Via the Cody Museum
Winchester designed an anti-tank rifle in 1918. It is a bolt action chambered in .50 BMG and the grip serves as the bolt handle. The gun was patented by Edwin Pugsley and was an American take on the German T-Gewehr anti-tank rifle of the day.
Ian with Forgotten Weapons has the dish best served old on David Marshall “Carbine” Williams’ Winchester AT rifle, a completely different design of WWII vintage.
Here we see, in this image from the Imperial War Museum, RFC armorers issuing Lewis guns with Lewis and Vickers ammunition to observers and pilots of No. 22 Squadron at the aerodrome at Vert Galand, 1 April 1918– some 99 years ago today. This was during the time of the German Spring Offensive that year.
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205247539 Note the chap in the Glengarry hat puffing away on his pipe
I say April Fools because the Lewis very often froze on these brave young men as their flying machines reached altitude. The only ways to solve this problem were as follows: a) fire a few rounds every so often to keep your barrel warm and mechanism moving; b) carry a small hammer in your cockpit with which to pound on your gun if it iced up, or c) carry your magazine inside your flying clothes to keep it warm.
Formed in 1915 on the Western Front, No. 22 Squadron gratefully flew Bristol F.2 fighters at the time of the above photo, which was armed with a synchronised fixed, forward-firing .303 in (7.7 mm) Vickers machine gun which, though it had its own troubles, was more reliable than the Lewis, which was used by the rear seat observer on a Foster mount.
With the motto Preux et audicieux (French: “Valiant and Brave”), No. 22 Squadron stood down in 2015 after 100-years or service which includes a VC awarded to Flying Officer Kenneth Campbell for executing a torpedo attack on the German battlecruiser Gneisenau in Brest harbor during WWII. Campbell, notably, was killed in that attack on 6 April 1941 though he was nobody’s April Fool.
In a world in which over two million of Ruger’s handy .223 caliber rifle has been made since 1973, there were bound to be dozens of variants and subvariants. Sure you know about the Ranch rifle, the full-auto AC556, and the Mini-30, but what about the GB? What makes the GB so special? And what do they have to do with Bermuda?
Ruger’s attempt at government sales
Styled after an amalgam of pre-1968 US combat rifles including the M1 Garand, M1 Carbine and M14 rifle, the Mini-14 had features drawn from almost all of these guns. Although the gun went on to sell many more copies in its standard form on the US civilian market, it was sales to law enforcement and the military that Ruger wanted a slice of. In the late 1970s, the company made a Mini-14 with a longer receiver and selector switch to change the gun from semi-auto to 3-round burst to full auto at 700 rounds per minute! One big overseas sale of these guns was to the French National Gendarmes (as the Mousqueton AMD).
This model, the AC556, and its chopped down little brother the AC556K were sold for two decades in small numbers. The thing is, while this was a good model for military use, many law enforcement agencies were leery of full-auto weapons or could get free M16A1s from the US government. What they wanted was a more tactical Mini-14 but still in semi-auto. This led to the GB variant.
Differences in the GB
These guns were simply standard Ruger Mini-14’s that were given a list of extra accessories and without the fun button of the AC model. This included a flash hider that adorned the muzzle crown of the rifle. The muzzle attachment allowed for use with a line of CS (tear gas) and smoke grenades, which were launched by blank 5.56mm rounds. This hider doubled as a recoil reducer as it ported the gases out and away from the muzzle. About five inches being the muzzle was a bolted on bayonet lug. This would accommodate any M16 style bayonet (the M7, M9, OKC-3S, or others).
This made the gun good for riot/crowd control scenarios for paramilitary forces overseas and was key in selling the gun to such groups as the Bermuda defense forces. After all, nothing says “keep off the grass” around a government building than a line of guys with rifles with fixed bayonets. This feature gave the gun its “GB” moniker, which stood for Government Bayonet.
The Royal Bermuda Regiment is a territorial defense unit for the British Overseas Territory of Bermuda.
Being closer to North Carolina than the UK geographically, Ruger scored in the early 1980s by selling the colonial government a stack of Mini-14GBs for a song that included the crest of the regiment in their wooden stocks (since replaced by a Butler Creek style polymer one without the embellishment).
They have seen hard use in both ceremonial and training duties.
Now, with the drawdown of the British Army, it seems the Crown has found a boatload of arms to send round to Bermuda to put the Rugers out to pasture.
In late 2016, it was decided to send the colony 400 L98A2 (SA80A2) rifles with bayonets, 1,600 magazines, 440 TA31 optical weapons sights (Trijcon ACOGs), and four collimator-type weapons sights. The gear is valued at $1.4 million and was donated.
As noted by the local paper, the Regiment will divest themselves of the Rugers but retain its small stock of Heckler & Koch G36s, which are issued to members of the spec-ops oriented Boat Troop and the Operational Support Unit.
The Enfields look much different compared to the Mini-14s.
New and old compared
In training at Warwick Camp
And on parade
But do they have the RBR crest? Didn’t think so.
There are lots of reasons why someone should not mess around with Norway. One is the Norwegian Home Guard (Norwegian: Heimevernet – “HV”) which today consists of some 45,000 part time soldiers.
Here is one of their rapid-reaction forces at work:
Norwegian Home Guard QRF soldiers from Vestfold on a recent training mission. Note the HV shoulder flashes and general “Most interesting man in the world” vibe of its troopers. These guys could ski circles around potential invaders and, when operating with home field advantage, bring the pain.
SOF has an interesting article from a few months back about these guys from a 1980s encounter in which the author bumped into hardlegs still armed with German WWII weaponry but ready to use it.
Norwegian reserve engineers in the 1980s with a P08 Luger and MP40 SMG. Via SOF
This jibes with my own personal Norwegian buddy, a fellow by the name of Kim that I have known for years. Back in the early 1990s he did his national service in Brigade South (also known then as 4th Brigade) and has shown me fading Kodaks of a skinnier/hairier version of him using everything from 1940s vintage M1 Carbines and Walther P-38s to HK G3s and MP5s. He said they learned to use it all and stacked it deep, just in case.
At the time, the Land Home Guard had 470 platoon-sized units stippled across Norway equipped with small arms and man-portable anti-tank weapons such as the Carl Gustav 84mm and L-18 57mm recoilless rifle– a nice addition to any choke point.
At the end of the Cold War, with a population of 4.2 million, Norway could put up the following numbers:
Army: 19,000 (plus 146,000 reserves)
Navy: 5,300 (plus about 26,000 reserves)
Air Force: 9,100 (plus about 28,000 reserves)
Home Guard: 85,000 reserves.
In short, over 300,000 ready when the balloon went up. Those aren’t rookie numbers.
Today it seems the HV is half the size it was in the tail-end of the Cold War, but you can bet there are probably well-maintained WWII stocks still housed in a warehouse somewhere, ready if needed.
Image via National Naval Aviation Museum
30 years ago, March 29, 1987, Light Photographic Squadron (VFP) 206, the last squadron of its type in the Navy, disestablished. It also marked the end of F-8 Crusader operations in Naval Aviation. In this photograph, a pair of VFP-206 RF-8G Crusaders flies over Monument Valley, the backdrop for many a John Wayne western.
Here at LSOZI, we are going to take off every Wednesday for a look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1859-1946 time period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all of their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger
Warship Wednesday, Mar. 29, 2017: The first into Kure
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142565
Here we see the Black Swan-class sloop, His Majesty’s Indian Ship Sutlej (U95), off the coast of Burma while on a coastal patrol in March 1942 just weeks after the Japanese entered WWII. She is as seen from the boarding whaler as the sloop goes alongside a native Sampan for a closer look.
With its roots hailing back to the East India Company in 1612, the modern Indian Navy was formed in 1830 under the aegis of the Royal Navy and, after over a century of name changes and rebranding became the Royal Indian Navy in 1934. Based in Bombay, this impressive-sounding force only had a handful of ships by the time the Commonwealth found itself in World War II.
The war sparked a huge expansion of the RIN, with a pair of Black Swans ordered in 1939 followed by four more of the same types in subsequent years. The Swans were an improvement of the Bittern-class sloop and were hardy 1,250-ton ships of 299 feet overall and, armed with half-dozen high angle 4-inch guns and some AAA pieces, also carried more than enough depth charges to scratch the paint on German U-boats and Japanese I-boats. They weren’t very fast (19 knots) but had long legs (7,000nm@12kts).
The hero of our tale, Sutej, is named after one of the major rivers that flow through India and carries the name of a previous 50-gun Ship of the Royal Navy as well as a Cressy-class armored cruiser who served in the Great War.
Named after one of the five great rivers of Punjab, HMS Sutlej was a Cressy-class armored cruiser in the Royal Navy
She and sistership Jumna were laid down at William Denny and Brothers Limited, Dunbarton, Scotland in early 1940. Sutlej was commissioned on 23 April 1941 and rushed into combat with her Indian crew under the command of Capt. J. E. N. Coope, R.I.N.
By July 1941 she was deployed in the Irish Sea for convoy defense and between May of that year when she joined HX 127 and August 1944, she escorted no less than 50 convoys in virtually all theaters of the conflict.
But convoy work was almost a sideshow for Sutej, who transited to the Pacific on the entry of Japan into the war, escorting some of the last troops and supplies into Singapore in January 1942. She then worked the coastal patrol off Burma, inspecting local traffic.
Royal Indian Navy Sloop Sutlej on Burma coastal patrol 26 March to 9 April, off Ceylon. The ship’s whaler returned after the inspection of a Sampan. HMIS Sutlej is in the background. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142566
Royal Indian Navy Sloop Sutlej on Burma coastal patrol 26 March to 9 April, off Ceylon. HMIS Sutlej investigating Sampans while on patrol. In the foreground, the ship’s officer is carefully scrutinizing the craft through his binoculars. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142564
ROYAL INDIAN NAVY SLOOP HMIS SUTLEJ ON BURMA COAST PATROL. 26 MARCH TO 9 APRIL 1942, OFF CEYLON. The gun is a quad Vickers .50 (more on that here). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142570
Loading the twin 4″ High Angle, guns during exercise stations on board HMIS Sutlej while escorting merchantmen from Colombo to Calcutta. March 1942. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142569
She then shepherded merchantmen from Bombay to the Persian Gulf, and in the Eastern Mediterranean. This brought her to Operation “Husky” the invasion of Sicily. There, alongside her Indian sister Swan Jumna, she covered the Acid North beaches.
“The Sutlej was senior officer of A/S patrol and as such had a roving commission as general ‘Whipper in’ to the patrol ships and managed to make quick dashes inshore to have a ‘decco’ at the landings at close quarters. The sight was amazing. Landing Craft of all descriptions pouring their loads ashore with very little congestion on the beaches as the troops and vehicles very rapidly pushed inland to capture their objectives.
“By 1100, five hours after initial assault, Admiral Troubridge was able to signal to the Supreme Naval Commander—Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham ‘Landings at Acid Beaches successfully carried out, bridgehead secured.’ Landings on the southern and western coasts of Sicily were also successfully accomplished.
In late 1943 Sutlej was tasked with rushing a detachment of the Queen’s Own Royal West Kents from Haifa– trucked across Iraq by lorry– to beaches in the Aegean where they tried to shore up the campaign there. The year 1944 saw her again in the Indian Ocean, providing convoy defense in the Bay of Bengal between Chittagong and Calcutta. There, she took part in the search for German submarine U-181, a Type IXD2 U-boat hunting in the Indian Ocean.
These days were quiet in this almost forgotten corner of the war. War photographer Cecil Beaton visited the ship during this period.
Wrestling, boxing, and Physical Training during the dog watches. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142572
Indian ratings hoisting a depth charge onto the thrower. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205142571
Cecil Beaton portrait of an Indian naval rating operating a signal lamp on the sloop SUTLEJ at the Royal Indian Naval Station at Calcutta, 1944. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205125435
India 1944: Three stokers of the Royal Indian Navy on the mess deck of the sloop HMIS SUTLEJ. Cecil Beaton portrait. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205193623
In April 1945, Sutlej was relieved of her vital but monotonous convoy work and attached to Operation Dracula– the amphibious assault on Rangoon. Joining the sloop HMIS Cauver, she sailed from Akyab for Rangoon, merging with the massive Allied Dracula force on the way. During the operation, the two sloops stood at the mouth of the Rangoon river ready to bombard shore positions if required.
After the capture of Rangoon, the army in the south of Burma was reinforced from India and Sutlej, along with the fellow H.M.I. Ships Cauvery, Narbada, Godavari, Kistna, and Hindustan were assigned “anti-escape” patrols along with the remote islands in the Mergui Archipelago, Forrest Strait, and the Moscos and Bentinck Group, to prevent Japanese forces bottled up there from being evacuated.
With a long war behind her and a lengthy campaign to take the Japanese Home Islands believed to be ahead, Sutlej was in refit at Bombay on VJ Day.
Then came the endgame.
Sutlej was given the honor of being the first Allied ship to reach the former Japanese naval bastion at Kure after negotiating the shallows, wrecks, minefields, and obstacles.
Indian warship HMIS Sutlej leaves Hong Kong for Japan as part of the Allied forces of occupation.” She was the first Allied warship to reach the former Japanese naval base at Kure. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205208273
HMIS Sutlej, the first Allied warship to reach the former Japanese naval base at Kure, lies in the harbor at Kuchi on Shikoku Island, after negotiating the difficult shallow waters. Date February 1946. (Photo courtesy of the Imperial War Museum with photo credit to ‘Number 9 Army Film & Photographic Unit’). Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205208272
Among the tasks given by Sutlej was that of “smasher” duty– coupled with the Royal Australian Navy destroyer HMAS Quiberon she sank several captured Japanese warships and submarines in the Inland Sea in May 1946 via naval gunfire as part of Operation Bottom. One batch of 17 submarines was sunk in 800 feet of water on the same day and included I-153, 154, 155, Ro-59, 62, 63, and Ha-205.
Scenes aboard the Indian sloop HMIS Sutlej show the views of preparations before the sinking of the Japanese submarine I-155, built-in Kure, 1929, and which apparently was not used during the war. The following scenes show the effect of 4″ shells on the sub and 20mm Oerlikon shells. After 238 rounds of 4″ shells and 4 depth charges, and after 4 hours of firing and closing the range from 4,000 yards to 200 yards, the sub was sunk:
Her sailors were courteous in victory. According to one report:
Many sailors/officers from other ships were seen removing Emperor Hirohito’s portraits, fancy-looking barometers, decorated chinaware, and even zinc bars from a battleship and a submarine. Although the act entailed no criminal offense, none of the Indian sailors or officers brought any Japanese trophies aboard the Indian ship, Sutlej, out of regard for the Indian people’s sensitivity on this subject.
By the end of the war, the RIN had swollen from eight ships and 3,500 personnel of all ranks to over 100 vessels and 30,000 men (as well as the newly established RIN WRENs corps of female sailors) commanded by Vice Adm. Sir Geoffrey Miles, K.C.B. This was soon to change as ships were scrapped and sailors demobilized.
With funds tight and the Empire close to insolvency, the RIN spent much of its postwar period swaying at anchor. By 1947, with India’s and Pakistan’s independence, the Navy was split by each side with Sutlej going to the new Indian Navy along with her Black Swan-class sisters Jumna, Cauvery, and Kistna while three others; Narbada, Godavari, and Hindustan went to Pakistan.
Redesignated Indian Naval Ship (INS) Sutlej was reclassified as a frigate and was one of just a handful of oceangoing warships operated by the fleet of the new republic, forming the 12th Frigate Squadron with her sisters.
SUTLEJ at anchor in Bombay harbor, 1947.
LCDR BA. Samson, R.I.N., Commanding Officer of the SUTLEJ photographed with a group of Bombay Journalists who visited the Sloop in May 1948. Indian Navy archives #3632
Officers of the R.I.N. Sloop SUTLEJ on the deck (May 1948). Indian Navy archives #3633
In 1955, Sutlej was disarmed and converted to a survey ship.
By the late 1970s, the Indian Swans were showing their age. INS Kaveri was the first decommissioned, in 1977, followed by our hero in 1978, INS Jumna in 1980, and INS Krisna in 1981.
Sutlej, however, was apparently scrapped last, going to the breakers in 1983.
A few pieces of her were saved and are in circulation.
Such as this tread plate that appeared for sale in 2015
Only one of the 37 Black Swans, HMS Mermaid (U30)/FGS Scharnhorst, lasted longer than Sutlej did, going to the scrappers in 1990 after a decade as a damage control training hulk.
Our Indian navy’s ship name was handed down to the new survey ship INS Sutlej (J17), commissioned in 1993.
Specs:
Displacement: 1,250 tons
Length: 299 ft 6 in (91.29 m)
Beam: 37 ft 6 in (11.43 m)
Draught: 11 ft (3.4 m)
Propulsion:
Geared turbines, 2 shafts:
3,600 hp (2,700 kW)
Speed: 19 knots (35 km/h)
Range: 7,500 nmi (13,900 km) at 12 kn (22 km/h)
Complement:
180
Armament:
6 × QF 4 in (102 mm) Mk XVI AA guns (3 × 2)
4 × 2-pounder AA pom-pom
4 × 0.5-inch (12.7 mm) AA machine guns, later augmented in 1945 by 20mm guns
40 depth charges
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The FWB carronade buried by the Walton Guards as it appears today (Photo: Chris Eger)
The interesting story of how the ‘Fort’ came to Fort Walton Beach Florida in the American Civil War.
Florida is unique in the south and is often referred to as the most northern of southern states. It is also said that the further north you go in Florida, the further south you get. This is perhaps the truest in the far western Florida panhandle. A little known Confederate force, comprised of local volunteers, fought a few minor battles near what is now Destin/Fort Walton Beach.
Florida in the Civil War
Florida succeeded from the United States on 10 January 1861 and within a month joined the Confederacy. Florida was very sparsely populated in 1861 and its population was thought to be just 140,000 of whom more than 60,000 were slaves. From this population base, the state mustered 16,000 local men to serve in 11 infantry regiments and 2 of cavalry from the Sunshine State. All told, Florida units made up just fewer than 2 percent of the Confederate Army.
One of these units, who later became Company D of the 1st Florida Infantry Regiment, was the Walton Guard. They were organized and mustered into Confederate service for 12 months at Chattahoochee Florida on 5 April 1861.
The Walton Guard and the Indian Mound
Formed from volunteers of Walton and Santa Rosa Counties near Euchee Anna Florida in March 1861, the Walton Guard was a scratch force. Armed with few regular weapons and no artillery they formed a defensive line near what is today downtown Fort Walton Beach.
The Fort Walton Mound, a thousand-year-old Indian burial site, was chosen as the fortification for the unit. The mound was a truncated pyramid made of sand, dirt, and shells 223 feet long, 17 feet high and 178 feet wide. The local Native Americans had used the site as the center of their village up until the 16th century when they became extinct. It was here that the Walton Guard chose to watch over the narrows of Santa Rosa Sound and Choctawhatchee Bay.
The Walton Guards stood their ground for a year, watching over nearby Union-held Fort Pickens and getting into a few light rifle skirmishes with Union gunboats in the area. Finally, regulars from Fort Pickens decided to scatter the Confederate force and in March 1862, a unit of the 1st US Artillery moved from the fort to within cannon range of Camp Walton. On the early morning of April Fool’s Day 1862, Union forces bombarded the Walton Guards on their Indian Mount and oyster shell fortification. Withdrawing from the battlefield Confederate forces fell back down the peninsula and only returned to their post once the Union artillery returned to Fort Pickens.
The Lost Cannon of the Walton Guard
Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, upon finding out of the skirmish, sent small naval cannon to Camp Walton to give the local Confederates some more firepower. The 18-pounder carronade sent over from Pensacola of the type of short naval cannons used on early frigates before the Civil War. They were smoothbore pieces that could be fired comparatively rapidly for ordnance of that era.
The weapons’ primary handicap was that it had a short-range (1-2 miles) and a low elevation. This meant that a Union ship would have to anchor nearly right in front of it to be in danger from it. With the inability to properly defend the mound and their enlistments coming up the Walton Guards evacuated the site in the summer of 1862. They spiked and buried their cannon in the mound so that it could not be used if captured and withdrew to the north.
The carronade as it appears today on a timber display
The Walton Guards joined the rest of the 1st Florida Infantry under Colonel James Patton Anderson. They fought with Stovall’s Brigade, Breckinridge’s Division, D. H. Hill’s Corps, Army of Tennessee at the battles of Chickamauga and Murfreesboro. The remnants of the Walton Guard surrendered and were paroled in North Carolina May 1865.
Their cannon was recovered during archeological excavations of the Indian Mound and today is mounted next to the mound on US 98 in Fort Walton Beach.
It has been a standard site in the area for generations.
Main Street. Fort Walton Beach.1968. Photo courtesy of The Nwfdn Librarian cannon
Much as once a week I like to take time off to cover warships (Wednesdays), on Sundays (when I feel like working), I like to cover military art and the painters, illustrators, sculptors, photographers and the like that produced them.
Combat Gallery Sunday: The Martial Art of Robert Gibb
Robert Gibb was as Scottish as they came, born in Laurieston, near Falkirk 28 October 1845, and educated in Edinburgh. He studied at the Royal Scottish Academy and exhibited his first of more than 140 works there in 1867. It should come as no surprise that he was one of the great chroniclers of Highlanders in the field.
His first stab at the military genre came with Comrades in 1878, depicting men of the 42nd Highlanders (The Black Watch) in the Crimea.
The original version of this work was painted by Gibb in 1878 and is currently unlocated. The painting became iconic. While reading a life of Napoleon, the artist made a sketch of the retreat from Moscow. The dominant group of three figures in the foreground was then isolated and adapted to form an independent composition depicting a young soldier whispering his dying message to a comrade who seeks to comfort him in the snowy wastes of the Crimean winter. Photo credit: The Black Watch Castle & Museum
The Thin Red Line, oil on canvas, by Robert Gibb, 1881, showing the stand of a handful of the 93rd (Sutherland Highlanders) Regiment of Foot at the Battle of Balaclava stopping 2,500 massed Russian cavalry. Currently on display at the National War Museum of Scotland, the venue notes “The Thin Red Line is one of the best known of all Scottish historical paintings and is the classic representation of Highland military heroism as an icon of Scotland.”
Saving the Colours; the Guards at Inkerman (1895 – Naval and Military Club, London)
Alma: Forward the 42nd. This 1888 oil on canvas by Scottish artist, Robert Gibb (1845–1932), depicts the Battle of Alma, in Sebastopol, Crimea on the 20th September 1854. Black Watch, in full review order, are advancing towards enemy guns on heights above, with Field Marshal Sir Colin Campbell (later Lord Clyde) shown giving the historic order from which the painting is titled. In left foreground are two Russians, and in distance stretch of sea with fleet in action. The painting was gifted to Glasgow Museums collection by Lord Woolavington in 1923. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
Besides the Crimea, he also portrayed the Scots at Waterloo.
Closing the Gates at Hougoumont, 1815. Men of the Coldstream Guards and the Scots Guards are shown forcing shut the gates of the chateau of Hougoumont against French attack, with Lieutenant-Colonel James MacDonell forcing back the gate to the left. The moment of crisis shown in the painting came when around 30 French soldiers forced the north gate and entered into the chateau grounds. Before others could follow, the gates were forced shut again, and the French soldiers still inside were killed. Wellington himself had said the success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at the chateau. Photo credit: National Museums Scotland
Late in his life, he also painted the Highlanders in the Great War.
He produced Backs to the Wall at age 84. In this painting, the artist shows a line of khaki-clad Scottish troops standing defiantly at the critical moment, bayonets fixed– with the specters of fallen comrades behind them.
The work was inspired by Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s famous Special Order of the Day at the time of the Great German Offensive of April 1918.
There is no other course open to us but to fight it out. Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one of us must fight on to the end. The safety of our homes and the Freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.
Backs to the Wall, 1918, painted 1929 oil on canvas. Gift from W. J. Webster, 1931 to the Angus Council Museums.
Gibb held the office of King’s painter and limner for Scotland for 25 years and was Keeper of the National Gallery of Scotland from 1895 until 1907. The artist died at his home in Edinburgh in 1932, and he was given a full military funeral with an honor guard provided by the Black Watch.
Many of his works are on display across the UK and are available online.
Thank you for your work, sir.
Here we see the full Royal New Zealand Navy Task Group back in the day off Hauraki Gulf, sometime in the early to 1990s, with four aging but well-maintained steam-powered frigates clustered around the fleet’s new oiler. Note the three airborne Wasp helicopters.
The ships are the HMNZS Canterbury (F421), HMNZS Southland (F104)— formerly HMS Dido, HMNZS Endeavour (A11), HMNZS Waikato (F55), and HMNZS Wellington (F69)— formerly HMS Bacchante.
The four frigates are Leander-class vessels, which proved the backbone of the RN and Commonwealth fleets in the Cold War. Waikato and Canterbury were purpose-built Batch 3 Leanders to replace WWII-era NZ ships such as the old light cruiser Royalist. Notably, these two Kiwi frigates relieved British ships of the Persian Gulf Armilla Patrol during the 1982 Falklands conflict, freeing British ships for deployment.
This latter fact led to the RN transferring HMS Dido and HMS Bacchante to New Zealand in 1983 as payback.
All four of these frigates were retired post-Cold War, replaced two-for-one by a pair of more modern ANZAC-class ships of a modified German MEKO 200 design (although they had been offered two FFG-7s shorthulls of 15–17 years age for a song.) The two Australian-built frigates arrived between 1997-99 and the New Zealand navy has stuck to a two-frigate force since then.
Ex- HMNZS Wellington (F69) prior to sinking as an artificial reef, Nov 2005
*HMS Dido/HMNZS Southland was decommissioned 1995 and scrapped at Goa.
*HMNZS Waikato was decommissioned in 1998 and sunk as an artificial reef off the coast of Tutukaka.
*HMS Bacchante/HMNZS Wellington was decommissioned 1999 and sunk in Wellington Harbour as a reef in 2005.
*HMNZS Canterbury decommissioned 2005 and was herself reefed in 2007.
The 12,300-ton Endeavour, a commercial design from South Korea commissioned 8 April 1988, is still active and is a common sight during RIMPAC exercises. She deployed to East Timor as part of the Australian-led INTERFET peacekeeping taskforce twice. She is the last of the vessels in the image above still afloat.
During the 1939-40 Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union, a hunter and farmer by trade by the name of Simo Hayha returned to his reserve unit and picked up 542 confirmed kills with iron sights.
While versions of Hayha’s story is well known in the West, the 192 pages of Tapio Saarelainen’s White Sniper goes past the second and third-hand accounts and brings you, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story.
It should be noted that Saarelainen is a career military officer who spent two decades training precision marksmen for the Finnish Army and even helped write that Scandinavian country’s manual for snipers. Besides this obvious resume to prepare him to write the work on Hayha, the author also met and interviewed the Winter War hero dozens of times over a five year period.
That’s a good part of what makes White Sniper such an interesting read is that it is drawn largely from first-hand accounts from a man who has been referred to as the deadliest sniper in history, but also from those who lived next to, fought alongside with, and knew the man personally. As such, it sheds insight on the man not known in the West. Such as the fact that he used his own personal Finnish-made Mosin M/28-30 rifle that he had paid for with his own funds. That his outnumbered fellow Finns, fighting alongside him in the frozen Kollaa region during that harsh winter, called him “Taika-ampuja” which translates roughly as the “Magic Shooter.” That he took almost as many moose and foxes in his life as he did Russians. That he was unassuming in later life, spending most of his time calling on old friends in his yellow VW Bettle.
To check out Saarelainen’s book on Amazon here.