Official caption: “Tommy Gun Motor Cyclists. Grenadier Guards, famous the world over, are now, as part of their mechanization, equipped with motorcycles on which Tommy guns are mounted. A guardsman on his Tommy-gun-equipped motorcycle. A guardsman of 1st Battalion, Grenadier Guards, 7th Guards Brigade, 3rd Division, 5th Corps, Swanage, 9 April 1941.”
Taken by LT. E G. Malindine IWM H 8827
My first “real” job, one that wasn’t working for family or friends of the family for a little bit of cash, was as a “library page” for the local county library system. It wasn’t much. Age 13-14. Limited to under 20 hours a week. The minimum wage back when that was $3.85/hr. I was lucky to be able to put in 10-15 hours a week during school and only “maxed out” on hours in the summer when the regular staff took vacations. The pay was so paltry that I could cash my paper check downstairs out of the circulation desk’s cash register and pocket, after taxes, my typical weekly $30-$40, which was still big money to me.
The job was mostly grunt work. Shelving books. Emptying the night book return. Putting magazines in binders. Updating the card catalog– yes, with a manual typewriter and index cards.
Still, I loved it and was in awe of the library. It had been my home away from home after all, as I had often spent much of my free time there as a kid. You could even say I walked on at the tender age of 14 as a trained junior book tender, as I had pitched in before school each day in grades 3-6 at the school library and have the certificates of appreciation to prove it!
The thing is, the libraries of the 1980s are not the libraries of the 2020s.
As today’s readers are more inclined to use the facility for its free internet access or public computer bank, the institutions have slaughtered their increasingly unused book catalogs, emptying the shelves and selling them off for cheap.
Like 50 cents for paperbacks and $1 for hardbacks cheap. Further, as many of the books that end up at these sales are donated by the public who incorrectly think the library will turn around and add them to the collection, there are a lot of old books from private libraries that have seen little use over the years.
And the selection can get pretty niche…in my kind of niche
With no shame in my game, I have been frequenting my local area public libraries for sales and I can report that it is not a waste of time. It feeds my inner tsundoku, you could say.
When they come to take me away to the home, it will be from behind stacks of books.
As Kipling said, “A man can never have too much red wine, too many books, or too much ammunition.”
80 years ago this month, a great period Kodachrome of one Private Alfred Campin, 6th Battalion, Durham Light Infantry, while undergoing training in Britain, March 1944. Note his late model No. 4 Enfield, complete with wartime spike bayonet and what (may) be an early Mark III “Turtleshell” helmet (its hard to tell under the net).
Photo by Tanner, A J (Lt), War Office official photographer, IWM TR 1596
The 6th Battalion DLI, was originally formed in 1908 from the old 2nd Volunteer Battalion DLI, as a Territorial Force battalion with headquarters in County Durham’s Bishop Auckland and eight companies in drill halls in Barnard Castle, Consett, Crook, Spennymoor, Stanhope, and Bishop Auckland. It marched off to war in 1914.
Reverting back to Territorial status interwar, the 6th DLI marched off again to France in 1940 and in North Africa (1941-43) before being shipped back to the Home Isles for reorganization and training for a return to France in June 1944. Pulled from the line in December 1944, the 6th was sent to Yorkshire to be used in training service corps soldiers as infantry then was placed in suspended animation in January 1946
Overall, the DLI continued in British Army service until 1968, when it was amalgamated into The Light Infantry, and then in 2007, when it was further amalgamated into The Rifles.
From mid-January to late March 1944, some 460 French maquis guerrillas of the Battalion des Glières occupied the Glières plateau, making it a besieged Free “French” territory where they hoisted the tricolor flag every day.
The motley assortment included not only paroled French soldiers and sailors but also 56 exiled Spanish Republicans who had escaped to the area in 1939 when Franco took over.
The remote alpine pasture only held about 20 year-round inhabitants but it made a great parachute drop zone to receive weapons intended for the maquis of Haute-Savoie, and the first RAF weapons drop, of 54 containers, was made on the night of 13/14 February. Guns and explosives were then spirited out through the nearby trails and paths to other parts of the region.
RAF parachute container drop to Resistance French 1944
Under the command first of LT Théodosius Morel (formerly of the Blue Devils of the 27e bataillon de chasseurs alpins) known as Tom Morel, then Capt. Maurice Anjot, the pocket held out against increasingly strong Wehrmacht attacks until 26 March 1944 when Anjot ordered those who could to break out and melt back into the countryside.
Maquis members of the Allobroges section during its breakout on Esserts on March 27, 1944 Plateau des Glières
In all, at least 129 maquisards died there, were killed in combat, executed on capture, or– along with the 20 inhabitants– were deported to concentration camps.
They are remembered in the National Necropolis of Glières, and a memorial stands on the plateau where the battalion mustered.
The battle along the Glières plateau was perhaps the biggest set-piece battle by the Resistance in the lead-up to the twin Overlord and Dragoon Landings in the summer of 1944 that would spark the overt liberation of the Republic. The Allies had gone far to build up the shadow army for “the day.”
Allied Military Missions in Occupied France, 1944
From 1941 to 1945, SOE organized about 3,733 parachute landings and 81 pick-up operations (Lysander, Hudson, or Dakota) into France:
About 470 SOE agents, including 39 women, were sent out into France. Among Section F, 104 of whom were killed in action or executed (13 women), 30 escaped and 12 were released. They were “closely harnessed to the military effort” and “played a very considerable part in our complete and final victory.”
About 100 Jedburgh teams were dropped into France, Belgium, and Holland between June and December 1944.
Jed Nationalies dispatched into France :
The Jedburgh Teams had in Europe:
The Carpetbagger operation dropped some 10 million pounds of equipment to the French Resistance including 104,536 STEN submachine guns, 409,224 grenades, and 307,023 kg of explosives.
French Bernard maquisards 1944 with PIAT and STEN. Note the blend of civilian clothes with Adrian helmets
We seem to be on a roll when it comes to erasing familiar childhood faces from the planet this week.
Michael A. James, better known as Michael Jayston, had the distinction of probably looking even more like Tsar Nicholas II than old Nikolasha did, appearing as the sad-eyed emperor in Nicholas & Alexandria.
African wars buffs will, of course, better remember him from Zulu Dawn as the real-life Colonel (later Lt. Gen) Henry Hope Crealock, a hard-bitten campaigner who had fought in the Crimea and across India and China before Isandlwana and had to live with Lord Chelmsford’s terrible choices in the latter war, although he was able to carry the line “I do not make the strategies you wish to comment on. I am only His Lordship’s secretary,” in the film.
He also surfaced repeatedly in Dr. Who— back when it was still good, although not opposite Tom Baker who was ironically an unforgettable Rasputin in Nicholas and Alexandria— Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and dozens of other flickering screeens over the past half-century. He was even reportedly in the running for portraying James Bond at one time or another.
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Born on 29 October 1935 in West Bridgford, he did his National Service in the 1950s with the British Army of the Rhine– crossing paths with Roger Moore who was also in the area at the time– before embarking on his stage career in 1962. He passed on Monday, aged 88.
Pouring one out for New Orleans-born Carl Weathers over the weekend.
A big part of my childhood, I can’t remember how many times I saw him on bootlegged-off-HBO Betamax tapes as Apollo Creed– including his death at the hands of Ivan Drago, which was one of the most chilling parts of the Cold War to me as a kid. Plus, there was the terribly underrated Force 10 from Naverone, and, of course, Predator.
As an adult, I just recently attended the Chubbs Peterson Memorial Rifle Golf Tournament in Utah last year, and everyone was full of Carl Weathers humor at the time.
Although he didn’t serve directly in the military, he was a big part of Red Tight Media, which specialized in producing tactical training films for the U.S. armed forces and in constructing simulated Afghani and Iraqi villages at the NTC at Fort Irwin, California, all of which certainly helped keep guys alive in the sandbox.
Thus closes another chapter on my childhood.
How about this amazing early color photo (possibly an Autochrome Lumière) showing the combat-tattered banner of the French army’s 37e Régiment D’Infanterie (37e RI) shown resting on two stacks of bayonets atop Lebel 1886/15 rifles, likely late in the Great War. Note the famed “horizon blue” uniform of the Croix de Guerre-wearing Poilu, shown complete with an Adrian Adrian-style steel helmet. You can make out, under the Honneur et Patrie (“Honour and Fatherland”) motto, and battle honors for Zurich, Polotsk, and Alger.
Jean-Baptiste Tournassoud/ECPAD/Défense Réf. : AUL 56
With a lineage traced to 1587, the 37e RI picked up its number designation in 1790 while at Valogne under Col. Joachim Robin de Blair de Fressineaux (along with the honor of being named for Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Maréchal de Turenne).
It soon earned two battle honors in the Napoleonic Wars (“Zurich 1799” and “Polotsk 1812”) although it fought notably in no less than 24 large battles from Vauban to Ligny. Post-Napolean, the 37th fought in Algeria (earning “Alger 1830” battle honor), as well as during the 1859 Italian campaign, and at Sedan during the 1870 war with Prussia.
Starting the Great War at Nancy with the 11th Infantry Division, the 37th was repeatedly bled white over the next four years, earning four battle honors (Lorraine 1914, Flanders 1914, Verdun 1916, and Champagne 1918) while sending no less than 6,155 of its members to the scrolls of its honored dead– more than twice the regiment’s 2,722-man wartime authorization!
It ended the war on occupation duty in Frankfurt.
The 37th, in keeping with French interbellum doctrine, was redesignated a fortress infantry unit in the 1930s and staffed the Maginot Line at Rohrbach.
When the Germans came again in 1940, the 37th held the line until its until it was compromised then mounted a fighting retreat to Val-et-Chatillon, suffering over 1,000 casualties in the process. There, its survivors burned its cherished regimental colors on orders of Lt. Col. Combet on 25 June, rather than surrender them to “The Boche,” capping 150 years of solid service to the empire and republic.
Post WWII, the 37th would be reformed a few different times as “public works” (bataillon d’ouvrages) and reserve battalions, but never again as a line infantry regiment.
The regimental motto was “Vaincre ou mourir” (Win or die)
Some 100 years ago today, “18.5-year-old” student Robert Anson Heinlein of Kansas City signed up for a three-year stint in the Missouri National Guard, taken on to the rolls of the 110th Engineers.
He was actually just 16, still a full half year before turning 17, but, a smart kid, he was already a senior at Kansas City Central High School, where he was a Cadet LTC in its JROTC unit.
Via the Missouri State Archives
Attending regular weekend drills and a summer camp, he quickly became a corporal.
Heinlein didn’t stop there.
After bombarding Missouri U.S. Sen. James Reed with more than 50 character reference letters urging an appointment to the Naval Academy while the youth was attending Kansas City Community College, Heinlein became a midshipman in June 1925, later being discharged from the Missouri Guard as a staff sergeant in 1928, just before earning his butter bar as a Navy ensign with the Class of ’29, ranked 20th of 243, and was soon in the fleet.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Throughout 46 novels and dozens of short stories, Robert Heinlein was always flanked by what he learned and remembered from his days as a young Soldier in an engineer unit with the Missouri National Guard, an Annapolis Mid, and as a young line officer in the fleet.
“Citizenship is an attitude, a state of mind, an emotional conviction that the whole is greater than the part…and that the part should be humbly proud to sacrifice itself that the whole may live.” ― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers
Major Willis Michael “Mike” Sadler, MM, MC, the last survivor of both the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG), and David Stirling’s original L Detachment SAS, has marked his map for the last time at age 103.
A Rhodesian, Sadler’s WWII service including 4 Rhodesian Anti-Tank Battery (ranks), Long Range Desrt Group (S Patrol) 1942 (Cpl) award M.M. with LRDG, L Detachment SAS July 1942-September 1942 (CR/3514 Sgt), 1 SAS (A Squadron) 1942-43 (2 Lt), Special Raiding Squadron 1943 (Lt), and 1 SAS (HQ + A Squadrons) 1944-45 (Cap)– recommended MC 1945, ret Maj.
Sadler joined SAS in 1941 and was the group’s primary navigator across the featureless Libyan desert, successfully guiding their gun trucks and war jeeps to success, among others, at Wadi Tamet where his team famously destroyed 24 aircraft and a fuel dump.
Using “very blank” maps and a sun compass — and sometimes not even that!– Sadler got it done long before the days of GPS.
A 2016 interview with Sadler:
Sadler is portrayed by Tom Glynn-Carney in the new BBC series Rogue Heroes.
Post-war, he served with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (now the British Antarctic Survey) and Sadler’s Passage in Stonington Island, Antarctica was later named after him in 2021 in recognition of his work there.
And thus, we remember.
70 years ago this month.
January 1954 – French Indochina. Legionnaires of the recently reformed 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1er Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes) crouching, stationary, during a patrol west of a little hamlet in the heart-shaped Mường Thanh Valley called Diên Biên Phu, long before it was infamous.
Daniel Camus/ECPAD/Defense Ref. : NVN 54-9 R43
Note the floppy chapeau de brousse bush hats, TAP 47 “lizard” camo, and hallmark MAT-49 SMGs: the French Indochina experience at its peak.
Formed at Khamisis, Algeria on 1 July 1948, 1er BEP shipped out to Indochina just four months later and would remain in the embattled colony during its entire existence. It was reportedly full of hard cases with prior combat jumps, including several former SOE/OSS types, Sky Soldiers, Paras, Paracadutisti, and Fallschirmjäger who has served under a half dozen flags in the Big Show.
They would make a series of spectacular airborne raids and jumps that have been all but lost to history including dropping 580 men into Haiphong on 18 March 1949, landing two companies at Phu Doan and another at Tuyen Quang during Operation Pomone I in April 1949 to destroy Viet Minh depots, 412 men at Phu Lo Xoc at the end of that month, a full battalion-sized raid on Phu Doan on 7 May 1949, captured Tinh Luyen in an 18 August 1949 airdrop, dropped a company to reinforce Hoa Binh in November 1949, raided Quang Nguyen on 20 April 1950, was involved in the brigade-sized mass drop (along with 2d BEP and 3d BPC) on Phu Doan during Operation Marion on 11 September 1950, and dropped in the tragic rescue at That Khe in October where an entire company was annihilated and its others decimated, leading the battalion to be disbanded on December 31, 1950.
Reformed, they lept into Cho Ben in November 1951 in Operation Tulipe.
Bled out, they had to be reformed extensively over the next two years.
They were only at full strength and para-qualified in November 1953 when they were pinned to Operation Castor– seizing the Mường Thanh Valley and fortifying Diên Biên Phu near the border of present-day Laos, essentially Giap’s backyard.
On D-Day on Castor, 20 November 1953, 2,650 men of GAP; 2/1 RCP, 1 & 6 BPChoc parachuted into the valley, meeting up with 25 pathfinders of GCMA who had landed the night prior. On D+1, 1,400 men of our 1er BEP, along with 2 GAP, and 8 BPChoc parachuted in. D+2 saw 485 Vietnamese paras of 5 BPVN leap in followed by a mortar company and light artillery battalion.
Castor was carried out with five squadrons of WWII-era C-47 Dakotas and one of recently supplied (CIA manned) C-119 Flying Boxcars. In all, just over 5,000 men would be parachuted into the valley in four days– the largest combat airdrop for any country since the Varsity jumps over the Rhine in March 1945.
It would be 1er BEP’s final jump.
Dien Bien Phu, René Pleven, Minister National Defense, presents decoration to fanion 1st BEP Feb 1954. Three months later the unit would no longer exist and the pennant was destroyed rather than be captured
Captain Cabiro, commander of the 4th company of 1st BEP (Bataillon Etranger de Parachutistes) is smoking a Gauloises cigarette. Note the Luger P08 he picked up in 1944 and the American handie-talkie radio
Indochina 1954, Officers newly reformed 1er BEP. TAP 47 lizard camo, Mauser bayonet, US M1 helmets, and handie-talkie
Indochina War, Dien Bien Phu, January 1954. A lieutenant of French 1er BEP recon unit.
With every member of the battalion either killed, wounded, or captured at Diên Biên Phu during the later 54-day siege of the outpost in 1954, 1er BEP would be reconstituted in name only on 18 May 1954– two weeks after the battle.
Following a shift to Algeria during the French withdrawal from Indochina it would be redesignated the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er Régiment Etranger de Parachutistes, 1er REP) in September 1955, a unit that earned further glory in the Suez and fighting in North Africa only for that unit to be dissolved for good for its part in the 1961 Algiers putsch against De Gaulle.
The regiment’s parade song was “Non, je ne regrette rien” (“No, I regret nothing”), by Edith Piaf.