Forty.

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'In time of peace prepare for war!" - - Cicero.

SWEDISH HOME GUARD DRILLS! FIRST TIME IN OVER FORTY YEARS!

SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME?

From the Russian media outlet Russian Times [RT] and with thanks to same.

"War cry: Sweden mobilizes all its reservists for 1st time in 40 years (PHOTOS)"

"For the first time since the height of Cold War, Sweden has called its entire Home Guard force – 22,000 reservists – for snap exercises."

"Sweden mobilized all 40 Home Guard battalions in an unprecedented exercise that has not been held since 1975. The drills marked the National Day of Sweden, celebrated on June 6."

. . . .

"The main task of the Home Guard is to fulfill secondary military roles, such as patrolling and guarding important infrastructure objects, while the standing army is engaging an enemy at the front lines."

HOME GUARD HAVING A COMBAT CAPABILITY BUT MORE OR LESS IN A DEFENSIVE AND PASSIVE POSTURE!

FORTY THAT NUMBER SIGNIFYING THE END OF ONE ERA AND THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER! SURELY THIS IS SO!

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Radio WW2.

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A MUST!

6 June 1944. The D-Day invasion, Normandy, France.

AS IT WAS REPORTED BY THE NATIONAL [USA] RADIO MEDIA.

Thanks to the tip from Al.

I recommend highly without qualification or reservation. Listen 

"Complete Broadcast Day D-Day [CBS]"

"D-Day Broadcasts: Compare and Contrast."

"It's fascinating to listen to CBS News' careful, scrupulously-vetted accounts of the Normandy landings (often based on confusing, fragmentary information). Compared with modern media debacles . . . this is exemplary work---should be mandatory listening for student journalists."

"Complete Broadcast D-Day [NBC]"

"Subject: What Was It Like On June 6, 1944? Listen To These Podcasts!"

"Because these are recordings of the original live news reports, you can learn how the American people were informed of the D-Day invasion."

". . . . On this particular occasion, the producers of that program decided to rebroadcast excerpts of radio news coverage of that day."

MODERN JOURNALISTS AND JOURNALIST STUDENTS AND ESPECIALLY THOSE IN THE BROADCAST MEDIA COULD BENEFIT GREATLY BY LISTENING TO THESE BROADCASTS? I MIGHT VENTURE SO!

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Doomed.

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With the context of these prior blog entries here and here consider also these comments of an acknowledged aviation authority, the Turkish Air Force now rendered for all practical purposes null and void, combat ineffective now and for the foreseeable future:

[what follows is profound and heavy stuff!!]

"The more complex a military weapons system is, the more complex and lengthy the manner of choosing, training, and maintaining its personnel is. A fighter plane force needs pilots who are chosen from a large pool of available, qualified people, who show the right amount of intelligence, physical skill, ability to learn, open mindedness receptive to training, and desire to learn throughout a career."

"Erdoqan’s efforts to turn his fighter pilot forces into a religiously correct, politically reliable fighting force are doomed to failure . . . [choosing pilot candidates on the basis or religious and political reliability] will automatically exclude the most capable people in the pool of prospective pilots."

"All military organizations are comprised of several levels of people—a progression of education, experience, and maturity.  Removing all levels at once means . . . you have to take up to three years to properly train and prepare a qualified fighter pilot: one year for basic pilot training (more if he or she needs physics and math training), up to one year for fighter pilot training, then at least one year before the young pilot is really considered 'combat ready' to do his or her job."

"After that, there needs to be a level of experienced pilots to lead and add to the training of the newer pilots.  You can’t just throw a bunch of newly minted fighter pilots into combat without having older, experienced ones to lead them and show them how to fight wars beyond what an instructor tells them in a training unit.  Each unit fights together, combining different roles and formations in different missions.  These roles and formations may even differ from week to week, as an enemy adjusts or alters its approach."

"Finally, there has to be a level of top leadership, comprised of the most senior officers in each fighter unit—the ones whose vast experience and continued training throughout their careers has prepared them to make the tough decisions, identify and promote the up-and-coming future leaders, and to ensure that the right training programs, opportunities and efforts are directed in the way that benefits the unit and the nation."

"So after the training phase of about three years to make a qualified combat pilot, it should take years more to make a force that includes new pilots and the mid-level combat qualified pilots who are the leaders of combat formations and who add to the training and education of the new pilots. Then there is the years of weeding out, promoting and further educating the experts and highly qualified, and maturing of the senior officers who can guide and direct the entire force into total effectiveness."

"The guidelines for bringing up a senior level of fighting men to existence do not necessarily equate with the best men/women available when the criteria still demands the most politically or religiously reliable people be considered ahead of other, more secular qualities of science, experience, education, and maturity."

"Removing all three levels to make the force more reliable in ways that have nothing to do with the science and skill of flying complex machines in war ensures that an Air Force will remain ineffective for at least the three years needed to select and train its new fighter pilots, and then it will be relatively less effective for the rest of its history, so long as a program designed to keep out the most qualified pilot selectees, mid-level officers, and senior officers, is in place."

"It is guaranteed."

IT IS GUARANTEED! TODAY, TOMORROW, PERHAPS FOREVER!

And thank you acknowledged aviation authority! Most impressive.

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Mob II.

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Conclusion.

Herewith comments of an acknowledge military authority the topic of which is the mobilization process as was the case in those days just prior to the commencement of hostilities, The Great War [WW1]: 

"Yes, all mob [mobilization] plans, once started, could not be undone. Most countries’ plans had no where to keep the huge masses of men; they were assigned road routes right up to the border. No nation could ignore entire armies standing spring-loaded along its borders in an invasion posture, unless it had its own maximum number of troops there, ready to resist or counter invade in another location. Many mob plans included a swift move into invasion, as there were only plans to feed, equip, and shelter men already moving into battle inside the enemy’s area. As German soldiers debarked from trains to their mob stations on the border, they were pushed forward by the mass of troops unloading just behind them. One Belgian citizen reported seeing German soldiers march on the street by his house by the tens of thousands per hour, somewhere well inside his country for ten hours straight without break, none of whom had seen combat yet. A huge grey river of humanity."

"How, indeed, do you stop that clock. No country had any option but to mobilize its own masses in response, often with their own invasion plans at the same time. Or, if not mobilized, have it’s politicians talk to an enemy whose Army-led diplomats already knew they were holding a gun pointed across the table at an enemy who came empty handed. You can’t bluff a man in poker where you and your opponent know he has four aces and you have nothing, not even a pair of deuces. The only discussion will be how much you will pay him to feed and clothe his troops in your house. And where to stack your army’s rifles for the enemy to pick up."

ONCE STARTED COULD NOT BE STOPPED! GET THERE FIRST WITH THE MOST!

And thank you acknowledged military authority.

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Mob I.

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"To horse lancers, to horse!" And to trains too!

From the Internet web site Strategy page and special thanks to the Professor Al Nofi CIC # 461 a discussion of the mobilization procedure, the Great War.

MILLIONS OF MEN, HORSES, WAR MUNITIONS ON THE MOVE SIMULTANEOUSLY ACCORDING TO AN INTRICATE PLAN/TIMETABLE ALLOWING FOR NO LEEWAY AND A DIPLOMATIC SOLUTION, WAR MORE OR LESS INEVITABLE.

"Mobilization for the Great War"

Mobilization having several distinct phases:

* "War Warning. Whether it was called 'War Warning' or 'Threat of War' or some other term, all of the countries had arrangements to take certain preliminary steps before initiating full mobilization."

* "The 'Couverture.' All armies had some forces immediately ready to take the field, to serve as a 'Covering Force,' known in French as the Couverture'”

* "Activation and Concentration. In all armies, active duty units were rarely at full war strength and second- and third-line units existed largely on paper. So reservists, territorials, and militiamen had to be notified to report to their duty stations"

* "Entrainment and Deployment. Once concentrated, units began moving to their assigned deployment areas, mostly by rail."

"Mobilization in World War I"

"Intricate plans for mobilization contributed greatly to the beginning of World War I, since in 1914, under the laws and customs of warfare then observed (not to mention the desire to avoid compromising national security), general mobilization of one nation's military forces was invariably considered an act of war by that country's likely enemies."

WE MUST GET THERE FIRST WITH THE MOST!!

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Images II.

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Conclusion!

Yet more images those battlefields of the Great War:

"The Fading Battlefields of World War I"

    Thanks to the Atlantic and the photo-essay by Alan Taylo.

"This year will mark the passing of a full century since the end of World War I—a hundred years since the 'War to End All Wars.' In that time, much of the battle-ravaged landscape along the Western Front has been reclaimed by nature or returned to farmland, and the scars of the war are disappearing. Some zones remain toxic a century later, and others are still littered with unexploded ordnance, closed off to the public. But across France and Belgium, significant battlefields and ruins were preserved as monuments, and farm fields that became battlegrounds ended up as vast cemeteries. In these places, the visible physical damage to the landscape remains as evidence of the phenomenal violence and destruction that took so many lives so long ago."

The Atlantic photo-essay many captions mentioning the Newfoundland Regiment. Canadian army unit of the Great War their ordeal during the Battle of the Somme [1916] the details of which are most horrific.

As related in the wiki entry and thanks to same:

"Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Lovell Hadow, the battalion [1st] commander, decided to move immediately into attack formation and advance across the surface, which involved first navigating through the British barbed wire defences. As they breasted the skyline behind the British first line, they were effectively the only troops moving on the battlefield and clearly visible to the German defenders. Subjected to the full force of the [German] 119th (Reserve) Infantry Regiment, most of the Newfoundland Regiment who had started forward were dead, dying or wounded within 15 to 20 minutes . . .  So far as can be ascertained, 22 officers and 758 other ranks were directly involved in the advance. Of these, all the officers and slightly under 658 other ranks became casualties. Of the 780 men who went forward only about 110 survived unscathed, of whom only 68 were available for roll call the following day. For all intents and purposes the Newfoundland Regiment had been wiped out, the unit as a whole having suffered a casualty rate of approximately 90 percent"

NINETY PERCENT LOSSES IN LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR AND FOR ZERO GAIN!!

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Images I.

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Readers to the blog merely perusing or otherwise need to access this Internet article courtesy the Daily Mail and view the images. Outstanding in all regards.

"The Great War pictures that are NOT colourized: Incredible photographs of World War I taken by some of the first colour cameras"

Pictures as taken with colored film to be pedantic but more exact.

"At first glance these photos from the First World War appear to have had digitally colourized, but in fact these rare images were taken using some of the world's first colour cameras."

From a caption to one of these rares images an entry that gets my attention and interest right away:

"Original Australian War Records Section caption: 'An Australian Light Horseman collecting anemones near Belah in Palestine'. The soldier was identified in 2007 as being 2601 Trooper George 'Pop' Redding, 8th Light Horse Regiment. Redding enlisted from Benalla, Victoria, on 28 August 1915 stating his age to be 44. He was in fact 57 making him nearly 61 at the time of this photograph and one of the oldest enlisted men in the AIF [Australian Imperial Force]."

Redding obviously a man of relatively advanced age to be doing serious soldiering. Also a man in the same league as and worthy of mention with the more illustrious names of Frederick Selous and H.H. Munro.

1. Frederick Selous. 2. H.H. Munro. [Saki]

Gentlemen during a time of war feeling honor-bound to respond, even unto death.

THEY JUST DON'T MAKE THEM LIKE THAT ANYMORE! OR DO THEY?

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