Bit sad that there was no context given with this post:
HAIRY MARY’S HEMP ARMOUR (1899) 🚂
In November 1899, a hemp-armoured locomotive was plying the tracks in Natal, South Africa, pulling military trains during the Second Boer War. Unlike other wartime steam engines that were covered in metal armour, the “Havelock” was covered in thick hemp Royal Navy anchor rope leading the troops to dub it the “Hairy Mary”. In total, 3.65km of 6" hemp rope was installed by sailors from the HMS Terrible for protection from Boer guerrilla attacks. However, the train was still vulnerable to derailment and the Boers managed to do so in an ambush while a young Winston Churchill, working as a war correspondent, was accompanying troops on a scouting mission.
Several cars were destroyed in the attack and dozens of men were injured and killed. The engineer panicked, but Churchill convinced him to pull himself together and attempt to save the train. With help from soldiers directed by Churchill (working under a hail of gunfire) the engineer managed to rock the locomotive free and the Hairy Mary limped back to friendly lines with dozens of injured men. However, Churchill was captured and spent nearly a month as a prisoner in Pretoria.
His bold escape and the ensuing fame helped Churchill win his first seat in Parliament, in the 1900 UK election (for full details on Churchill’s stranger-than-fiction South African adventure, see “Hero of the Empire”, by Candice Mallard.) As for the Hairy Mary, it resumed commercial service after the war ended in 1902 but was consigned to working branch lines as more powerful engines were introduced. By 1905, it was considered obsolete and sent to the scrapyard.
Well, yes and no. He was also a massive piece of shit who knowingly ordered hundreds of Australian and New Zealand troops to their deaths at the Dardanelles
Every wartime leader knowing sends their members of the military to their deaths.
There are tons of other terrible things he did that are exceptional. Like causing a famine in India by depriving them of food, allowing chemical agents against indigenous people, genuine racism, and encouraged the genocide of Palestinians.
You should definitely look up the details of that theater of the war. He purposely sent ANZAC troops to storm the beaches that he knew were mined extensively. Used them as mine fodder to clear the way for British troops. Threw away thousands of lives for a failure of a campaign.
A smart soldier will accept good ideas in a crisis whether they come from a superior, subordinate or whoever is around if they seem competent. Obviously that comes with some stuff about following the orders of people in charge of you and making a bunch of decisions in the moment but it’s not that unreasonable.
The queue for jokes about a “smart soldier” forms below.
He was not just some random reporter. His father was an aristocrat, his mother the daughter of a wealthy American businessman. He had military education and had been appointed second lieutenant of the British army years earlier. He had combat experience from Sudan and India before going to South Africa.
Chances are he had a hands on approach to war correspondence as well.
However, Churchill was captured and spent nearly a month as a prisoner in Pretoria.
holy crap what a story.. there are no cinematic versions of young Winnie rescuing a Hairy locomotive from guerilla Boers? that sounds worthy of anime almost..
First result on Google with someone explaining things. I just wanted to know why they used ropes and OP didn’t offer any explanation. Then I thought if I already went through the trouble of looking it up, I might as well post it. Fuck Facebook, but if you don’t like this “source” go and grab your own.
But it’s not the burned, mutilated bodies that stick with me. It’s the faces of the white men in the crowd. There’s the photo of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana in 1930, in which a white man can be seen grinning at the camera as he tenderly holds the hand of his wife or girlfriend. There’s the undated photo from Duluth, Minnesota, in which grinning white men stand next to the mutilated, half-naked bodies of two men lashed to a post in the street—one of the white men is straining to get into the picture, his smile cutting from ear to ear. There’s the photo of a crowd of white men huddled behind the smoldering corpse of a man burned to death; one of them is wearing a smart suit, a fedora hat, and a bright smile.
Their names have mostly been lost to time. But these grinning men were someone’s brother, son, husband, father. They were human beings, people who took immense pleasure in the utter cruelty of torturing others to death—and were so proud of doing so that they posed for photographs with their handiwork, jostling to ensure they caught the eye of the lens, so that the world would know they’d been there. Their cruelty made them feel good, it made them feel proud, it made them feel happy. And it made them feel closer to one another.
The 25th Infantry U.S. Army Bicycle Corps stationed at Fort Missoula, Montana set out across the country on their bicycles in 1896-7. Lt. James A. Moss led the company of black soldiers on several obstacle intensive test runs of the iron two-wheeled alternative to horses for transportation. Their greatest trip covered 1900 miles to St. Louis, Missouri, returning to Missoula by train. The 25th Infantry gained fame and was nicknamed the Buffalo Soldiers.
25th Infantry at Yellowstone in 1896.
In 1896 the 25th Infantry rode, walked, and carried their bicycles cross country to Yellowstone Park, 500 miles from their Fort Missoula base. They pose above on Minerva Terrace at the town of Mammoth Hot Springs in a photograph taken and hand colored by Yellowstone's official freelance photographer F. Jay Haynes (1853-1921). Note that the troops mounted from the left side of the bike, according to the custom for mounting a horse.
Frederick Douglass was a badass. He was a former slave who obtained an education and worked with political leaders, garnering a measure of power and influence himself. He penned one of my favorite quotes of all time:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Lots of German immigrants in Argentina; Nazi Germany utilized German communities in other countries to spread their vile ideology, where possible.
After WW2, there were also lots of German 'immigrants' to Argentina... though that later immigration wave has more to do with the fascist-sympathizing dictator in charge at the time.
Refugees are generally expected to return to their country of origin. The Nazis fleeing to Argentina had 0 chance or intention of returning to Allied-controlled Germany where many were wanted as war criminals.
While Madison Square Garden had prepared itself for the German Bund, many around New York City considered the Nazi sect less welcome in their city. About 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters gathered around the arena in protest of the Bund, carrying signs stating "Smash Anti-Semitism" and "Drive the Nazis Out of New York".[6] A total of three attempts were made to break the arm-linking lines of police, the first of these, a group of World War One Veterans, wrapped in Stars and Stripes, were held off by police on mounted horseback, the next, a "burly man carrying an American flag" and finally, a Trotskyist group known as the Socialist Workers Party, who like those before, had their efforts halted by police.[4]
I love that the lone burly man carrying an American flag was disruptive enough in attempting to get through the police line to warrant mention.
The picture below shows Zejneba Hardaga guiding a Jewish woman (Rivka Kavillo) and her children down a street in Sarajevo in 1941. As they walk, Zejneba covers Rivka’s yellow star with her veil. The Hardagas let the Kavillos (including their children and Rivka’s husband, Josef) stay in their home until Josef was able to get his wife to an area where they were relatively safe. Afterward, they continued to hide Josef despite the fact that Gestapo headquarters were nearby, and despite the fact that the town was plastered with signs warning that anyone caught housing a Jew would be killed. Josef eventually joined his wife and children, and they all survived the war.
I love this story, and I also love context, so I just need to add to this. The story behind the photo is from the Yad Vashem testimony of Josef Kabiljo (husband of Rifka, the pictured Jewish lady). (They spell their names differently everywhere because Hebrew is possibly the worst language for Balkans language transcription except maybe Chinese). It is very much worth reading, it involves multiple concentration camps, and much more nuance than just "German Nazis vs Jewish people".
From the testimony, after the Hardaga's took in the Kabiljo family:
“Our home is your home”, [Mustafa Hardaga] said, and to demonstrate this point, the women were not obliged to cover their faces in the presence of Josef Kavilio, since he was now a member of the family.
This was an insanely dangerous thing for them to do. There were posters lining the streets warning people that the penalty for harboring communist Partisans and Jews was death.
This time, he stayed with them for two months, hidden, without ever leaving their home. Through the windows, Kabilio watched Jews being deported, or being maltreated in the Gestapo building opposite before being flung off it from the third floor and onto the street. Before long, there was not a single Jew left in the city. Kabilio felt that he could stay with his friends no longer – it was simply too dangerous for those harboring him. Thus, with their help, Kabilio managed to move to the Italian occupied zone, where he found his family and joined the partisans.
- Yad Vashem documentation with extra photos
Zejneba Hardaga, the pictured Muslim lady, her father was later also murdered for harboring Jews. Josef, her husband, spent time in Jasenovac, the third largest concentration camp, which was run by the Croatian Catholic Ustaše who were the Nazi-puppet state running the area. Even the Nazis considered the Ustaše barbaric and inhumane.
Increased activity of the bands [of rebels] is chiefly due to atrocities carried out by Ustaše units in Croatia against the Orthodox population. The Ustaše committed their deeds in a bestial manner not only against males of conscript age, but especially against helpless old people, women and children. The number of the Orthodox that the Ustaše have massacred and sadistically tortured to death is about three hundred thousand. - Heinrich Himmler in a 1942 Gestapo report
For 'reasons' the fascist Catholic Ustaše are rarely mentioned, despite being the main axis forces in the area who targeted Orthodox Christians as much as Jewish people. The communist Partisan partnership with the Allies is also rarely mentioned, despite being the main anti-Nazi military forces there too.
A lot of the Yad Vashem testimonies are worth reading though, even if it is Jewish-focussed and WW2 in the Mediterranean was much much more complex than that.
The story of the Partisans fascinates me and how they went from being a tiny force to an army that had freed most of their country by the time they linked up with the Red Army. It's why I do living history displays about them since the war's largest resistance movement deserves more mention than just a passing mention in western-centric historical narratives. It has been received very positively, so far since re-enactors re-tread popular history all too often, but that seems to be changing for the better in the UK.
I’m happy to hear that the statu finally was put up. There was so much debate and arguments about it, mostly about it encouraging violence especially if taken out of context and also her still living family being unhappy with the portraition of her.
I remember the debates but I never actually heard how it ended.
The man hit by Danielsson was identified as Seppo Seluska, a militant from the Nordic Realm Party later convicted for the torture and murder of a gay Jew.
Runesson’s photograph was published the next day on the front page of the Swedish national newspaper Dagens Nyheter, and on April 15 by two British newspapers, The Times and The Daily Express.[3] Another photograph taken by Runesson during the event shows the 10 Neo-Nazis being chased, pelted with eggs and violently confronted by a crowd made up of hundreds of attendants of the left-wing rally joined by local Växjö residents. One of the Neo-Nazis was kicked unconscious on the ground, then saved by one of the protestors who reportedly took pity on him. The far-right activists eventually managed to shelter in the toilets of the city’s train station, hiding there for a few hours until the police transported them away.[3][5]
B-but it's literally Nazism to refuse to tolerate Nazis!!!1! (Never mind the fact that tolerance would be the thirst thing to go in a Nazi-dominated society.)
I think hitting them with a purse, throwing eggs and making them hide in toilets is fine, but the unconscious thing isn’t something I would recommend. They probably already have brain damage, they’re nazis.
In 1943 the recruiting momentum stopped and went into reverse as a massive slander campaign on the home front challenged the WACs as sexually immoral...
Sept. 15, 1970 A victim of American bombing, ethnic Cambodian guerrilla Danh Son Huol is carried to an improvised operating room in a mangrove swamp on the Ca Mau Peninsula. This scene was an actual medical situation, not a publicity setup. The photographer, however, considered the image unexceptional and never printed it. IMAGE: VO ANH KHANH/ANOTHER VIETNAM/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOOKS
The worst part about this is that it wasn't a one time sort of thing. The forced relocation was enforced until just before the Soviet Union fell. As a note, every other ethnic group that Stalin forced into relocation were allowed to begin returning home in 1956, but not the Crimean Tatars.
Stalin also tried to kill them off via famine in the 1920s.
This is bad, however, there’s some hope. From wiki,
Starting in 1967, a few were allowed to return and in 1989 the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union condemned the removal of Crimean Tatars from their motherland as inhumane and lawless, but only a tiny percent were able to return before the full right of return became policy in 1989.
IDK, that might actually work surprisingly well against the weapons involved in that conflict. Didn't help with derailment of course, but this old timey cope cage wig was probably not that bad.
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