Artifacts of War

[Blue Puttees]

Some forum members served in the military and some have not. Some forum members have seen combat and some have not. We read history, we research history, we collect history and we honor those who served (particularly those who gave all). Sometimes we forget how terrible war is.

http://www.musee-armee.fr/collection...r-fauveau.html

"Elite unit of the cavalry "heavy", the carabinieri distinguished themselves at Austerlitz in 1805, in Germany and in Russia in 1812 in Leipzig in 1813 and Waterloo in 1815. During these campaigns, they have suffered very significant losses, despite the adoption in 1809 of the armor designed to provide better protection. In 1892, one of these breastplates found in Waterloo, has been donated to the museum for its creation. It belonged to a single rifleman named Fauveau.

23 years old, François-Antoine Fauveau butter dish by trade, is incorporated in May 1815 to the 2nd regiment of riflemen.
It is described as: long face, forehead uncovered, blue eyes, aquiline nose, small mouth, dimpled chin hair and brown eyebrows, face marked foxing. His height - 1.79 m - in fact a rookie for this exceptional body.
In spring 1815, Napoleon left Elba and meets his enemies in Belgium with an army raised hastily.

A month after its incorporation on June 18, the young Fauveau part in the desperate charge of the Carabinieri at the end of the battle. This is probably in that office received a bullet in the chest piercing it.
The breastplate is a foundation since its flagship objects of the Army Museum, but has perhaps not everything. Because, to save a brother about to get married, it might be another Fauveau that replacing Francis Anthony, died anonymous during the last heroic charge of the emperor's riflemen."

[Blue Puttees]

http://raunerlibrary.blogspot.com/20...-remember.html


"On June 6, 1944, Clinton Gardner, Class of 1944, found himself digging a foxhole on Omaha Beach as part of the D-Day invasion of German occupied Europe. The landing area was already strewn with bodies and the Germans were raking the incoming allied forces with artillery and machine gun fire. Gardner, a Lieutenant in the artillery, was not about to move any further inland until the infantry made a hole in the German defenses, and that did not seem to be about to happen.

An incoming round suddenly exploded in front of him. His head snapped back and then a curtain of blood blinded him. In his memoir, D-Day and Beyond, Gardner recounts how he stood up and staggered toward two of his fellow officers wiping blood from his eyes. The two officers stared at him in horror. Then he reached up and felt his helmet. There was a gaping hole, large enough that he could get two hands into it. Gingerly he felt around and found that he could feel a soft, mushy surface that he assumed must be his brain. Sick and disoriented though he was, he managed to get his first aid kit out and pour sulfa powder into the hole and then stuff it full of gauze.

Unable to walk or speak properly, Gardner watched as his unit packed up and began to move inland, following the infantry who had suddenly begun to advance. The other officers told him that they would send medics back for him. He was soon alone on the beach with a handful of wounded and dying soldiers, all of whom would have been killed by German mortar fire had not a group of British troops happened along. The British moved the wounded Americans up the beach to a sheltered area among some rocks.

After 23 hours wounded on the beach, a group of medics finally arrived and moved Gardner and the others to a field hospital in Vierville. There Gardner made the happy discovery that what he had felt through the gash in his helmet was not his brain, but badly lacerated scalp tissue. Though his skull was scarred, it was not broken. Getting the helmet off was another matter: it took three doctors and a fair amount of pulling and twisting as the edges had curled in and were imbedded in his scalp. Eventually Gardner was sent back to England to recover, but that was not the end of the war for him. Later he would find himself being bombed by friendly fire during Battle of the Bulge and still later he would serve as the American Commandant at Buchenwald following its liberation.

Gardner’s helmet remains, to this day, the most damaged helmet whose wearer survived his wounds.

To see Clint Gardner’s helmet or to read his letter home ask for MS-1109. A guide to the collection is available. To read his book, D-Day and Beyond, ask for Alumni G1728."

[Blue Puttees]

http://www.nam.ac.uk/collection/coll...uggle-on-somme



"Bloodstained Tunic Tells of Struggle on the Somme


Captain George Johnson wore this service tunic on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916). Torn and bloodstained, it serves as evidence of the bitter struggle fought on the Western Front during the First World War.

Captain Johnson on the Somme

On 1 July 1916, one day before his 38th birthday, Captain George Johnson put on this service tunic and went into battle. It was the infamous first day of the Battle of the Somme, where the British and their allies faced the full might of the German Empire. The British Army sustained nearly 60,000 casualties on what remains the worst day in its history.

Captain Johnson’s own unit, 2nd Battalion, The Duke of Cambridge’s Own (Middlesex Regiment), was not spared from these sweeping losses. Only 51 of the 673 officers and men of the battalion made it to the end of that first day unharmed. The rest were either killed, wounded or reported missing.

Bloodstained tunic

George Johnson was wounded during the attack on Oviller-La Boisselle. During the fighting he was hit in his chest, pelvis and arm, and his tunic sleeve had to be cut away so that medics could attend to his injuries. Johnson was invalided out of the war, but recovered and went on to live well into his 90s.

This single-breasted tunic, made of khaki whipcord, features brass buttons of The Middlesex Regiment, which bear the coat of arms and motto of the Prince of Wales.

Johnson’s tunic serves as a testament to the intensity of the fighting on the Somme. The various holes, tears and bloodstains illustrate the destruction wrought by shells, shrapnel and gunfire on the Western Front during the First World War.

Britain’s Greatest Battles exhibition

Visitors to the National Army Museum can see Captain Johnson's tunic on display in the Britain’s Greatest Battles exhibition in the White Space Gallery from 13 February to 2 June 2013."

[Hussar100]

The ravages of war are something I never forget. There are similar artefacts around today from our modern conflicts. The limbless, the disfigured, the damaged men and women evident in our society today are further evidence, if any were needed, of the horrors war brings to us. It's something every generation has seen however and I'm afraid I believe society has become inured to. A case of, I'm alright Jack so eff you!

Thank God for the organisations in place to guarantee the well being of our veterans. They and the media are the only things reminding the public of what the armed forces do for them and in their name.

[pinfrin]

The Face of Battle by John Keegan
A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo and the Somme
Good B. inoculation text