Thursday, May 26, 2005

[roevermca1996] Anecdote: Interesting ones (Wartime)

Anecdote:
  • While planning a campaign one day, one of Richelieu's officers, poring over a map, placed his finger at a strategic junction. "We shall cross the river," he boldly declared, "at this point." "Excellent, sir," Richelieu replied. "But your finger is not a bridge."
  • "When the German delegation came to Marshal Foch at the end of the war to ask for armistice terms, the Frenchman picked up a paper from his desk and read a set of conditions.

    "'But - there must be some mistake,' the leader of the German officers stammered in dismay. 'These are terms which no civilized nation could impose upon another!'

    "'I am very glad to hear you say so,' replied Foch gravely. 'No, gentlemen, these are not our terms. These are the terms imposed on Lille by the German commander when that city surrendered.'"

  • "In 1962, when working for Reuters, Frederick Forsyth was posted to East Berlin where he nearly started the Third World War. Returning home late one night he found his path impeded by Soviet armoured divisions; tanks, rocket-launchers, motorised infantry, rumbling along the Karl Marx Allee in the deep dead of night. As soon as he reached his telex he filed a story that a Russian assault on West Berlin was imminent. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, the British prime minister of the time, and the US president Lyndon Johnson had to be woken up, and NATO was put on red alert. Then a wise old hand at Reuters in London suggested he check if it was a rehearsal for the May Day parade. It was."
  • Following the Normandy landings, General George Patton led the Allied sweep across France at the end of World War II. Shortly after one of his units crossed the Seine at Melun (on August 26, 1944), General Dwight Eisenhower received a formal military report detailing the operation - to which Patton had added a celebratory note: "Dear Ike," it read, "Today I pissed in the Seine."
  • In the run-up to the war in Iraq in May 2003, President George W. Bush was dismayed to learn that France would not be supporting the American effort to oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Jed Babbin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense in the first Bush administration, was less concerned. "Going to war without France," he remarked, "is like going deer hunting without your flute!"
  • Barbara Bush once accompanied her husband, President George Bush, on a state visit to Japan. During a formal luncheon at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, she found herself seated beside Japan's Emperor Hirohito.

    "Was the former palace so old that it crumbled?" she asked, noting the building's apparent youth. "No," Hirohito tersely replied, "I'm afraid that you bombed it..."

  • After his ill-fated invasion of Russia in 1812, Napoleon, alarmed by unrest at home, left his army in the lurch and rushed back virtually unaccompanied. He shortly arrived at the river Neman, inquiring of the Russian ferryman if many deserters had passed that way. "No," the man replied, "you are the first."

  • While leading his troops north from Decatur to Nashville in late September, 1864, Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest encountered a Union army at Athens, Alabama.

    When the Union commander, Colonel Wallace Campbell, refused to surrender, Forrest asked for a personal meeting and invited Campbell to inspect his troops. Campbell accepted.

    Each time the men left a detachment, the Confederate soldiers would quickly pack up and race to another position; Forrest and Campbell would then arrive and continue to tally up an impressive number of Confederate troops.

    By the time they returned to the fort, Campbell was convinced that he was vastly outnumbered and gave Forrest an unconditional surrender.


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posted by saima | 5:51 AM

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