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BillB

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About BillB

  • Birthday 06/16/1959

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  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    English East Midlander in Glasgow, UK
  • Interests
    most things military, military modelling, Vespa motor scooters, Staffordshire Bull Terriers

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  1. BillB

    Brexit

    Of course it's a good thing, it's got the EU running scared of what's coming next as evinced by the desperate flailing and wishful thinking upthread. BillB
  2. BillB

    Brexit

    I dropped into this thread earlier to check, and lo, the same tired nonsense is still being posted by the usual suspects. In that vein be advised that at 23:00 Greenwich Mean Time I lifted a glass of champagne to celebrate what will likely be the most significant event in the history of my country in my lifetime. It took forty-seven years but the essentially dishonest, underhanded and anti-democratic wrong inflicted by morally bankrupt politicians upon my country has finally been righted. It was righted by the expressed will of the majority of the UK population via the largest democratic exercise in British history, and despite over four years of caviling and attempts to overturn that result by Brussels and their creatures here in the UK. The deed is done. Happy New Year one and all. BillB
  3. I walked the Kall Trail a few years back, on the switchbacks down to the stone river bridge you could see US tank tread prints clearly pressed into the clay at the trail edges. Lots of M1 Garand cartridge cases just laying virtually on the surface too. Elsewhere we also found a platoon location with the fighting positions clearly visible under a carpet of pine needles. Guy I was with was a Sergeant in the Parachute Regiment, he spotted the first fighting position and picked out the rest by eye because they were where he would have put them. BillB
  4. Yup, that looks like Manchester all right. Mebbe the Daily Star were telling de troot after all 🙂 BillB
  5. Leaving aside I've never seen a rate, cat sized or otherwise, it's Manchester so pretty much anything is possible. On the other hand it's the Daily Star, so is prolly totally made up by some bored third-rate journalist on his lunch break. 🙂 BillB
  6. 😂😂😂 Sorry RETAC, I'm definitely stealing that!!
  7. So basically then Stuart, you are saying that everybody is out of step but you, yes? AFAIK nobody appointed you to be TankNet's Disinformation Finder General and more importantly the responses in this thread clearly show that your view is far from universal among your fellow members. It's not a court of law, it's the interweb mate and the world isn't going to stop turning because you don't turn every perceived difference of opinion into an existential conflict. You can just scroll on by... On top of that I understand what you are saying fine, I just don't see it that way. Two points. First, this site doesn't degenerate into a slanging match, that happens in a handful of locations in one specific part of the site. It happens because a relative handful of members insist on their perspective being accepted as the One True Path on either side of a small selection of topics, exacerbated by the inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge any other viewpoint; nothing unique about that, it seems to be the way the world is going generally these days. Second, I spend a good deal of time on ARRSE, and what you laud as 'community effort' is nothing of the kind, I suspect you see it that way because it suits your personal preferences. It is generally no more than simple harassment and abuse, which is tolerated by a deliberately lax moderating regime designed to maximise advertising income and avoid prosecution for political incorrectness. Sure, it is amusing and entertaining but it doesn't even work; consider how many years KGB Resident (and others) have been posting on there and the fact he is still happily doing so, routine abuse and harassment not withstanding. Seriously, I think you need to lighten up a bit mate, because you are so close to the trees you can't see there is a wood. BillB
  8. Ref the bold, yes, but they never do, do they.... 😉 🙂 BillB
  9. National Farmers Day or something I think. I expect Sir Kneelalot Starmer thinks it's to commemorate the glories of the kolkhoz or something...
  10. Hello Retac, glad you are enjoying the book and thank you for the kind words, they are much appreciated. 😊 Ref the above, the following is off the top of my head as I'm not on my work machine, so please excuse the lack of/any errors in locations and/or timings. I don't think the bit about Horrocks reflects what I was driving at, mebbe I could/should have been clearer. By the time 30 Corps had finally closed up to the south bank of the Lower Rhine and they were holding the meeting that hung Sosabowski out to dry the die was cast regarding the 1st Airborne Division and Horrocks (and Dempsey I think) were looking to put the best face on a totally preventable failure. I suspect Horrocks was not so much aping the behaviour of Thomas and Browning but allowed himself to be led by the nose, probably in arguably misplaced loyalty toward his senior subordinates. What I see as the reason for his quiescence is laid out below. It should also be remembered that the scapegoating went further up the British chain-of-command as far as Montgomery, who also played a shameful role in the affair, presumably also in an effort to protect his subordinates; to be fair I don't think there is any evidence that Montgomery was looking to deflect personal blame at the time or later. With ref to Horrocks being someone who did not fuss over details etc I would argue this was exactly the problem with MARKET. Horrocks made all the right noises with regard to the vital need for haste etc. and I think he was genuine about it. The problem was that his senior subordinates commanding the Guards Armoured Div and 43rd Div simply ignored Horrocks' intentions and pretty much did what they liked, when they liked totally without censure or sanction. Horrocks should have been dishing out severe arse kickings from the evening of 17 September but I did not come across evidence of any such things at any point during the nine days up to the evacuation of the 1st Airborne across the Lower Rhine. This leads to what I would argue was the underlying reason for Horrocks' poor performance during MARKET GARDEN, which was his health. He may have been the figure quoted by Delaney (who I think is bit too rah rah like Dover with regard to the more senior British Airborne leadership FWIW) in North Africa and again in the push through the Reichswald and over the Rhine into northern Germany, but he wasn't that man during MARKET GARDEN because of his severe wounding in the strafing attack at Bizerte in June 1943. That put him out of action for over year to recover, and I don't think he was fit for service when he played the old boy network card with Montgomery to get command of 30 Corps in August 1944. His lack of fitness was not immediately apparent during the Falaise break-out and the Great Swan across France & Belgium because he didn't really have that much to do as his formations were running on auto-pilot from their Normandy experience but once the pressure came on with MARKET there are several references to him being ill at his HQ and then Montgomery ordered him back to the UK for rest in December 1944, a euphemism for being temporarily relieved of his command; I suspect by that time they could no longer sweep his lack of fitness and consequent erratic behaviour under the carpet. BillB
  11. Why do I need to do that? Why would I do that? I can point out that there ARE troops performing some form of civil security functions without needing to A. challenge one to a fight or B. even do anything other than asking questions. If anyone is going to end up on the wrong end of an SA80 bayonet it'll either be some of your many leftist who've decided that Robert the Bruce was a racist OR it'll be more of your new citizens who are utterly devoted to some other religion than the CoE and decide that they need to kill a guardsman for Allah. I'll be here wishing you guys had better security if it turns out badly and you'll be fixated on me, while ignoring the folks that argue that anyone who has a statue to them in the UK is obviously racist. Do you get paid by the word? Do us all a favour, go and find an empty phone box and hold your verbose one-way conversations in there. BillB
  12. I am? I'm pointing at the soldiers themselves that perform security NOW. And are armed, NOW. If there was an attack would the Guards stand around or would they run or would they fight? I dunno, oh font of all UK knowledge AND Chief Denigrator of SAME. You could of course come OVER and perform an attack on Buck House NOW to show us, I'd pay good money to see you on the wrong end of an SA80 bayonet. BillB
  13. Don't be coming in here with your facts and logic and other fripperies young man. BillB
  14. SOURCE: Mawdsley, Evan. Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War 1941-1945. Hodder Arnold, London, 2007. ISBN 978-0-340-61392-4 **General Editor's Preface, pages xviii - xix** I'm surprised to see those two caught out like that, I thought they were better than that. AIUI Eisenhower's SHAEF's original plan involved a step-by-step broad front advance after the Germans who it was assumed would conduct a repeat of 1918; as Carlo D'Este puts it for example: D'Este cites a SHAEF planning paper to back up his analysis, WO 219/2506 'Post-Neptune Courses of Action After Capture of Lodgement Area' and refers to a copy belonging to 21st Army Group lodged in WO 205/660. Nothing in there about anybody thinking it would be over by Chrimble, quite the contrary. My understanding is that the 'all over by Xmas' thing was born from the German collapse at Falaise and subsequent retreat which created a surge of overconfidence after the British 'Great Swan' and Patton's push carried the Allied advance to the Belgian-Dutch border and Metz respectively in days rather than weeks or months. Even then I don't think anyone was talking about finishing up by Xmas. D'Este quotes Montgomery's memoir suggesting a '...full blooded thrust towards the Ruhr...to establish a powerful air force in Belgium, to secure bridgeheads over the Rhine before winter began, and to seize the Ruhr quickly'. (Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery Memoirs (London: Collins,1958), p. 266; cited in D'Este, p. 464). Given that Montgomery was talking post-Falaise and just three moths or so short of Xmas and that he was likely over egging the pudding with the benefit of hindsight, that was still a pretty tall order, especially given the logistics problems created by the loss of the OMAHA MULBERRY, the failure to secure a functioning major port and the sudden and unexpected lengthening of the Allied logistics chain by hundreds of miles. Which pretty much brings us back to securing ground for a resumption of the advance in early 1945... BillB
  15. Blimey RETAC, you're a glutton for punishment, I don't know whether to be flattered or just afraid... In response to your question, I think Rich has answered better than I could have done. TBH I didn't look at DRAGOON and I doubt there was much if any cross pollination apart from the mainland Italian landings emphasising the need to clear the beaches as rapidly as possible - hence the omnipotent Beach Masters. OMAHA actually went better than it is routinely given credit for, and there was a distinct lack of push at UTAH despite the windfall of accidentally landing in a better stretch of coast than planned. All this is from memory, so rich will likely pop up and tell me that I'm wrong. BillB
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