Armchair Dragoons Forums

News:

  • Connections Online 2024 will be held 15-20 April, 2024 ~~ More Info here
  • Buckeye Game Fest will be held May 2-5, 2024, with The War Room opening on 29 April ~~ More Info here

News

Buckeye Game Fest will be held May 2-5, 2024, with The War Room opening on 29 April ~~ More Info here

Author Topic: This Day in History  (Read 199707 times)

besilarius

  • Corporal
  • **
  • Posts: 1558
Reply #255 on: December 14, 2019, 07:57:38 AM
1943         Capt. Henry T. Waskow (25), Co. B., 143rd Infantry, kia, Hill 703, near San Pietro, prompting Ernie Pyle to write the most moving dispatch of World War II.

The Death of Captain Waskow

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944 – In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.

Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him.

"After my own father, he came next," a sergeant told me.

"He always looked after us," a soldier said. "He’d go to bat for us every time."

"I’ve never knowed him to do anything unfair," another one said.

I was at the foot of the mule trail the night they brought Capt. Waskow’s body down. The moon was nearly full at the time, and you could see far up the trail, and even part way across the valley below. Soldiers made shadows in the moonlight as they walked.

Dead men had been coming down the mountain all evening, lashed onto the backs of mules. They came lying belly-down across the wooden pack-saddles, their heads hanging down on the left side of the mule, their stiffened legs sticking out awkwardly from the other side, bobbing up and down as the mule walked.

The Italian mule-skinners were afraid to walk beside dead men, so Americans had to lead the mules down that night. Even the Americans were reluctant to unlash and lift off the bodies at the bottom, so an officer had to do it himself, and ask others to help.

The first one came early in the morning. They slid him down from the mule and stood him on his feet for a moment, while they got a new grip. In the half light he might have been merely a sick man standing there, leaning on the others. Then they laid him on the ground in the shadow of the low stone wall alongside the road.

I don’t know who that first one was. You feel small in the presence of dead men, and ashamed at being alive, and you don’t ask silly questions.

We left him there beside the road, that first one, and we all went back into the cowshed and sat on water cans or lay on the straw, waiting for the next batch of mules.

Somebody said the dead soldier had been dead for four days, and then nobody said anything more about it. We talked soldier talk for an hour or more. The dead man lay all alone outside in the shadow of the low stone wall.

Then a soldier came into the cowshed and said there were some more bodies outside. We went out into the road. Four mules stood there, in the moonlight, in the road where the trail came down off the mountain. The soldiers who led them stood there waiting. "This one is Captain Waskow," one of them said quietly.

Two men unlashed his body from the mule and lifted it off and laid it in the shadow beside the low stone wall. Other men took the other bodies off. Finally there were five lying end to end in a long row, alongside the road. You don’t cover up dead men in the combat zone. They just lie there in the shadows until somebody else comes after them.

The unburdened mules moved off to their olive orchard. The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave. They stood around, and gradually one by one I could sense them moving close to Capt. Waskow’s body. Not so much to look, I think, as to say something in finality to him, and to themselves. I stood close by and I could hear.

One soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, "God damn it." That’s all he said, and then he walked away. Another one came. He said, "God damn it to hell anyway." He looked down for a few last moments, and then he turned and left.

Another man came; I think he was an officer. It was hard to tell officers from men in the half light, for all were bearded and grimy dirty. The man looked down into the dead captain’s face, and then he spoke directly to him, as though he were alive. He said: "I’m sorry, old man."

Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer, and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said:

"I sure am sorry, sir."

Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand, and he sat there for a full five minutes, holding the dead hand in his own and looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of his uniform around the wound. And then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.

After that the rest of us went back into the cowshed, leaving the five dead men lying in a line, end to end, in the shadow of the low stone wall. We lay down on the straw in the cowshed, and pretty soon we were all asleep.
Ernie Pyle

"These things must be done delicately-- or you hurt the spell."  - The Wicked Witch of the West.
"We've got the torpedo damage temporarily shored up, the fires out and soon will have the ship back on an even keel. But I would suggest, sir, that if you have to take any more torpedoes, you take 'em on the starboard side."   Pops Healy, DCA USS Lexington.


mirth

  • Cardboard Mohel
  • Lance Sergeant
  • ****
  • Posts: 7291
    • Armchair Dragoons
Reply #256 on: December 14, 2019, 08:42:54 AM

Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


bbmike

  • Warrant Officer
  • Lance Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 7444
    • My Own Worst Enemy
Reply #257 on: December 14, 2019, 10:51:18 AM
Napoleon was reported to have said 'goddammit!'

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

My Own Worst Enemy


bob48

  • Smeghead.
  • Warrant Officer
  • Lead Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 11715
Reply #258 on: December 14, 2019, 11:01:56 AM
But in French.

Obviously.

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'


bbmike

  • Warrant Officer
  • Lance Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 7444
    • My Own Worst Enemy
Reply #259 on: December 14, 2019, 11:19:15 AM
Oui.

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplace of existence."
-Sherlock Holmes

My Own Worst Enemy


Staggerwing

  • Patreon Supporters
  • Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 4362
Reply #260 on: December 14, 2019, 11:29:50 AM
Had he been Quebecois it would have sounded liturgical.

Vituð ér enn - eða hvat?  -Voluspa


bob48

  • Smeghead.
  • Warrant Officer
  • Lead Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 11715
Reply #261 on: December 14, 2019, 02:32:28 PM

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'


mirth

  • Cardboard Mohel
  • Lance Sergeant
  • ****
  • Posts: 7291
    • Armchair Dragoons
Reply #262 on: December 17, 2019, 05:37:50 AM

Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


bob48

  • Smeghead.
  • Warrant Officer
  • Lead Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 11715
Reply #263 on: December 17, 2019, 06:24:59 AM
It still has the power shock.

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'


besilarius

  • Corporal
  • **
  • Posts: 1558
Reply #264 on: December 18, 2019, 10:05:37 AM
On this day in 1944, Typhoon Cobra devastates the Third Fleet in the Pacific.
The destroyers Hull, Spence, and Monaghan capsize with great loss of life, and at least 86 planes are lost offof flight decks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typhoon_Cobra


"These things must be done delicately-- or you hurt the spell."  - The Wicked Witch of the West.
"We've got the torpedo damage temporarily shored up, the fires out and soon will have the ship back on an even keel. But I would suggest, sir, that if you have to take any more torpedoes, you take 'em on the starboard side."   Pops Healy, DCA USS Lexington.


mirth

  • Cardboard Mohel
  • Lance Sergeant
  • ****
  • Posts: 7291
    • Armchair Dragoons
Reply #265 on: December 18, 2019, 12:10:31 PM

Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


mirth

  • Cardboard Mohel
  • Lance Sergeant
  • ****
  • Posts: 7291
    • Armchair Dragoons
Reply #266 on: December 22, 2019, 12:19:46 PM

Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


bob48

  • Smeghead.
  • Warrant Officer
  • Lead Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 11715
Reply #267 on: December 22, 2019, 12:24:29 PM
 :bigthumb: :bigthumb: :bigthumb:

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'


mirth

  • Cardboard Mohel
  • Lance Sergeant
  • ****
  • Posts: 7291
    • Armchair Dragoons
Reply #268 on: December 22, 2019, 12:27:17 PM
The Battered Bastards of Bastogne

Being able to Google shit better than your clients is a legit career skill.


bob48

  • Smeghead.
  • Warrant Officer
  • Lead Sergeant
  • *
  • Posts: 11715
Reply #269 on: December 22, 2019, 12:33:00 PM
I should be playing either 'Bitter Woods' or 'Ardennes '44'

“O Lord God, let me not be disgraced in my old days.”

'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers'