forced them into the confinement of reservation life, on lands ill-suited for subsistence farming, which the US proffered as the model of civilization. Today, the Chiricahua are preserving their culture as much as possible, while forging new relationships with the peoples around them. The Chiricahua are a living and vibrant culture, a part of the greater American whole and yet distinct based on their history and culture.

The Apache–Mexico Wars, or the Mexican Apache Wars, refer to the conflicts between Spanish or Mexican forces and theApache peoples. The wars began in the 1600s with the arrival of Spanish colonists in present day New Mexico. War between the Mexicans and the Apache was especially intense from 1831 into the 1850s. Thereafter, Mexican operations against the Apache coincided with the Apache Wars of the United States, such as during the Victorio Campaign.

Mexico continued to operate against hostile Apache bands as late as 1915.Victorio 's War, or the Victorio Campaign, was an armed conflict between the Apache followers of Chief Victorio, the United States, and Mexico beginning in September 1879. Following his escape from the San Carlos Indian Reservation in southeastern Arizona, Victorio led a guerrilla war across the Southwest and northern Mexico. Many engagements were fought until the Mexican Army killed Victorio and defeated his warriors in October 1880. After Victorio's death, Chief Nana continued the war into 1881. Following the Battle of Cibecue Creek, in August 1881, Nana and his band joined Geronimo

how the russians won the second world war

2015-04-13T10:10:00.001-07:00

The idea that the United States was the savior of Europe in World Wars I and II is popular in some circles on both sides of the Atlantic, but is demonstrably false. Between the formal entry of the United States into the Great War in April 1917 and the last German offensive in March 1918, hundreds of thousands of Entente soldiers were killed, mainly British in the summer and autumn of 1917 after the frightful slaughter of the French army in the spring; and in that period of nearly a year, fewer than two hundred Americans died. In the course of that war, the Frenchmen killed defending their country were twice as numerous as all theAmericans who have died in every foreign war taken together from 1776 until today. (the soldiers ofgothatone are sold on ebay)As a matter of historical fact, the Third Reich was defeated by the Red Army and not by the Western democracies. Even though over one hundred thirty-five thousand American GIs died – a startling figure today – between D day and V-E day, more than ten million Russians were killed.

It was Stalin’s blindness to Hitler’s pre-invasion manoeuvres that allowed the Germans to occupy Russia’s industrial heartland at a stroke.To retreat was a crime against the motherland: in 1941 and ’42, according to the historian Dmitri Volkogonov, 157,593 men were executed for “cowardice”.

The Soviets’ contribution to the war effort, which was vast and decisive. In fact it’s even more marvelous what they accomplished, given the handicaps imposed by their leaders. Without the Soviet contribution, the western democracies couldn’t have defeated Hitler’s armies on their own. But could the Soviets, fighting on their own, have defeated Hitler – say, if the democracies had capitulated after the fall of France?

Perhaps a better way to compare the effectiveness of the western and eastern armies is not to compare Allied deaths but to compare German deaths. Estimates vary widely, but since I’m looking for a ratio rather than a total, . For military deaths only:

Killed by Soviet Union	Killed by other Allies [3]
2,742,909	534,683

The Red Army was roughly 5.5 times as lethal as the other Allied forces combined.

The Third Reich was defeated by the Red Army and not by the Western democracies. Germans willingly surrended to the allies rather than fight on against the Red Army as the knew what surrender meant

Germans were much better off on the West front as the figures below show

	Killed in action	Missing	KIA + missing
Eastern front:	1,105,987	1,018,365	2,124,352
West + southwest:	157,523	603,695	761,488

(These data omit the final months of the war, and also exclude Navy and Air Force deaths.) Note that on Germany’s eastern front the number of confirmed deaths slightly exceeds the number of missing, while in the west and southwest (i.e. western Europe, Italy, and Africa) the number of missing is almost four times the number of confirmed deaths.

Regardless of how many German soldiers the Soviets killed or captured, they tied up the bulk of the Third Reich’s military capacity. It’s no great achievement to take a German bullet, but that’s one less bullet the Germans have to fire elsewhere. The Red Army held off the Germans at the critical point in the war, allowing the Americans and Brits to get organized and open up a second front.

Millions of Russians died so that millions of Americans didn’t have to.

The myth that American GIs dealt Nazism its greatest blow on the cliffs of Omaha Beach is obvious if we understand that DDay would have been a disaster if the red army had not defeated the bulk of the German army.

Without Russian fighting power in Europe and in time the United states would have ceased to exist

would have been purely and simply wiped off the map

The Americans massive financial help only staved off certain defeat,the armaments, food, and other assistance supplied to the Allies by the United States under the lend-lease program.But it is will that wins wars and that will manifested itself in the best tanks of WW2 , tanks win wars at least then .If you do not believe this then look at the Italian army wiped off the face of battle because they lacked a tank able to withstand the not so deadly British ones( and British ones were knocked out easily by panzers)

bunch

2015-04-05T16:27:00.002-07:00

Who was the Wild Bunch? What crimes can be attributed to the gang? And who participated in those crimes? These questions defy simple answers.William Cruzan

Take the last: Who participated in the gang’s crimes? The bandits almost always escaped, which makes identifying them difficult.

Eyewitnesses are unreliable at best, and they are especially dodgy regarding masked perpetrators. Witnesses to Wild Bunch crimes disagreed on descriptions, even on how many bandits were involved. Those indicted were usually acquitted. So how can we, a century later, determine the truth? We can only try.

On June 24, 1889, Butch Cassidy, Matt Warner and Tom McCarty (abetted by others, perhaps including Bill Madden and Butch’s brother, Dan Parker) robbed the San Miguel Valley Bank in Telluride, Colorado, of around $20,000. Considering that trio as the root of the Wild Bunch, we can fold in later crimes in which they participated.

Tom McCarty and Matt Warner along with Tom’s brothers Bill and George, his nephew Fred, his brother-in-law Hank Vaughan, and George’s wife Nellie staged about 10 holdups in Oregon, Washington and Colorado between 1890 and 1893. The outlaws’ tastes were catholic: They hit trains, banks, casinos and stores. The gang dissolved after Fred and Bill died during an 1893 attempt on the Farmers and Merchants Bank in Delta, Colorado.

The Rocky Mountain branch of the Wild Bunch made an inauspicious start on November 29, 1892, near Malta, Montana, when three men—probably the Sundance Kid, Harry Bass and Bill Madden—held up the Great Northern No. 32 and netted less than $100. Bass and Madden were caught and implicated Sundance, who had escaped.

Butch Cassidy’s outlaw career resumed in 1896, after a two-year prison term for horse theft. On August 13, he, Elzy Lay and Bub Meeks robbed Idaho’s Bank of Montpelier of $7,165. The money went to attorneys defending Matt Warner for murder. On April 21, 1897, Butch, Lay and perhaps Meeks and Joe Walker stole a $9,860 mine payroll in Castle Gate, Utah.

On June 28, 1897, six bandits flubbed a holdup of the Butte County Bank in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Tom O’Day was caught hiding in a saloon privy. His cohorts included Walt Punteney, George “Flat Nose” Currie, Harvey Logan (making his debut in the Wild Bunch) and Sundance. Butch may have participated, but it’s doubtful. The bungling bandits got $97. O’Day was tried and acquitted; Punteney was arrested, but the charges were dropped.

Butch’s reputation outpaced his criminal record. In a story headlined “King of the Bandits,” a Chicago daily declared in early 1898 that “Butch Cassidy is a bad man.” Not just any bad man, but “the worst man” in Utah, Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming, the leader of a gang of 500 outlaws “subdivided into five bands.”

On July 14 that year, a trio of bandits, said to have been Sundance, Logan and Currie (though they were never identified), held up the Southern Pacific No. 1 near Humboldt, Nevada, escaping with $450. Two other men were tried for the holdup and acquitted.

The Humboldt threesome struck again on April 3, 1899, robbing a saloon in Elko, Nevada, of several hundred dollars. The Wild Bunch holding up saloons? Maybe not. (Unsolved crimes are often attributed to famous outlaws.) Three local cowboys were tried for the robbery and acquitted.

Meanwhile, other outlaws were roaming the Southwest. Three Texas delinquents, Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum, Dave Atkins and Will Carver, held up a Southern Pacific train near Lozier, Texas, on May 14, 1897, taking upwards of $42,000. Reinforced by Tom’s brother, Sam, and possibly Bruce “Red” Weaver, they robbed the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe No. 1 on September 3, 1897, of several thousand dollars. Weaver was later tried for the crime and acquitted.

Success bred carelessness. On December 9, 1897, five bandits, probably the Ketchum brothers, Carver, Atkins and Edward H. Cullen, attempted to rob the Southern Pacific No. 20 near , but met a fusillade from armed guards. Cullen was killed; the other four, though wounded, escaped. Unchastened, four men—probably the Ketchum brothers and perhaps Carver and Ben Kilpatrick—robbed the Texas Pacific No. 3 at Mustang Creek, Texas, on July 1, 1898, grabbing between $1,000 and $50,000 in cash. (Victims were not forthcoming about how much was stolen. Sometimes employees pocketed overlooked money and included it in the amount said to have been taken by the bandits. At other times, initial accounts lowballed the sums, and the truth came out decades later.)

Elzy Lay joined the gang just in time for its train-robbing blitz to come to a bloody halt. On July 11, 1899, Sam Ketchum, Lay and Carver overpowered the crew of the Colorado & Southern No. 1 and galloped off with some $30,000. (Weaver, thought to have been standing guard nearby, separated from the others.) After the holdup, the three principals were surprised by a posse. When the dust settled, one posse member was dead and two were wounded, one mortally; Sam Ketchum was mortally wounded; Lay was wounded and later captured; and Carver escaped. (Some say the third bandit was Harvey Logan, not Carver.)

Tom Ketchum, meanwhile, picked an inauspicious moment to launch a solo career. On August 16, 1899, he attempted holding up the Colorado & Southern No. 1 near Folsom, New Mexico, but was shot, captured, tried, convicted and hanged.

These calamities should have been a lesson to Carver and Kilpatrick, but they merely moved north and joined the Wild Bunch proper.below doolin

The first crime that consolidated what was left of the various gangs was the June 2, 1899, robbery of the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 1 near Wilcox, Wyoming.

This holdup, which yielded between $3,400 and $50,000, made the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang nationally famous. “They were lawless men who have lived long in the crags and become like eagles,” averred the New York Herald. Yet we can’t place Butch or Sundance at the scene with any precision. Witnesses reported six masked men; most historians count George Currie, Harvey Logan, his brother Lonnie Logan and their cousin Bob Lee among them.

The lawless eagles swept down again on August 29, 1900, robbing the Union Pacific Overland Flyer No. 3 near Tipton, Wyoming, of between $55.40 (the initial account) and $55,000 (a later report). The five bandits included Butch and probably Sundance and Harvey Logan. Also suspected were Ben Kilpatrick, Tom Welch and Billy Rose. Tipton was the first crime in which Butch and Sundance are generally agreed to have teamed up. They were just six months from fleeing the country.

Three weeks later, on September 19, three or four bandits struck the First National Bank in Winnemucca, Nevada, collecting between $32 and $40,000. Sundance, Carver and Logan are thought to have participated, but some suspected local miscreants, and others called it an inside job. The bank’s head cashier, George Nixon, at various times agreed and disagreed that Butch was present. A few years later, a newspaper recounted a conversation in which Sundance supposedly disclosed that he, Butch and Carver were responsible. Stories that the bandits had camped near Winnemucca as early as September 9, however, have prompted researchers to question whether Butch could have been at both Tipton and Winnemucca, 600 miles apart.

Butch and Sundance left for Argentina in February 1901. Today popularly considered the leaders of the Wild Bunch, they had teamed up on only two or three robberies. As crime sprees go, it was not much of a run. Their colleagues sputtered on, but within a couple of years most were dead or in jail.

On July 3, 1901, what was left of the gang on North American soil attacked the Great Northern Coast Flyer No. 3 near Wagner, Montana, fleeing with about $40,000. There were four to six bandits, including Harvey Logan, Ben Kilpatrick and O.C. Hanks. Kilpatrick and Logan went to prison for passing bank notes from the holdup, and Hanks died the next year in a confrontation with authorities in Texas.

Logan, who had escaped from jail in 1903, rounded up two friends, probably from Ketchum territory, for what would be his farewell appearance, the botched holdup of the Denver & Rio Grande near Parachute, Colorado,

on June 7, 1904. Wounded and cornered, Logan committed suicide. The list of possible accomplices is long, but George Kilpatrick (Ben’s brother) and Dan Sheffield are high on it. George is thought to have been mortally wounded, although his body was never found.

The northern hemisphere’s Wild Bunch was kaput, except for one footnote. Ben Kilpatrick, released from prison in 1911, joined former cellmate Ole Beck to rob the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio No. 9 near Sanderson, Texas, on March 13, 1912. Quick-witted Wells Fargo messenger David Trousdale fatally bludgeoned Kilpatrick with an ice mallet, borrowed his rifle, and dropped Beck.

So, what was the Wild Bunch? Between the late 1880s and early 1900s, there were several gangs, comprising several dozen outlaws, who are part of the Wild Bunch story. The McCarty-Warner and Ketchum Gangs had more coherence than the Rocky Mountain Wild Bunch, perhaps because they were family based. All the bandits put together committed or attempted more than two dozen holdups. They probably didn’t do some they’ve been blamed for, and they probably pulled others they’ve never been accused of.

Of the approximately 20 outlaws who can be counted in the Rocky Mountain Wild Bunch during its heyday, the 1896-1901 Montpelier to Wagner era, few participated in crimes together more than a couple of times, and the gang’s holdups in that period numbered a scant five to seven. Butch and Sundance—surprisingly, given their later iconic status as a joined-at-the-holster outlaw duo—teamed up in the United States no more than three times. If they hadn’t gone to South America and died together, the 1969 movie would never have been made, nor this article written.

“In Search of Butch Cassidy” made the case that Cassidy and his partner, the Sundance Kid, were not killed in 1908 in a shootout with a Bolivian cavalry troop — the fate that was etched into the popular imagination by the movie starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman.

Pointer argued that Cassidy, whose given name was Robert LeRoy Parker, survived the shootout, returned to the United States and lived peacefully in Spokane, Wash., under the alias William T. Phillips until his death in 1937.

Pointer’s book did well. It was published by the prestigious University of Oklahoma Press, was translated into Spanish and Japanese, sold something like 30,000 copies and remains in print.

Now living in Billings, Pointer recently published a second book on Butch Cassidy. This one might be even more provocative — and it turns Pointer’s earlier theories about Butch Cassidy on their head.

The new book consists of the complete manuscript “The Bandit Invincible: The Story of Butch Cassidy,” written by William T. Phillips, with extensive notes and an introduction by Pointer.

When Pointer wrote his earlier book, he had access only to an abridged version of that manuscript. His reading of the abridged version, and his other research, had convinced Pointer that Phillips was actually Butch Cassidy, and that he was telling his own life story in “The Bandit Invincible.”

But his study of the complete manuscript, and his study of photographs of Cassidy and some of his associates, threw all of his previous theories into confusion. Previously, he thought Cassidy looked enough like Phillips to convince him they were one and the same man.

Then, last August, he obtained a photo of an associate of Butch Cassidy by the name of William T. Wilcox. Wilcox, he realized, was actually the same person as Phillips, and Phillips was not Cassidy.

Also, the complete manuscript contained numerous descriptions of robberies and other exploits supposedly involving Butch Cassidy at a time when Cassidy not only wasn’t in the state in question, but was already in South America.

Pointer no longer has a firm opinion on the fate of Butch Cassidy, but his suppositions come down to this: He thinks Wilcox was in prison in Laramie, Wyo., with Robert LeRoy Parker, and Parker was then using the alias George Cassidy.

Somehow, Pointer said, Parker and Wilcox both started using the alias Butch Cassidy, perhaps to throw off the authorities. And when Wilcox/Phillips sat down to write “The Bandit Invincible,” Pointer believes, he actually narrated a dual biography of himself and the Butch Cassidy known to history, blending elements of both their lives in the tale.

It’s complicated and confusing, as Pointer is the first to admit. But history consists of the information available at any given time, and his new book, which offers Phillips’ long-lost manuscript to the world, doesn’t so much answer questions as open up new lines of inquiry.

Pointer is a native of Sheridan, Wyo., and when the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kind” came out in 1969, he was living in Lander, Wyo., where he taught life sciences and coached the rodeo team at Central Wyoming College.

He started hearing from locals that the movie was lots of fun but mostly hogwash. Many people, Pointer said, talked matter-of-factly about how Cassidy often came back to the Lander area to visit old friends long after his supposed demise in Bolivia.

One of Pointer’s students said his grandmother was an old girlfriend of Butch Cassidy, and she had talked of his coming to see her in the 1930s. All that talk fired Pointer’s imagination, and it led to his first book.

Pointer’s research brought him into contact with James K. Dullenty, a reporter who wrote an investigative series on William T. Phillips for the Spokane Daily Chronicle. It was Dullenty who was given the abridged manuscript of “The Bandit Invincible,” provided by a longtime friend of Phillips, and Dullenty allowed Pointer to use the manuscript for his first book on Butch Cassidy.

Pointer wasn’t planning to write another book about Cassidy. He switched from teaching college to working for the government, first for the Bureau of Land Management and then the National Park Service, from which he retired in 1997. He also wrote a few more books, including a work on the painter Harry Jackson and a book called “Rodeo Champions.”

Meanwhile, in Provo, Utah, Brent Ashworth, a collector of antiquarian books and Western memorabilia, had become infatuated with Butch Cassidy after reading Pointer’s first book in 1988. Over the years he amassed a sizable collection of materials related to Cassidy and his Hole in the Wall Gang.

Like Pointer, Ashworth was aware that at some point the manuscript of “The Bandit Invincible” had been condensed from a 900-page original. Then, in 2009, Ashworth punched in the title of the manuscript on the Internet — and up popped an offer to sell the long-lost work on eBay.

Ashworth bought the manuscript — it was typed, and its 220 pages jibed with the length of the 900-page handwritten original — for an undisclosed price from the family of a deceased book dealer. The dealer supposedly bought the manuscript from Phillips’ widow, and the whole thing was typed on the backside of W.T. Phillips General Machine Work stationery.

Ashworth eventually got a hold of Pointer for help in authenticating the manuscript, and in 2011 Ashworth turned over a copy of the manuscript to Pointer to prepare for publication. He also gave Pointer access to his entire Cassidy collection.

Pointer and his wife, Dotti, put in countless hours preparing the manuscript for publication, starting with a word-by-word comparison of the abridged manuscript and the complete version. Then they had it typed up exactly as written, to preserve its authenticity.

Proofreading was doubly hard. Larry and Dotti Pointer not only wanted to catch mistakes, but also to preserve those “mistakes” present in the manuscript. When that job was complete, Pointer worked on the notes for each chapter, in which he provided history, context and clarification for Phillips/Wilcox’s narrative. He worked on the notes from last October to December.

“It was 100 percent of my life, 24 hours a day,” he said.

Although his previous books had all been released by publishers, Pointer self-published this book. He’d had a world of trouble with editors on his rodeo book, he said, and this time he wanted “complete editorial control.”

He acknowledges that there are “some big gaps and holes” in the story of Butch Cassidy and Phillips/Wilcox, and he doesn’t pretend to have solved any mysteries by publishing the full text of “The Bandit Invincible.” He just wanted to get it out into the world, giving other people the materials to continue unraveling the mystery.

“I think this is the discovery of all time for this subject,” Pointer said. Even so, he added, “For me, this is just a ribbon-cutting for future researchers.”In 1991, a grave in San Vicente, Bolivia, was dug up said to contain the remains of Butch and his sidekick, Harry Longabaugh - the Sundance Kid. DNA testing revealed the bones weren't the outlaws, but Buck, a writer who lives in Washington, D.C., said his research proved the two indeed died in a shootout with Bolivian cavalry in 1908.