Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

A friend loaned this book to me a few years ago as suggested reading. He let me know tonight that he was looking for some links for someone and had come across the book in PDF format and I think it is something worth posting about it and to be as concise as possible regarding a summation, I quote Amazon's product description.

To capture the lessons their tactical leaders learned in Afghanistan & to explain the change in tactics that followed, the Frunze Military Academy in Russia compiled this book for their command & general staff combat arms officers. The lessons are valuable not just for Russian officers, but for the tactical training of platoon, company & battalion leaders of any nation likely to engage in conflicts involving civil war, guerrilla forces & rough terrain. This is a book dealing with the starkest features of the unforgiving landscape of tactical combat: casualties & death, adaptation, & survival. Provides an intimate look at the boring but brutal business of counterinsurgency. Maps.

However, the review comments are much better and strongly urge you to go and read them and decide then if it is worth having (all 13.2MB's) in, at the very least, your digital library.

Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

WP

Chainsaw Maid

That maid must be a DOOM player.

WP

Oct. 26, 1942: The last man did not fail

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
EDITORS: A LONGER VERSION, AT 2,000 WORDS, ALSO MOVES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED OCT. 22, 2000
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Oct. 26, 1942: The last man did not fail

Oct. 26 falls on a Thursday this year.

Ask the significance of the date, and you're likely to draw some puzzled looks -- five more days to stock up for Halloween?

It's a measure of men like Col. Mitchell Paige that they wouldn't have had it any other way. What he did 58 years ago, he did precisely so his grandchildren could live in a land of peace and plenty.

Whether we've properly safeguarded the freedoms he and his kind fought to leave us as their legacy, may be a discussion better left for another day. Today we struggle to envision -- or, for a few of us, to remember -- how the world must have looked on Oct. 26, 1942. A few thousand lonely American Marines had been put ashore on Guadalcanal, a god-forsaken jungle island which just happened to lie like a speed bump at the end of the long blue-water slot between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago -- the very route the Japanese Navy would have to take to reach Australia.

On Guadalcanal the Marines built an air field. And Japanese commander Isoroku Yamamoto immediately grasped what that meant. No effort would be spared to dislodge these upstart Yanks from a position that could endanger his ships during any future operations to the south. Before long, relentless Japanese counterattacks had driven the U.S. Navy from inshore waters. The Marines were on their own.

World War Two is generally calculated from Hitler's invasion of Poland in 1939. But that's a eurocentric view. The Japanese had been limbering up in Korea and Manchuria as early as 1931, and in China by 1934. By late 1942 they'd devastated every major Pacific military force or stronghold of the great pre-war powers: Britain, Holland, France, and the United States. The bulk of America's proud Pacific fleet lay beached or rusting on the floor of Pearl Harbor.

As Mitchell Paige -- then a platoon sergeant -- and his men set about establishing their last defensive line on a ridge southwest of the tiny American bridgehead at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal on Oct. 25, it's unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide a definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated attackers?

The Japanese Army had not failed in an attempt to seize any major objective since the Russo-Japanese War of 1895. But in preceding days, Marine commander Vandegrift had defied War College doctrine, "dangling" his men in exposed positions to draw Japanese attacks, then springing his traps "with the steel vise of firepower and artillery," in the words of Naval historian David Lippman.

The Japanese regiments had been chewed up, good. Still, American commanders had so little to work with that Paige's men had only four 30-caliber Browning machine guns on the one ridge through which the Japanese opted to launch their final assault against Henderson Field, that fateful night of Oct. 25.

By the time the night was over, "The 29th (Japanese) Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men," historian Lippman reports. "The 16th (Japanese) Regiment's losses are uncounted, but the 164th's burial parties handle 975 Japanese bodies. ... The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low."

Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige's platoon. Every one. As the night wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige's Congressional Medal of Honor adds: "When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machine gun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire."

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings -- the same design which John Moses Browning famously fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition in its first U.S. Army trial -- and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

But that was the second problem. Part of the American line (start ital)had(end ital) fallen to the last Japanese attack. "In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible," reports historian Lippman. "It was decided to try to rush the position."

For the task, Major Conoley gathered together "three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before."

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that "the extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades." In the end, "The element of surprise permitted the small force to clear the crest."

And that's where the unstoppable wave of Japanese conquest finally crested, broke, and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal. Because of a handful of U.S. Marines, one of whom, now 82, lives out a quiet retirement with his wife Marilyn in La Quinta, Calif.

On Oct. 26, 1942.

When the Hasbro Toy Co. called up some years back, asking permission to put the retired colonel's face on some kid's doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren't. That's his mug, on the little Marine they call "GI Joe."

And now you know.

Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and editor of Financial Privacy Report (subscribe by calling Nicholas at 612-895-8757.) His book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available by dialing 1-800-244-2224; or via web site
http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right." -- Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926)

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken

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I always remember and as I look about to see what Americans are today, it is examples such as this that remind me what we once were, still are as a whole, and what will be required quite shortly in what I suspect is the very near future.

WP

Two late posts.

I was swamped this past weekend and firstly, I want to wish a belated public Happy Birthday to CSMK and the other is a reminder of St. Crispin's Day.

Battle of Agincourt, 25 October 1415
Won by the direct ancestor of the citizen rifleman.

If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires:
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England:
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.

He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian:'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispin's day.'
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember'd.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:*
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

WP

Obama Mural Defaced – Now Reads: "Yes We Can… Lose Our Freedom"

Obama Mural Defaced – Now Reads: "Yes We Can… Lose Our Freedom"
Monday, October 19, 2009, 6:00 PM
Jim Hoft

The Houston Obama mural on the side of a Midtown building was defaced over the weekend.

The mural now reads, "Yes we can… Lose our freedom."

At least he Puppet HOPES so.

Someone is awake in Houston.

WP

"And simply the most egregious example of cowardice."

TSA Takes Baby Away From Mother

I stated the title in this post, and I certainly think I was obvious that I considered that woman a coward for not standing up right then and there. Now, we have the TSA QUICKLY finding the video which seemingly shows her to also be a liar which I found at Bruce Schneier's Blog post on this it.

However, none of this negates the fact that so many of our friends and families will just roll over and take it. We are constantly told that we have to do such to defend the HOMELAND which is a filthy, filthy phrase that is used at every turn and told that we must do so to protect our liberties which and my response is just as quite simple as what Fletcher stated to the Senator.

"Don't piss down MY back and tell ME it is raining!"

WP

Alan Maimon go talk to your Assistant Editorial Page Editor

After you read his columns and his books and then rethink the article you penned where you give CREDENCE to the likes of the SPLC lying traitors who attack the Oath Keepers.

Or, does Big, Bad, Meany Vin cause you to pee your pants?

WP

UPDATE

Perhaps he does...

Thank you Willard Oliver.

Navajo Nation mourns Code Talker death

Updated: Thursday, 15 Oct 2009, 8:38 AM EDT

Published : Thursday, 15 Oct 2009, 6:45 AM EDT

PRESCOTT, Ariz. (AP) - Willard Varnell Oliver, a member of the Navajo Code Talkers who confounded the Japanese during World War II by transmitting messages in their native language, died Wednesday. He was 88.

Lawrence Oliver said his father died at the Northern Arizona Veterans Administration Health Care System Hospital in Prescott, Ariz. He had been declining health for the past two years.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. ordered flags on the Navajo Nation to be flown at half-staff from Oct. 15-19 in honor of Oliver, who is at least the fifth Code Talker to die since May.

WP

Cornwallis Surrenders 1781!

Today, in 1781, Cornwallis surrendered and ended our first war of Independence.

Raise a toast to those fine Men, and remember that our Founding Father's left us a great legacy- one that we have squandered.

And in absolutely no order, I prove MY point by pointing to the follow articles:

Rough Road Ahead for New York Eagle Scout as School District Won't Budge on Pocketknife Suspension

Democrats to push in-state college tuition bill for undocumented students

Why Did 1 In 7 Girls Get Pregnant At Robeson High?

And simply the most egregious example of cowardice:

TSA Takes Baby Away From Mother

If you cannot see the connections, I will not connect the dots for you for that is up to you and you alone as I no longer fear for our nation cowards- I no longer care to lift a finger to show them or even to see the cowards stand up and fight. When the time comes, I concern myself with those who already and fundamentally know now what the following means.

"And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor."

--WP

"Epitaph on the Politician Himself"

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

Hilaire Belloc

Mr. Sharkey keeping us well versed and there are many other fine poems worth reading at the link most readers will enjoy.

WP

A consideration: Great Britian, France & Israel

Mr. Sharkey sent a question that is well worth considering.

"Given Great Britain, France and Israel's great concern with Iran's Nuclear program might we have variation on Suez 1956? A joint GB, French and Israeli air and missile strike?"

As I said, something to consider.

WP

End the FED and erase this filthy day in United States History

The Sixteenth Amendment.

Die you Thieving Bastards! DIE!

WP

October 3rd, 1993/Afghanistan 2009

Remember- then remember this:

"On August 29 Task Force Ranger flew into Mogadishu. They were led by General William Garrison and consisted of 440 elite troops from Delta Force. Their mission was to capture Aidid. But, at the same time, in September 1993 the Clinton Administration began a secret plan to negotiate with Aidid. U.S. military commanders within Somalia were not apprised of this. U.S. Defense Secretary Les Aspin denied a request for armored reinforcements made by General Montgomery."

Even though the Kenyan Muslim finally met with General Stanley McChrystal, and spent a twenty-five (25) minute "...session..." that was "...a continuation of ongoing consultations about the way forward in Afghanistan", I am sure that the Kenyan Muslim will let this happen again and I wonder how much dancing there will be on the White House lawn when it does.

WP

Come And Take It!

Yesterday was a great day in Texas History. It's the day the first shots in the successful Texas revolution were fired. In a surprise attack at dawn October 2nd, 1835 outside Gonzales under the "Come and Take It" flag a band of noble Texicans took the Mexican force which had been sent to seize their cannons.

"When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, and for the advancement of whose happiness it was instituted, and so far from being a guarantee for the enjoyment of those inestimable and inalienable rights, becomes an instrument in the hands of evil rulers for their oppression."

Unanimous Declaration of Independence
March 2, 1836
Washington-on-the-Brazo, Texas

Yes, it is time once more and I ask you, are you ready for it?

WP