Comments on: Official historians behaving badly

By: Jakob

Jakob — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:27:30 +0000

IIRC, CNA had OCD-delightingly complex supply and logistics rules; one of these was that Italian units had higher water requirements that the Germans, ostensibly because they needed the extra amounts to boil their pasta in…

I’ve never played (or even seen) the game, but have seen the rule used as an example of entertaining if barking chrome.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:41:18 +0000

Okay, you’ll have to remind me in more detail!

By: Alan Allport

Alan Allport — Wed, 06 May 2009 12:14:07 +0000

All this talk of tea compels me to remind everyone of Campaign for North Africa and its water-for-pasta chrome rule.

By: Brett Holman

Brett Holman — Tue, 05 May 2009 05:35:46 +0000

Dan:

Yes, Blair has some figures on p. 28. Short answer: the tall Anzacs of legend are a bit of a myth. He finds that (in round figures) 61% of 1 Bn officers were over 5′9″, 44% of sergeants and only 26% of the battalion as whole. He also compares his statistics with average heights for British recruits up until 1916 and basically there’s no difference to speak of. He suggests that perhaps in comparison with Bantams or urban Territorial units the Anzacs may have looked tall, but that’s hardly fair!

On tea, surely the British military and civilian bureaucracies compiled statistics on that! Far more important than casualty figures.

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:00:10 +0000

I’ve always wanted someone to do that with tobacco, which the wars of the twentieth century appear to have run on. But tea has to be a close second, for the British at least.

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:23:17 +0000

What we have is evidence that only the threat of imminent death is sufficient to _stop_ British soldiers brewing up.
Damnit, now I just have to find a way to calculate the weight of tea going to different fronts and graph it against miles advanced.

By: Chris Williams

Chris Williams — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:10:06 +0000

Remember the start of ‘The Land Ironclads’? The stunted city dwellers are being whipped by New World farmboys, when they turn the tables through their superior mastery of machinery.

As for tea, rumour has it that, about three hours before the battle of Mount Harriet, an RM Welsh Guard contingent had, with some difficulty, successfully snuck round the back of the Argentine position and was waiting for zero hour, when some clever Guardsmen decided that there was time for a brew. They were apparently informed by a Marine officer present that unless they put the fire out he’d shoot them himself in order save the enemy the bother. So we have an existence proof that British soldiers don’t always brew up on halting.

By: JDK

JDK — Fri, 01 May 2009 02:39:42 +0000

Very acute, Dan, the British Pongo Tea Ceremony in Film looks like a great thesis. Rather like the ‘empty fridge scene in detective films’.

Social class in the UK – no argument, in general. However poor farm labourers were fitted and stronger than poor denizens of the city slums. The levels of fitness among the landed gentry would be pretty varied too, IMHO. However the British diet in the C20th was poor throughout; across all classes – the best balanced diet in the century was caused by rationing in W.W.II!

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:19:55 +0000

JDK – it’s a while since I read it, but I think there is data on the physical stature of Australian recruits in Dale Blair’s book Dinkum Diggers. As in the British forces, I suspect that social class was probably a bigger determinant on size than nationality.
But more importantly, shouldn’t more research be done on the meme of British soldiers stopping to drink tea? It’s also a significant scene in A Bridge Too Far, and the New Zealand equivalent to Gallipoli, Chunuk Bair (starring Robert Powell, of all people). I’ve just been reading Sean Longden’s book about 21st Army Group in NW Europe, To the Victor the Spoils, and he makes the point that because British soldiers brewed up every time they stopped, observers tended to presume that this was why they’d halted in the first place. Shouldn’t someone establish a database of cinematic tea drinking? (Come to think of it, it also gets mention in A Canterbury Tale, although there the tea drinkers are presented more positively).

By: JDK

JDK — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:07:16 +0000

Isn’t is generally accepted that Bean decided to build the myth of ‘the strapping Aussie mates reaching manhood through the shedding of their blood at Gallipoli’, rather following the Bulletin’s line on lovely Aussie country boys? (And we are still crippled in Australia’s history by this poor, extemporary choice of a myth. Thanks, Chas.)

So he has no problem ‘finding’ evidence to support it; but as it was a failure (hanging around for a while while more-than-decimated by dysentery and then a ’successful withdrawl’ isn’t ’success’ in my book) he had to find a scapegoat; stunted cockneys were OK targets, rather than the (IMHO Eton & Sandhurst institutionalised) untouchable officer class.

I’d guess that a batch of Aussies there would probably be healthier and fitter than a bunch of the British; quantified data would be nice. (Canadians and Australians in Britain in the Air Forces of W.W.II were often commented on as being ‘bigger and fitter’. But that’s only perception – easily mismeasured. Much as I’d like to believe it!)

However for nasty, inventive initiative in war, I’d bet on the denizens of inner Manchester, London or Glasgow than the nice young men from Whoop-Whoop. Generally gutting your fellow man was a slum passtime, rather than country tricks with two-up.