I guess it is up to me to stand up for the Tommy, the name given to the British Soldiers of world wars past in the atrocious way liberal Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and apparently President Sarkozy in either slapping the Tommy around, cutting them out of the historical picture or trying to rewrite history that it was the Yanks and the Frogs who won World War II.........well according to that ass orifice Ken Burns, it was only black and Asian Soldiers who won World War II for the Americans.But I digress...........
The British have had a noted history of either having the finest of rapineous and murderous Soldiers or the melancholy worst. At the same juncture, they could have the finest in right proper bastard officers and then have the sloven worst.
They can produce a Drake, a Wolfe, a Churchill and a Montgomery and then at junctures produce nameless names who slaughtered their troops on World War I battlefields in the millions by making them charge German machine guns massed.
The Tommy deserves better than what he got on the 65th commemoration, because it was not his fault his officers were once again unprepared like in World War I for the war which came.
World War I was but a prelude to what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle warned of and started the first NRA after Boer farmers in Africa chewed the British regulars to bits. This led to the Tommy in World War I being taught the British mad minute.
For those unfamiliar with that term, the British Tommy fired the 303 British bolt action rifle. They could fire that weapon so fast that the Germans just could not figure out what on earth the British were doing in having so many machine guns massed in every position.
That was the mark of the Tommy. He could pour firepower into an enemy and so confound them that they reeled.
What happened on June 6th was compounded in Queen Elizabeth not being invited deliberately to the ceremonies. Elizabeth who is from both royal and common stock, the Queen Mum, was a commoner and I dearly loved like all did that plucky old broad, wore the uniform of the Tommy and served the British Empire.
To exclude her was the ultimate slap as the British regulars who have always been the most incredible group of people to be told to go out and die........and they did just that.
Rudyard Kipling sacrificed his own son in World War I due to the horrendous incompetence of the General Staff.
World War II saw the HMS Hood, the great British battleship steam out to do battle with that greater German battleship, the Bismark.
The Hood opened up on the Bismark, but due to British incompetence at the front office, her shells bounced off of the Bismark. The Bismark opened up on the valiant Hood and cut her apart in minutes.
Churchill was furious over this humiliation and sent the entire British fleet after the Bismark to sink her. The Brits caught her off of Spain and in a God given epic battle of mice against a monster, a lone torpedo plane hit the Bismark's rudder so she could not maneuver. The Germans were forced in the battle to sink her. So ended, the greatest of battleships, the Bismark.
Those days were horrid for the Tommy. They had been evacuated out of Europe. British officers had their pistols out in Africa ready to shoot fleeing Tommies who just would not stand against the Rommel onslaught.
It was then that Montgomery of the British appeared. He calmly told the troops, "Now look here. I have reviewed the plans. The plans were all wrong. I have fixed the plans and now we will win, because I am a winner".
And in Africa the British Tommies were marvelous after that, with a little help from George Patton, who assisted them in Sicily too.
After this Rommel would be recalled to Germany and be executed by Hitler. Montgomery would sit on his duff in the lowlands with the American 1st while Patton slaughtered those hun bastards by the bushel.
None of that was the Tommies fault, as they did indeed in the closing days of the war make some wonderful use of their talents again. They are tough bastards those English, Scots and Welsh, and they would find that statement a compliment to them all.
In my collection from the world I ventured, I have two web sets. A web set is the pack set a British Tommy used during the wars. They still had clay in them from the fields they fought in when I retrieved them.
If you ever saw the movie Zulu, you will recall now what I write here in the webs have written on them, Finn 623 and Wilson 299. The British regulars did not have dog tags like Americans with numbers during those years. They simply had the person's name and the number of he came along in the series of Smiths, Wilsons, Finns etc...
I have always wondered of my Finn and Wilson in who these Tommies are, but I treat their gear with the utmost respect as these are troops of empire, my British family and without them the world would never have been as the world now is for the freedom which does exist.
So in these Obama times, I want it known that a child not of empire, remembers both the foe and the ally of the British Soldier. They deserve better than to be cut out of history and ignored while Obama in Europe pretends he knows how to snap a salute to Europeans, but dishonors American Soldiers.
God save the Tommy and God save their Queen who wore their uniform. I remember them all fondly.
agtG
