Burial.

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Please forgive me, but I am back to the subject of burial - - specifically that of the war dead.

In this specific case, Edwin Dyett. English bloke from the era of the Great War [WW1], one of two British officers shot for cowardice and desertion, while in the face of the enemy.

A man who in some circles remains a cause celebre' to this day?

"cause cé· lè·bre - - n. 1. An issue arousing widespread controversy or heated public debate. 2. A celebrated legal case."

A man, being executed with dishonor, nonetheless, seemingly having been buried with some degree of honor? A burial in the cemetery of Le Crotoy, France, the remains of Edwin finding final repose with other deceased from the Great War, men whose death was deemed HONORABLE!!

The inscription on the gravestone of Edwin says: "If doing well ye suffer this is acceptable with GOD" - - 1 Peter 2:20.

It seems that in the aftermath of WW1, those having been executed for dishonorable behavior WERE given proper and respectful burial. I guess that the question would be - - DID Edwin do well?

"Executed men eventually received the same gravestones as their comrades and with no mention of their dishonourable ends."

And thanks once more to the Telegraph, we have this item from just recently, 2006. A movement was afoot, perhaps by now having been brought to fruition, to rehabilitate those executed for cowardice during WW1, COMPENSATION BEING DUE THE ESTATE OF THE DECEASED! From almost one hundred years ago now - - justice will be done?

"Families of WW1 soldiers shot for cowardice 'are owed compensation'"

"The payment would be for loss of life, loss of pension, loss of earnings and loss of the right to enjoy family life. It seems only fitting."

Like I said, in some circles, Edwin and others like him are a cause celebre'!

coolbert.

Bones.

This is coolbert:

1. From the Telegraph, as of August, 2008:

"Body of WWII airman found dangling from a tree"

Human remains, believed to be from a combatant of the Second World War [WW2], found hanging from a tree in New Guinea. Evidently a "bailed-out" aviator, caught by his rigging, not able to make it to the ground, the body "caught", disintegrating with time, covered with moss, but the outline of a human body still plainly discernible!

"The suspected remains of a Second World War airman have been found dangling from a tree in the dense jungles of Papua New Guinea."

A story that caused a mild stir at the time!!

"The skeleton of what is thought to be a World War II pilot hangs in the jungle canopy along the Kokoda Track"

"in a harness. There are goggles and it appears to be caught up in cables, so presumably it is an airman,"

"a jumble of cords and bits of parachute harness leaves."

"If confirmed as a human body it is likely to be the remains of an Australian, American or Japanese airman, left undisturbed in the forest for more than 60 years"

2. NOW, thanks to the BBC, only two weeks after the discovery of the "body" hanging from a tree"

"Papua 'remains' are not WWII body"

"Hikers thought moss-covered branches were the remains of a WWII airman"

Well, what was thought to be so was not so. It was not a body - - rather, a growth, branches and vegetation, having shape and form of a human body, but merely that, jungle vegetation covered with moss and nothing more. Where all the notions of cable, harness and goggles came from I do not know!!

"The Australian military sent a team to investigate the 'body' only to discover it was a branch tangled in vines."

3. And here from 2007 - - the Philippines, the remains of Japanese soldiers, fragments of bone I would think mostly, being burned. Japanese "bone pickers, what they are called, devoted to proper ceremony and ritual for Japanese war dead - - many decades after the end of the war in the Pacific.

"Japanese soldiers' bones burned; At rites in Ifugao to release spirits of the dead."

"KIANGAN, Ifugao - Japanese bone pickers were here last week to retrieve and ceremonially burn the skeletal remains of Japanese soldiers killed 62 years ago during World War II."

"Japanese officials and a high priest burned the collected human skeletons believed to be those of Japanese soldiers 'to release the spirits of the dead.' This is consistent with mandatory cremation of the dead, a Japanese tradition"

Within the Buddhist tradition [perhaps even more so within the tradition of Shinto?], those deceased, the body of which is not disposed of according to proper ritual, roam the earth as ghosts? Proper ceremony obligatory to the greatest extent possible!

"those who in Buddhism are reborn in the 'realm' where they wander the earth eating waste. The fear of many Japanese, indeed, is that Japanese soldiers who died missing in action in many places in World War II, and whose bones may lie without proper burial or rites, did end up as hungry ghosts in such places."

Japanese civilians - - "bone pickers" have been a presence all throughout the WW2 Pacific theatre for decades now! A noble but thankless task properly disposing of the remains of Japanese soldiers, what still exists. A devotion to Buddhist ritual and belief that is to be admired.

coolbert.

Vacquois.

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"Le village disparu - - the disappeared village"

Here is the Great War [WW1] saga of Vacquois.

Scene of intense tunnel warfare during WW1. Perhaps the one site in all of France that most epitomizes the entire concept of tunnel warfare as it was fought during the era.

The small French village of Vacquois - - sitting atop a butte, dominating terrain - - vicinity of Verdun. Dominant terrain fiercely contested by both sides [French and German] more or less for the entire length of the war. Contested primarily UNDERGROUND. The weapon of choice being a tunnel packed at the far end with explosive, detonated under the front line of the enemy!!

"It provided a superb observation point for road and rail traffic from the Islettes pass, and therefore, eventually, all movement to and from Verdun."

"butte - - n. A hill that rises abruptly from the surrounding area and has sloping sides and a flat top."

FOR A PERIOD OF FOUR YEARS, NEITHER SIDE EVER TO DISLODGE THE OPPONENT, THE COMBATANTS ESCHEWING ABOVE-GROUND CONVENTIONAL FRONTAL ASSAULTS - - RESORTING TO TUNNELING AND SAPPING AS A MEANS OF OVERCOMING THE OPPOSITION!!

Dig a tunnel from your side of the butte so that it extended under the front line trenches of the enemy, pack that tunnel at the far end with explosive, and detonate. Mining, counter-mining, sapping and counter-sapping that went on more or less continuously for three years!!

Combatants too engaging in warfare, hand-to-hand, miners and counter-miners sometimes meeting underground, deliberately or otherwise, trench-raid style warfare being the result, but subterranean! Literally cave-man type battle. Picks, shovels, hand-guns, grenades, knives, fists, boots, etc.

[these tunnels to a large extent were probably dug by men who in civilian life were professional miners? I think so!]

Again, during that entire period, neither side being able to dislodge the other!!

The village of is now gone forever. A multitude of craters now exists were the battlefield once was. And under the butte it is estimated there is no less than TEN MILES OF TUNNEL!!

"The sappers of both sides shifted tons of Argonne rock, a loamy sandstone the French called 'gaize', to create an underground system of tunnels, on three levels, that eventually totalled 17 km (12 km German/5 km French), and between them exploded 519 mines (199 German/320 French)."

During the Great War, not only did Vacquois die for France, but so did the butte!! All it seems, from a military stand-point, for nought.

What remains is now a popular tourist attraction? Tunnels and craters galore? Well, if you like that sort of stuff!

coolbert.

Long Ride.

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"A pharmacist, a ranch hand, and two priests!!"

The 1927 Cristero War, a rebellion by those opposed to the anti-clerical measures of the Mexican government, is still remembered by the average Mexican, the cowboy, the vaquero, the rider on the horse.

In an amazing manner! An apparently spontaneous, unrehearsed, "grass-roots" style remembrance of things past. Much as was the insurgency of the Cristeros to a degree spontaneous, unrehearsed, a "grass-roots" rebellion.

The Cristero War. A particularly bloody guerrilla insurrection - - the conflict only being ended in large measure because of the mediation of the American Ambassador.

A guerrilla army of Mexican peasantry led most successfully by "a pharmacist, a ranch hand, and two priests!!" Intuitive military commanders and leaders. Well, if that is all you need, that is all you need!!

An insurrection commemorated by an annual ceremony that has occurred for fifty-one years now. As described in the August 2007 edition of the National Geographic: "Mexico's PILGRIM COWBOYS"

"In central Mexico, time and place are fluid, and history runs into the present, and the present is always straining in the the afterlife so that nothing is only what it seems. For example, at dawn on January 5, the day before Epiphany, on a dusty rancho in El Rodeo"

"Clusters of riders - - dozens, hundreds in a group - - cross Guanajuato state . . . This pilgrimage has no official routes, no central organization, but it's been happening for more than half a century, and it's growing."

Thousands [three to four thousand] cowboys [vaqueros] making a sacred pilgrimage, wearing the obligatory and symbolic white cowboy hat, a trek via horseback across desolate terrain to a high mountain peak, and, again, in remembrance [?] of the failed uprising and those that died in the conflict.

Makes for a very impressive devotional and spiritual exercise.

"History runs into the present"! Very true.

coolbert.

Invasion.

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Here from the Internet Archive - - free to download and keep, to be read at your leisure, a collection of forty nine titles - - invasion literature of the era, circa 1900 primarily!

Alternative history, novelettes, short stories, speculative military science-fiction, etc.

Germany invades and conquers England. Germany at war with America, Japan at war with America, the results unfavorable to the U.S. That sort of thing.

"Imaginary wars and battles"

This particular title I found to especially intriguing. As written by Marsden Manson. Very short story, about thirty-six pages only, you can read in one sitting without breaking a sweat!

"The yellow peril in action, a possible chapter in history; dedicated to the men who train and direct the men behind the guns" - Manson, Marsden, 1850-

China at war with the U.S. - - Japan in league with China, the year is 1909. The teeming hordes of China, organized into armies of prodigious size, supported by the pre-Dreadnought and Dreadnought navy of the Japanese, the Chinese able to besiege and capture American Pacific outposts, Guam, Philippines, Pago Pago [Samoa] and Hawaii. American west coast ports blockaded, no Panama Canal in place for passage of American warships from the Atlantic to Pacific.

Download and read. You will enjoy. And Marsden Manson was both a prolific and prescient writer too. An man that had some pretty good insights. Unfortunately several pertinent pages are missing from the collection [Manson refers to the brochure]. Evidently the destruction of the U.S. Pacific fleet was primarily accomplished by torpedoes fired from submarines and steaming yachts surreptitiously fitted for firing "fish"!

[Manson was a writer totally unknown to me prior to this. A highly educated man, PhD in Engineering, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute [VMI], and as a public works engineer inextricably linked to the San Francisco as we know it, the city having to have been rebuilt in the aftermath of the Earthquake of 1906!!]

Enjoy!

coolbert.

Maurice.

This is coolbert:

The most senior French military commander during the Battle of France, 1940, General Gamelin, is a figure not well understood, the man being a non-entity as far as the history books are concerned.

The speed, the rapidity, the apparent ease of German victory - - 1940, came as a decided and VERY unexpected shock to the democracies of the western world? Within SIX WEEKS the Germans had accomplished what they had been unable to do during the FOUR YEARS of the Great War [1914-1918]. AND, again - - did so with what seemed to be "apparent ease"

THE FRENCH JUST SEEMED TO COLLAPSE!

"Maurice Gustave Gamelin . . . was a French general. Gamelin is best remembered for his unsuccessful command of the French military in 1940 during the Battle of France and his steadfast defense of republican values."

"The generalissimo of the French armed forces in World War II, Gamelin was viewed as a man with significant intellectual ability. He was respected, even in Germany, for his intelligence and 'subtle mind', though he was also viewed by some German generals as stiff and predictable . . . his command of the French armies during the critical days of May 1940 proved to be disastrous"

Disastrous and humiliating in the extreme. So much so that it has been suggested that Gamelin was either very incompetent or A TRAITOR. Furthering German victory by lackadaisacal response, indecisiveness, etc. PERHAPS EVEN DESIRING A GERMAN VICTORY!

From the book "The Ultra Secret" by F.W. Winterbotham:

"Despite all the information available, the full appreciation of where the armoured thrust to come appears to have ignored by the French High Command, and even when the French tank patrols finally met the German tanks in the forest of Ardennes, there was still no air reconnaissance, ordered. It seems almost impossible to believe that General Gamelin, the French command-in Chief [generalissimo], had so staked his reputation on his assessment that the Germans could not and would not attack through the the Ardennes that he refused to change his mind or his strategy. It is difficult to say more without accusing Gamelin of treason."

And from another source, that Gamelin was not so much traitorous as grossly incompetent. Treason emanating from another direction:

"The traitors began their work by undermining the Army, by denying it the funds necessary to operate and innovate, and by ensuring that the Army maintained a pacifist, defensive mentality [Maginot Line] . . . It also served their cause to have in place a weak and incompetent Army chief, General Gamelin. Despite overwhelming evidence of his incompetence, Gamelin stayed in power . . . his weak and misguided military strategy undermined the Army’s power and ability to fight a modern war."

Gamelin, during the Great War [WW1], did display some panache', competence, ability! A commander whose record was excellent! And a man who did prescribe to French Republican democratic ideals when large portions of the French electorate were in a ferment, far-right and far-left both!!

Those French and English general officers, during the various earliest stages [1939-1940] of the Second World War [WW2] - - at least to my way of thinking - - have the appearance of someone whose entire mentality and perception of warfare had NOT GONE BEYOND THE MANNER OF COMBAT AS EXPERIENCED IN 1918!! Appearances might be deceiving - - but these guys JUST LOOK OLD - - were out of place!! AND, then Gamelin was relieved of command, his replacement - - Weyand, was five years the senior of Gamelin! So you had failure reinforced by failure. There was no vigor or dynamism? Or am I being too harsh here?

"The 68 year-old Gamelin was replaced by the 73 year-old Maxime Weygand who immediately tried to launch counter-attacks but by then it was too late."

Gamelin in the aftermath of 1940 was placed on trial by the Vichy French, but maintained his decorum - - not availing his captors, maintaining his dignity, even in defeat.

Gamelin - - more incompetent that a traitor? This seems to be the case!

coolbert.

UVB-76.

This is coolbert:

From the conspiracy web site AboveTopSecret we find this gem. Russian radio transmitter of unknown purpose, strangely has stopped.

This is the Russian radio station referred to by amateur radio monitors as UVB-76. Active for decades [almost thirty years] and now GONE!!

"Russian Radio Signal UVB-76 has stopped transmitting.. UH-OH"

"The mysterious Russian shortwave radio 'UWB-76', also known as 'The Buzzer'..."

"...just stopped transmission. This is huge, considering there has been almost NO interruption since 1982. It even survived the cold war."

"This is.............. odd.................."

"UVB-76 is the call sign of a shortwave radio station that usually broadcasts on the frequency 4625 kHz (AM full carrier). It's known among radio listeners by the nickname The Buzzer. It features a short, monotonous buzz tone, repeating at a rate of approximately 25 tones per minute, for 24 hours per day. The station has been observed since around 1982."

You can listen to The Buzzer for yourself! Very odd type of high frequency transmission indeed. And active for almost thirty years non-stop. Again NOW gone! [as of 5 May this year]

Again, transmissions OTHER than "repeating short, monotonous buzz tone" were very rare indeed! Voice messages from UVB-76 were very rare.

"Three or four such messages have been intercepted in over twenty years of observation"

Speculation among the conspiracy theorists was that this was part of the Russian "Perimeter" or "Dead Hand" automatic launch of nuclear assets system? But this seems not to be the case. The explanation is much more prosaic. This was a transmitter used for ionospheric research? NOTHING MORE THAN THAT? Sort of like the explanation given for HAARP in Alaska? Who knows?

Nothing to worry about folks! Just a big nothing!

coolbert.