waynec
Posts: 299
Joined: 6/5/2002 From: Colorado, littleton Status: offline
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quote:
ORIGINAL: OrvalB quote:
ORIGINAL: BK6583 Natuarally with all due respect to all soldiers who fought in that war, weren't the Canadiens arguably the best army on the TE side? Yes, we were. The big advantage of being an all volunteer army with no conscripts. The Aussies were pretty good too, for the same reason. (And those racist times, we had a somewhat segregated army, with a few largely Aboriginal/First Nations/Indian units, which racked up insane achievements and impressive medal counts, and scared the crap out of the Karl May influenced Germans; once they realized the effect they were having, they played it up, with Hollywood war-paint, drum beating, singing, etc. ... a little known but fascinating bit of Canadian military trivia.) And what does that get you? The "honour" of being in the front row in every offensive, that's what. And a higher butcher's bill than we racked up in WWII. I haven't caught Passchendaele yet, partly scheduling issues and partly dread. It was one of the most miserable, bolixed up tragedies of a war and front that had no shortage at all of that kind of thing. A very sad bit of history indeed. I am partly scared they won't get it right, and partly scared that they will, because it was such an unrelieved tragedy. i think the best army in ww1 was the british bef as deployed in august 1914. of course, after the "race to the sea" and ypres, the orginal bef, manned completely by professional soldiers, was a shadow of itself.
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