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Posted on 09/29/2002 7:30:12 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
Edited on 04/12/2004 2:10:07 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
When the Battle of Antietam started, eighth-grade students from Wilson Middle School in Chowchilla were scattered along the rope line, all angling for an unobstructed view of the carnage.
For those within earshot, history teacher Mike Martin was offering a running commentary.
(Excerpt) Read more at fresnobee.com ...
Yes, it did take a long time for the strategy to catch up with the techonology. However, in the above quote, the guy is giving an example of the technology lagging behind the strategy. How is it that most of the world is incapable of logical thought?
Anyway, what the guy is really referring to is the tactics not keeping up with the technology, but he doesn't know the difference between tactics and strategy.
Personally, I think the problem was more the strategy rather than the tactics. Marching in to battle in line formation was necessitated by the fact that there was no other way to keep control of them men. Hence, the need to keep them shoulder to shoulder. This state of affairs prevailed, albeit to a lesser degree, through world war 1.
The great breakthrough in strategy was the smaller independent unit, which neccesitated better trained and more loyal soldiers, led by better trained and more numerous officers.
Nobody will admit it of course, but it was Rommel's book "Infrantry attacks" that really changed everything.
Great. And for added realism, they could also have had a few large piles of recently amputated arms and legs stacked and stinking in the sun outside the hospital tents, courtesy of the regimental surgeons' bone saws. That would have really "entertained" the little dears about the medical realities of the Civil War much, much more then their insipid and mundane tales about bleeding with leaches.
My question is how many pages in their textbook is devoted to Harriet (Moses) Tubman and how many to Lincoln and Washington? I'm not antagonistic about space devoted to Tubman and Douglass, but there is only so much time, space and pages in what is now probably called Social Studies, that the vital lodestones of our nation and democracy get short-changed.
Well, yeah. But, Stainless, you can't expect them to know that. People in California are for the most part Yankees. You have to reeducate them about the truth slowly. This sort of thing is at least a step in the right direction.
It's good to know that we reenactors are at least making some kind of contribution to educating the public, though I had NO idea that anybody in California was doing any sort of job of reenacting. One gets the impression that the reenactors out there in CA are for the most part farbs.
I hope my son follows his ol' man also one day Semper Suo! 12-84
By the way, does this look familiar?
http://www-benning.army.mil/rtb/ranger/photo/10-77.jpg
If they can find a way of doing it without guns, of course. :>)
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