#Field Reports of Civil War Battles

[deborabuerk-the-write-stuff]

Civil War Battle Reports: First-Hand Accounts from 1862

Actual Battlefield Reports from the Civil War. Note: As the author of this blog, I did not edit these reports. These are actual battle reports filed from the field by officers in the Illinois 100th Infantry Regiment. My objective is to report the facts as they were presented in 1862. And remember, these reports were written from the battle-field. The writers would naturally be in a hurry to…

[nthspecialll]

General Harris: A hero or a coward?

I am a lover of red dead's world building, of the small things that aren't shead light on in the main story but you have to dig a bit to learn of, and my favourite kind of case might be General Quincy T, Harris. Some might know him from his cigeratte card which can be found at the bottom of the Heartland Oil Field's oil well tower, however he is mentioned many more times and that tells an interesting tale.

Harris was a prominent leader on the side of the Confederacy during the civil war and the newspapers speak highly of him, calling him a hero for his work during the battle of Scarlett Meadows, even going so far as giving him a statue in Saint Denis. Generally he is known in Lemoyne by the rich as a war hero, but those around him and the traces left behind by them don't cast a friendly light on him.

For example the statue of him in Saint Denis has been vandalised with the word "Coward" on it.

We can also find a fella by camp fire in the wilderness willing to talk about his father's experiences serving under Harris. The son explains that he was shocked to hear that people saw Harris as a war hero when his father called him "a coward who sold out his men." Apparently there were also rumors that Harris was working for the other side.

In Fort Brennand by Roanoke Ridge yet another clue to Harris's military life can be found through a war report made by Ronald Alger. He explains that the 8th May 1863 Harris attacked the Fort in the middle of night, storming through and executing any surviors, burning them afterwards.

On an even sadder note, Harris broke apart lovers.

The body of a lady named Martha can be found in Martha's Swain in the East Grizzlies and along with her, a letter can be found from her lover Garfield who is serving under Harris. He talks about how Harris is shooting deserters who flee, but that the battle he has set them up for, Scarlett Meadows battle, is one anyone can see they would loose, yet Harris does not care, he wants them to fight. The speculations of his cowardism has even reached higher ups and it is revealed that no one actually trusts him anymore, but they do not flee due to fright of being shot. Garfield is afraid of dying during this battle and sadly he does.

Garfield's body can be found on the battle field, having been stabbed with a bayonet, this was however not done by the enemy but by his own people. Around his neck is a sign with the word "traitor," he most likely tried to desert during the battle but was killed in the process by his own.

Along with Garfield's body, Martha's reply can be found where she tells him to come home and that she will be waiting for him.

[mariacallous]

The war would be over by Christmas. That was what everyone said, when Britain, France, and Germany went to war in August 1914. Maybe that’s why, by the start of December, with no victory in sight, there was a pause in the fighting along parts of the Western Front stretching from Belgium through France. And maybe that’s why, when singing broke out in the trenches on Christmas Eve, soldiers on both sides decided to risk a walk up into no man’s land and even, in one recorded case, a soccer kickabout. Troops on both sides sang “Silent Night” as snow began to fall.

The truce was never formally declared by any power. Although Pope Benedict XV had called for a cease-fire earlier in the month, it had been rejected by all parties. France and Belgium had little appetite for a truce with an invading army. And in a war between global, multiethnic empires, there was little agreement about the timing or the meaning of a Christmas truce for soldiers who were Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Hindu, or Shinto. Even for Eastern Orthodox troops on the Eastern Front, Christmas would be a few weeks later.

Instead, there were spontaneous truces along the front lines. While both sides engaged in singing, many Germans had reportedly decided not to take any action from Dec. 25 to 27. In France, near Laventie, German soldiers started putting up Christmas trees along their trenches on the 23rd and their officers requested a meeting with their British counterparts. In their book, Christmas Truce, Malcolm Brown and Shirley Seaton report that the German officers “proposed a private truce for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day” that the British officers accepted. Similar informal arrangements were made up and down the front lines, with different results in different sectors.

The informal nature of the truce meant that not everyone participated. This is partly why the truce has now attained a mythical quality—many who were on the front did not experience it and so doubted that it had taken place. Even where peace seemed to prevail, officers worried that “the truce will probably go on until someone is foolish enough to let off his rifle.”

Across the Western Front, the Christmas truces came to an end at different points. By the 27th, rain had resumed and the soldiers were once again knee-deep in mud. Along some parts of the line, fighting resumed in January. But one soldier wrote home that part of the front near Ploegsteert in Flanders didn’t really see any action from the Christmas Truce until mid-March. The Battle of Neuve Chapelle in March 1915 definitively shattered the peace. Attempts for an Easter truce in early April were largely ignored.

The Christmas Truce that took place in the first December of World War I has transcended historical curiosity to become a feature of popular memory. Pop songs, TV shows, and even ads have all made reference to the events of December 1914. Why has it adhered in this way? What has it come to symbolize, more than 100 years on?

Regular truces were a typical part of pre-modern warfare. Staged battles left time for clearing the field, burying the dead, and regrouping. Informal encounters between soldiers did not always lead to fighting, and impromptu Christmas truces occurred in the U.S. Civil War and the South African War in 1899. In a way, the Christmas Truce appeals because it seems to point to the last moment of an older form of warfare. Given the horrors of the war to come, it seems poignant in its innocence.

The popularity of the Christmas Truce of 1914—even though it was not repeated for the rest of World War I—was not just as a token of nostalgia, though. It was also responsible for creating something new: the idea that there should be a Christmas truce.

One of the enduring legacies of World War I was the shift from an approach to humanitarian principles and human rights that was “episodic, empathic, and voluntary” to, as one scholar put it, a “permanent, professionalized, and bureaucratic” responsibility of states operating in a transnational network. Alongside these developments in humanitarian organizing, truces moved out of the realm of improvised, informal agreements between soldiers. Instead, they were called for and negotiated by states and transnational peace organizations. And they did so with the Christmas Truce of 1914 as a model.

For instance, in 1965, in the midst of the escalating Vietnam War, the Viet Cong proposed a Christmas cease-fire. Meant to parallel the cease-fire that had accompanied the Vietnamese Lunar New Year celebrations earlier in the year, it was embraced back at home and internationally by the peace movement. The truce was arranged with some skepticism on the ground. Even more so given the previous year’s Christmas Eve bombing of a hotel where many U.S. officers were staying. The truce was agreed to and formally communicated to both sides.

A newspaper report from the cease-fire explicitly echoed the coverage of the 1914 truce. “It was quiet—the guns of war were stilled by a Christmas truce for the first time in almost a year,” the paper reported. “And from the top of the hill, the words of ‘silent Night’ wafted down” as the men rested their rifles on their foxholes and contemplated what the Viet Cong forces made of the song.

At the end of the 48-hour pause, both sides accused each other of violating the cease-fire. Radio Hanoi reported that “in complete disregard for their proclaimed Christmas truce, the U.S. imperialists Sunday sent many flights of aircraft.” The U.S. argued that these were reconnaissance flights, rather than bombing raids, and that the “Communists had launched at lease 60 small attacks.”

What the soldiers of World War I accidentally stumbled on was a new form of propaganda. Christmas cease-fires build morale among the troops, but also more widely. A key feature in the rhetoric of war is convincing your side that the opposing side is not just wrong, but bad. Truces and cease-fires play into this: The side proposing the cease-fire paints itself as humane. Violations of the cease-fire are fodder for arguments that the violators are inhumane.

In foreign policy, the Christmas Truce endured because it turned out to be good for both international and domestic public relations. But as a result of this realization, Christmas cease-fires also became more top-down. While the soldiers were responsible for organizing spontaneous truces along the front lines in 1914, the Christmas truces of the Vietnam War and other more recent conflicts have been ordered by leaders, often in response to international pressure. In Vietnam, despite suspicion among U.S. troops that the Viet Cong “took advantage of the truce” to rearm and resupply its forces in the south, the Christmas truce was often implemented. While this provided respite and a chance for point-scoring in the media, some U.S. soldiers were left asking, “What good would it do?”

And they asked that with good reason. Christmas—and other religious holidays—have been just as likely to mark the beginning of a campaign, taking advantage of the enemy’s hope for some respite. George Washington crossed the Delaware River on Christmas 1776, surprising the British-allied Hessian troops in Trenton. During the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War, the Viet Cong took advantage of the Lunar New Year in 1968 to attack while many of South Vietnam’s soldiers were on holiday leave. And then-U.S. President Richard Nixon broke the expected Christmas Truce tradition in 1972 when the U.S. launched its largest B-52 raid on North Vietnam in the course of the war. The Yom Kippur War in Israel began on the Jewish holiday in 1973. Operation Ramadan in the Iran-Iraq War launched to coincide with the holy month in 1982.

This explains the unease of the leadership in December 1914. In Laventie, one group of British soldiers was about to withdraw from the trenches on the 26th when a German deserter, taking advantage of the truce, crossed to warn them that an attack was imminent. The British soldiers fired artillery at the German trenches and then lay in wait for the attack. But it never came. And the Germans, put on alert by the artillery fire, similarly had spent the night in anticipation of a British attack.

In fact, while the 1914 Christmas Truce saw soldiers sharing tobacco and wine, Christmas puddings and songs at scattered locations along the trenches in Belgium and France, the Germans dropped their first aerial bomb on Britain, at Dover on Christmas Eve. On Christmas Day, the British used seaplanes to attack the Imperial German Navy, stationed in the harbor of Cuxhaven.

The 1914 Christmas Truce in particular has been read in popular culture as a moment when soldiers rejected their officers’ orders and rejected the nationalist propaganda that they had been exposed to, which demonized their opponents. The Christmas Truce appeals to the idea that ordinary people would get along if only they weren’t ordered to fight each other by their governments. In 1914, soldiers ignored officers and took risks to make human connections with people they were supposed to hate.

Christmas truces have subsequently become a regular prop in international diplomacy. In conflicts ranging from the Philippines to Colombia, Sudan to Ukraine, it’s hard not to see the Christmas Truce as having retained its mythical status precisely because of its usefulness as propaganda. Perhaps it would be better to remember the Christmas Truce as one poem concluded in January 1915: “God speed the time when every day/Shall be as Christmas Day!”

[autoacafiles]

Thank you for information on the Time Controller. I would like more data on the ranks of old and new Dalek empires?

In the current Dalek hierarchy, the Dalek Parliament utilised Dalek Squadron Leaders to command a single Assault Cruiser worth of Daleks. These would often be utilised for small scale attacks or operations, though would usually be part of a larger fleet. The Neo-Imperial would utilise Red Paradigm Drones in a similar command capacity. In combat situations, both units often command on the frontline, leading the charge alongside their fellow drones, though boasting a stronger force field and inbuilt enhanced transmitter-receivers.

Above the Assault Leaders/Paradigm drones would be Dalek Commanders. These would normally command small fleets of Daleks, normally consisting of half a dozen assault cruisers and a single command battle cruiser. The purpose of Dalek Commanders was to typically command the invasion and, if it’s resources were of value, occupation of a planet. By the time of the Parliament/Neo-Imperial Civil War, Commanders were specifically bred to replace the older battle computers, even possessing a private Dalek Pathweb with other Dalek Commanders.

The highest rank in the Dalek military hierarchy, Dalek Supremes have been known through history to be feared Dalek leaders, often reporting directly to an Emperor. In the current time, Dalek Supremes command vast warfleets, consisting of dozens battlecruisers and assault cruisers, and commanded from the feared Exterminator-class Dreadnoughts. These fleets could hold vast sectors of space, and would often be designated for direct warfare with other galactic powers. Dalek Supremes rarely ventured out into direct battle, instead commanding from their flagship or Dalek bases, surrounded by host of Dalek Strategists and Analysts as they dished out orders.

The Dalek Parliament, as the name would suggest, is commanded by the Parliament of the Dalek, a body consisting of nearly a hundred supreme Daleks. This would be commanded by the Dalek Prime Minister and the Supreme Overseer, a unique Supreme Dalek intended to fulfil the role of the now deceased original Dalek Supreme of the New Dalek Paradigm. The Parliament was established to avoid the potential poor decision making of a single leader, notably the descent into madness many Emperors have undergone.

The Dalek Parliament also incorporated several special advisors, including the Dalek Time Strategist, who would be charged with monitoring threats to the Dalek timeline, as well as any opportunity for the Dalek to regain temporal technology; the Dalek Prime Strategist, an ancient Dalek from the first generation of Daleks who had developed a keen strategist Mind from watching thousands of Dalek victories and defeats; and the Dalek Litigator, a Dalek strangely concentrated on law. Quite an odd position, given how little concern Daleks have for order outside their own command structure.

Meanwhile, the Neo-Imperial Faction are lead by the Supreme Council, a triumvirate consisting of the three surviving Daleks of the New Dalek Paradigm, saved by the Dalek Chief scientist after the Siege of the Arkheion Device by extracting their mind through the path web and placing them into new bodies. The Council consists of the Chief Strategist, in command of Military Operations; the Chief Scientist, who commanded all scientific and technological endeavours; and the Dalek Eternal, once simply charged with chartering the history of Dalek engagements, it now serves as the leader of the council, having absorbed the remnant memory engrams of the two deceased Paradigm Council members to command more efficiently. However, the Supreme Council is only a temporary position, as the trio seek to create a new Dalek Emperor to once more lead the Daleks.

At their earliest, the Daleks were led by the Dalek Prime, one of the very first Daleks created on Skaro. This Dalek would become the first Dalek Emperor, and after its death, would be inspire several other Emperors, including an alter ego of Davros himself. In the interims where the Daleks had no Emperor, they would often be led by a council of Supreme Daleks.

As well as the various Daleks, there were also a number of other specialised ranks such as Dalek Strategists, Scientists, Analysts and Executioners who would often be assigned a squad under their command. A unique squad consisting of the Dalek Time Commander, Dalek Time Scientist and Dalek Time Executioner commanded a specialised squad in tandem with the Dalek Time Strategist. Other roles included Pilot Daleks, who manned their saucers, gunships and other craft, Reconnaissance Daleks, who scouted out potential target worlds, and Special Weapon Dalek, formidable heavy weapons unit with immensely powerful primary cannon.

However, while the Neo-Imperials were content to stop there, the Dalek Parliament saw fit to experiment with Dalek models, down to their genetics. These produced curious variants including Spider Daleks, Glider Daleks and, perhaps the most formidable breed of Dalek created, the Dalek Berserker. These formidable creatures have been bred to the point of insanity, killing anything and everything in their way, even fellow Daleks. Adding to powerful weapons, they possess the ability reconstitute their casing, often incorporating nearby material into their bodies, including organic material and other Daleks. With such a force even they cannot control, Daleks only use their Berserkers when a planet is worth so little to them that there is only one option - total extermination.

[handeaux]

Why Did Cincinnati Abandon Cricket To Become America’s First Baseball Powerhouse?

You can blame the Civil War for Cincinnati becoming the home of professional baseball. Well into the 1860s, this was a cricket town with “town ball” and “base ball” taking a distant second place to bowlers and wickets.

The curious researcher can still find references to Cincinnati’s early cricketeers today, but most often as footnotes to the history of baseball. However, it is not too much of a stretch to say that baseball would not have prevailed in Cincinnati without the boost it received from the old-time cricket clubs.

Cincinnati’s cricket clubs were formidable opponents, hosting international matches with Canadian teams and participating in home-and-away rivalries with cricket clubs in Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Cincinnati cricketeers were professionals long before the nascent Red Stockings decided to pay their players.

Cricket was most definitely an Englishman’s game and Cincinnati before the Civil War was largely a city of English origins. The Cincinnati Gazette [6 October 1853] summed up the popularity of the “manly old game”:

“Cricket matches are now quite in fashion. We see notice of them in numerous exchanges, East, North and West. Wherever Englishmen are found, there a Cricket Club is found with them.”

Although Cincinnati newspapers carried stories about out-of-town cricket matches as early as the 1820s, local cricketeers didn’t get organized until the 1840s. The Queen City Cricket Club convened in 1843 every Thursday at 2:00 p.m. at “Wade’s Woods” northwest of the intersection of Liberty Street and Central Avenue. By 1845, the Western Cricket Club offered some stiff competition to the Queen City club and the two teams battled it out on grounds located “at the foot of Eighth Street” in the Millcreek bottoms near the Whitewater Canal. It appears that the players were solidly middle-class – salesmen, plumbers, carpenters and shopkeepers – the sorts of folks who could spare a weekly afternoon to indulge in outdoor recreation.

By 1850 the Union Cricket Club, apparently a merger of the Queen City and Western clubs, was the dominant local team. Cricket grounds were hard to come by and the Union Club played variously at the Orphan Asylum lot where Music Hall now stands, on a wood-ringed field off Madison Road in East Walnut Hills, near the canal in Camp Washington and at the back of what later became known as Lincoln Park, location of Union Terminal today. From time to time, reports indicate that adherents of “town ball” or “base ball” also made use of the Union Cricket grounds, but only on days when the cricketeers were otherwise occupied.

Among the Cincinnati cricket stalwarts back in the day was Jonathan Hattersley, born in Sheffield, England, in 1835. Hattersley emigrated to the United States as a young man, arriving in New Orleans and working his way up the rivers to Cincinnati. After a failed start as manager of a weaving operation, he set himself up as the sales agent for a number of British steel refineries. He later joined the firm of Thomas Turner, manufacturer of cutting and slicing equipment. Hattersley married the owner’s daughter, bought out his father-in-law, and set up a saw manufactory with his son, Harry. Before the Cincinnati Fire Department went professional in 1853, Hattersley battled blazes with the Franklins, one of the amateur companies active in the city. He was among the founders of the Western Cricket Club and later became president of the mighty Union Cricket Club. His office in the saw blade factory on Third Street served essentially as the club’s headquarters.

The Union Cricket Club dominated Cincinnati cricket from the 1840s into the 1870s. Its bench was so deep that the club supported two teams – the stars and a farm team both under one roof. While the “first eleven” participated in matches from Chicago to the East Coast, the “second eleven” kept the hometown fans occupied by playing clubs from Northern Kentucky, Lawrenceburg and some smaller Ohio towns. The Union Club even challenged a championship English club then touring the states but couldn’t reconcile schedules. About half the Union Cricket Club players were paid professionals.

It was Jonathan Hattersley who recruited George and Harry Wright to Cincinnati from New York’s stellar St. George Cricket Club. Although the Wright brothers carried the original Cincinnati Red Stockings to baseball glory, they arrived in the Queen City as professional cricket players. Harry Wright was also from Sheffield, born the same year as Jonathan Hattersley. One may assume they had met in childhood. In an interview with the Enquirer [20 August 1875], Harry, by then manager of the Boston Red Stockings, recounted his arrival in Cincinnati:

“I was under contract, and was offered very fine inducements to leave New York. When I arrived in Cincinnati cricket was all the rage, but it finally subsided, and from the club I managed the old Red Stockings of that city was organized. I would like to say in this connection that the uniform I used as the cricketer was adopted by the Base-Ball Club.”

Wright glosses over what specific factors caused the “rage” for cricket to “subside,” but baseball scholars generally point to the Civil War, which brought young men from all over the United States together and gave them a great deal of free time when they weren’t busy shooting each other. Simon Worrall, writing in Smithsonian Magazine [October 2006] describes the wartime conditions that promoted baseball over cricket:

“A year before the Civil War broke out, “Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player,” published in New York City, sold 50,000 copies in the United States. Soldiers from both sides of the conflict carried it, and both North and South embraced the new game. It was faster than cricket, easier to learn and required little in the way of equipment: just a bat (simpler to make than a cricket bat, which requires sophisticated joinery), a ball and four gunnysacks thrown on a patch of ground, and you're ready to play.”

By the time the war ended, Cincinnati seethed with baseball fever. Even Jonathan Hatterley’s son, Harry, took up baseball, catching for the junior-league Pickwicks in Cincinnati. A group of young executives – many of them Civil War veterans – organized the Cincinnati Base Ball Club on 23 July 1866 and quickly allied with the Union Cricket Club, who already had very nice facilities ready for play. According to Harry Ellard’s 1907 “Baseball in Cincinnati”:

“In 1867 the club moved to the grounds of the Union Cricket Club, with which was made a quasi alliance. These grounds were situated at the foot of Richmond Street. They were used in the summer for cricket and baseball and in winter were flooded and used for skating purposes, where great enthusiasm was manifested in this winter sport, with a series of interesting carnivals.”

Harry Wright and his brother George were convinced to give up cricket to lead America’s first professional baseball team. The rest, as they say, is history. Still, Harry, George and the rest of their team did not totally abandon cricket. It is not often reported that the Cincinnati Red Stockings, during their undefeated inaugural season, actually played a cricket match. In San Francisco, on 28 September 1869, the Cincinnati baseball team engaged the “All California Eleven.” According to Ellard:

“For the sake of variety and amusement they played a game of cricket with the California eleven, in which they showed that they could play cricket as well as baseball.”

The former cricketeers now known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings prevailed 118 to 79.

[spaceless-vacuum]

Ok so I read how if Zelda knows all about Link's yandere tendencies and how she's all for it, but what if they're both yanderes for Reader?

I have several small fics in progress that involve these ideas but I think that this is a really fun deal to play around with. Especially if the darling isn't that easy to get to. Having a Hylian darling who can easily be swooped away to share under the safety of the castle is really fun but I favorite ones where the darling isn't so easily taken. If you wanted me to talk about how the two of them interact with each other sharing a darling that’s cool as well but for now here's this.

So to start I love the idea of a darling who's royalty or a noble from a different nation. The dynamics of how the three would have to interact through the lens of civility and politics. God I love it so much. Link being praised for his skills and resting himself as a hero by taking care of problems around the kingdom. Using the praise he gets to curry favour so he can get closer to you.

What? Don't you want the hero to guard them? He's the best you've got might as well use him.

Zelda plays into this. He stays by your side and reports back to her while she gathers information and starts to formulate ideas for how to get you into her kingdom for a change. All they would need to keep you there is to extend a formal invitation, something to keep the two places together. Who could deny such a request made by such an impressive princess after all?

The hard part is figuring out how to keep you there. Messengers could only be stalled for so long and the lie of a troubled road delaying your return can only keep your nobles happy for so long. If you're just a noble from a small house then it's not a big deal. However for people who are higher up and have more sway things like this are a more delicate matter.

Yet her highness isn't just here for pleasantries. If the hero and princess have returned that can only mean one thing and that's possibly facing an inevitable collapse.

I can so see the two of them taking you to Hyrule a before the tragedy (Twilight realm, Ganon, calamity, or whatever else hit) and having you never return home because of it. Maybe they told you that either you died. Why would anyone come to look for you? The worst came to fruition and now that everyones done mourning they've all forgotten about you. Not a single soul is coming to your aid.

This would only work assuming they could keep you safe while the storm hits but I have a feeling that it wouldn't be too difficult for them to plan something out. If the castle isn't safe they can send you anywhere else and have you guarded by the greatest warriors. Just stay away from where the fires are and you'll be fine.

Not to just talk about royalty but imagine if you were part of a nation waging war against Hyrule or at least on their enemies list. Kidnapping is bad but if they're your enemy then it’s just ransom! Them placing a huge price on your head, and sending back a duplicate. They not only get to bleed your nobility's pockets dry as a way to make you repay the damages your country has done but it will also double as a way to keep you even after filling their end of the contract.

Zelda watching you plan and offer any help you can to the war effort. She's both challenged by you and in awe as you hold your ground as people talk over you and chatter about issues that don't currently need your attention. She waits patiently as you throw out excellent ideas only to have them all shut down. Meanwhile she's controlling several heads of states and making sure you're discredited and seen as someone who can't be trusted. She's placing evidence for after you leave to make sure even if you get back to your homeland it'll be in disgrace so there's no nowhere to run.

Taking the field in battle and having Link absolutely decimate you. You think you could handle yourself in a fight against a bunch of common soldiers only to be relentlessly targeted by the best Hyrule has to offer. Watching helplessly as he just won't stop chasing you into swathes of enemy soldiers. He’s rushing across the front lines and enemy fortifications just to make sure he can have his hands on you before you can rush away. Everyone is horrified and shocked as he just sweeps the floor with your people only to find you and drag you to a secluded spot where Zelda can pick him up.

Both of them pick you up and carry you away to Hyrule. Your whole life is flipped upside down. No you can't go outside because they don't need an enemy making plans and trying to sneak away. Yet that doesn't answer the questions as to why you're still here if they don't trust you.

Man this scratches an itch in my brain because of the tension of the reader not wanting to give up their country or homeland but also it's so hard when you're being swooned by these two gorgeous individuals, and by god they know it. They have access to everything they need to make you talk but they never seem to focus on that. Rather the interrogation in a large comfortable room with lots of snacks and refreshments is far too comfortable to hold any real threat. Sure Link is standing in the corner but he seems to be antsy. He looks away and blushes whenever you turn around to focus all your attention onto him so it can't be helped when you notice that it isn't so bad here.

Yet you can't relax because these are the hostile enemy! The bad guys! Yet this tea is really good.

Plus it's hard to ignore how bad it can be since they control everything now. Maybe this is all so they can drive you deeper into misery when they act on their inevitable betrayal. Even if they never tighten the rope too much there's so many complex layers to this idea and I adore it. Sadly the war is messy so they can't tell you anything about it. Which just means you need to lay a price on how far you're willing to go for them to tell you anything; which is a double edged sword because how can you know if any of it’s true!!

Gah the concept is so interesting to me!!!

I think that's it for now but come back at any time and I’ll rant to you more about these two.

[calypso707]

Chapter 1 : Ataman.

Enjoy ! ლ(���_ಠ ლ)

Holigrad, Eastern Slavic Republic – 3:02pm

As time passed and the oligarchs tightened their grip on the fragile Slavic Republic, Svetlana Belikova managed to find her way into government and became the first female president. Her goal was very clear: she wanted world peace, simple as that may sound. She was willing to do anything to achieve it, even to get her hands dirty, hoping that her country would be able to join the European Union and that its value would finally be recognised.

However, in 2006, as the state transitioned to a capitalist state, the first revolution broke out across the country. The gap that had formed between the rich and the poor had become insurmountable. The whole country was in turmoil. Svetlana was the first woman in the country to take on the role of a leader, and it was at this point that she set about calming the conflicts, at first in a diplomatic manner, but eventually using much more aggressive methods. Svetlana used money to achieve her goals and funded the military forces with more advanced training, more troops and better equipment. This worked for a while, the rebels were pushed back quite easily and then a ceasefire was offered in exchange for autonomy for some regions of the country.

In 2010, the state discovered that oil reserves were in rebel lands and fighting resumed when the government tried to seize them by force. A civil war broke out. The insurgents decided to redouble their efforts and continued to fight using bio-organic weapons. How they obtained these weapons was still unknown, so a bloody battle continued to rage in the country. Svetlana saw an opportunity in the use of these weapons, if her government and country could be seen to be actively opposing bioterrorism, she would gain favour with the larger Western powers.

"Come in," said Svetlana.

A woman opened the door to stand beside the president. She was of medium height, dressed in simple black jeans and a leather jacket of the same colour, her long brown hair was braided in her back. The fine features of her face brought out the green of her almond-shaped eyes, topped by long, thick black lashes, and her fleshy, rosy lips were sealed. The special detail of her face was the mole under her left eye. In a word, she was a very attractive woman. An impassive expression was glued to her face as she examined the men present in the room.

"Gentlemen, I present to you Erina Levin, my best and most formidable asset. I helped train her myself. She will be deployed to the field to find and approach Ivan Judanovich," Svetlana explained.

"And what does she intend to do? Charm him?"  Asked a man, a petty smile on his lips, proud of his joke.

"The mediocre man always allows himself to make such reflections when it comes to a woman, how hilarious," said Erina, staring at the man.

The man gritted his teeth, ready to retort, but Svetlana spoke up again: "Irina has proven herself, many times over. She will get results by any means necessary. She will report to me regularly to inform me of the progress of the situation.” she turned to Erina: "You may go."

Erina nodded before leaving the office. She was determined to find the person responsible for this civil war by any means necessary, as the President had so aptly put it. But this was not her only objective, something more personal was driving her.

-

Erina had found refuge in a shop that had been completely abandoned, the windows completely blown out. She was leaning against the damaged wooden counter, talking to another liaison officer who had been in the field for a few days now.

"So you're Svetlana's new protégée, huh?" the man asked, scrutinizing her with his eyes.

"I guess so. What's the situation?" the young woman asked as she adjusted her holster.

"We managed to push the insurgents back with difficulty. Last I heard, Ivan was seen here a few hours ago. He couldn't have gone far, he must be hiding somewhere," said Dimitri, "Ah, also, we managed to intercept a communication, it seems that the United States has sent an agent here"

"Do you know why?" questioned Erina, her arms crossed against her chest.

"I think he's here to do the dirty work and find out how this whole mess started. Svetlana wouldn't want a meddler in her business, so we'd probably be doing her a favour by taking him out. I saw him heading towards the underground car park to the north, he was probably meeting someone”

"Well, thanks for the information."

"Hey, do you want to go for a drink after all this shit, just you and me?" Dimitri winked at her

"Try to stay alive, then we'll see," Erina replied, patting him on the shoulder. She didn't wait for an answer and left the shop through the back door.

The streets were deserted, some buildings had been evacuated, others damaged. She walked quietly over the debris, pulling her balaclava up to her nose to avoid inhaling dust. She passed a truck with a bee on it as she began her descent into the underground, and no sooner had she made her way through than an explosion sounded. A terrible roar echoed around her as debris crumbled several feet away. She hid behind a pillar and leaned to the side to observe the scene, a few metres to the left was the ripped open body of an old man, her gaze then shifted to the smoke cloud. She saw a man desperately trying to stand up, amidst the debris as a creature crawling on four legs came dangerously close to finish him off. Just as the beast was about to deliver the fatal blow, it suddenly stopped. There, in the cloud of dust, Ivan, the leader of the resistance, appeared staggering.

 "We're taking him." he said.

Two other men emerged from the cloud of dust to lift the one on the ground. Irina braced her back against the pillar and blew slightly, still disturbed by what she had just seen. Ivan was able to control these creatures, which made him a more than redoubtable enemy. She had to act intelligently considering the danger of the situation, but this was her only chance, she had to follow them to their HQ.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

You only heard the statement of the loss. You did not see the father fall as Pilar made him see the fascists die in that story she had told by the stream. You knew the father died in some courtyard, or against some wall, or in some field or orchard, or at night, in the lights of a truck, beside some road. You had seen the lights of the car from down the hills and heard the shooting and afterwards you had come down to the road and found the bodies. You did not see the mother shot, nor the sister, nor the brother. You heard about it; you heard the shots; and you saw the bodies.

- Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

The 1937 film The Spanish Earth, was an important visual document of the Spanish Civil War and a rare record of the famous writer's voice. Hemingway went to Spain in the spring of 1937 to report on the war for the North American Newspaper Alliance (NANA), but spent a good deal of time working on the film.

Before leaving America, he and a group of artists that included Archibald MacLeish, John Dos Passos and Lillian Hellman banded together to form Contemporary Historians, Inc., to produce a film to raise awareness and money for the Spanish Republican cause. The group came up with $18,000 in production money - $5,000 of it from Hemingway - and hired the Dutch documentary filmmaker Joris Ivens, a passionate leftist, to make the movie.

MacLeish and Ivens drafted a short outline for the story, with a theme of agrarian reform. It was MacLeish who came up with the title. The film, as they envisioned it, would tell the story of Spain's revolutionary struggle through the experience of a single village. To do that, Ivens planned to stage a number of scenes. When he and cameraman John Fernhout (known as "Ferno") arrived in Spain they decided to focus on the tiny hamlet of Fuentedueña de Tajo, southeast of Madrid, but they soon realised it would be impossible to set up elaborate historical re-enactments in a country at war. They kept the theme of agrarian struggle as a counterpoint to the war.

When Dos Passos arrived in Fuentedueña, he encouraged that approach. "Our Dutch director," wrote Dos Passos, "did agree with me that, instead of making the film purely a blood and guts picture we ought to find something being built for the future amid all the misery and massacre."

That changed when Hemingway arrived.

The friendship between the two writers was disintegrating at the time, so they didn't work together on the project. It was agreed upon in advance that Hemingway would write the commentary for the film, but while in Spain he also helped Ivens and Fernhout navigate the dangers of the war zone. Hemingway was a great help to the film crew. With a flask of whisky and raw onions in his pockets, he lugged equipment and arranged transport. Ivens generally wore battle dress and a black beret. Hemingway went as far as a beret but otherwise stuck to civvies. Although he rarely wore glasses, he almost never took them off in Spain, clear evidence of the seriousness of their task."

In Night Before Battle, a short story based partially on his experience making the movie, Hemingway describes what it's like filming in a place where the glint from your camera lens draws fire from enemy snipers:

“At this time we were working in a shell-smashed house that overlooked the Casa del Campo in Madrid. Below us a battle was being fought. You could see it spread out below you and over the hills, could smell it, could taste the dust of it, and the noise of it was one great slithering sheet of rifle and automatic rifle fire rising and dropping, and in it came the crack of the guns and the bubbly rumbling of the outgoing shells fired from the batteries behind us, the thud of their bursts, and then the rolling yellow clouds of dust. But it was just too far to film well. We had tried working closer but they kept sniping at the camera and you could not work.”

The big camera was the most expensive thing we had and if it was smashed we were through. We were making the film on almost nothing and all the money was in the cans of film and the cameras. We could not afford to waste film and you had to be awfully careful of the cameras.

The day before we had been sniped out of a good place to film from and I had to crawl back holding the small camera to my belly, trying to keep my head lower than my shoulders, hitching along on my elbows, the bullets whocking into the brick wall over my back and twice spurting dirt over me.

The Western front at Casa de Campo on the outskirts of Madrid was just a few minutes' walk from the Florida Hotel, where the filmmakers were staying. Any doubt about whether the passage from "Night Before Battle" is autobiographical are dispelled in the following excerpt from one of Hemingway's NANA dispatches, quoted by Schoots:

“Just as we were congratulating ourselves on having such a splendid observation post and the non-existent danger, a bullet smacked against a corner of brick wall beside Ivens's head. Thinking it was a stray, we moved over a little and, as I watched the action with glasses, shading them carefully, another came by my head. We changed our position to a spot where it was not so good observing and were shot at twice more. Joris thought Ferno had left his camera at our first post, and as I went back for it a bullet whacked into the wall above. I crawled back on my hands and knees, and another bullet came by as I crossed the exposed corner. We decided to set up the big telephoto camera. Ferno had gone back to find a healthier situation and chose the third floor of a ruined house where, in the shade of a balcony and with the camera camouflaged with old clothes we found in the house, we worked all afternoon and watched the battle.”

In May, Ivens returned to New York to oversee the work of editor Helen van Dongen. Hemingway soon followed. When Ivens asked Hemingway to clarify the theme of the picture, according to Kenneth Lynn in his erudite biography Hemingway (1987), the writer supplied three sentences: "We gained the right to cultivate our land by democratic elections. Now the military cliques and absentee landlords attack to take our land from us again. But we fight for the right to irrigate and cultivate this Spanish Earth which the nobles kept idle for their own amusement."

There were tense moments when Hemingway handed in his first draft of the commentary. Ivens felt it was too verbose, and asked him to make some cuts. Hemingway didn't like being told to shorten his work, but he eventually agreed. There was more tension when MacLeish asked Orson Welles to deliver the narration. Even though Hemingway had already shortened it, Welles thought the commentary was too long, and he told him so.

"Arriving at the studio," Welles said in a 1964 interview with Cahiers du Cinema, "I came upon Hemingway, who was in the process of drinking a bottle of whiskey; I had been handed a set of lines that were too long, dull, had nothing to do with his style, which is always so concise and so economical. There were lines as pompous and complicated as this: 'Here are the faces of men who are close to death,' and this was to be read at a moment when one saw faces on the screen that were so much more eloquent. I said to him, 'Mr. Hemingway, it would be better if one saw the faces all alone, without commentary.'"

Hemingway growled at him in the dark studio, according to Welles, and said, "You effeminate boys of the theatre, what do you know about real war?" Welles continues the story:

“Well, taking the bull by the horns, I began to make effeminate gestures and I said to him, "Mister Hemingway, how strong you are and how big you are!" That enraged him and he picked up a chair; I picked up another and, right there, in front of the images of the Spanish Civil War, as they marched across the screen, we had a terrible scuffle. It was something marvelous: two guys like us in front of these images representing people in the act of struggling and dying...We ended up toasting each other over a bottle of whisky.”

Skeptics have questioned the truthfulness of Welles's account, suggesting that he may have been trying to compensate for his own moment of humiliation, which followed soon after the recording session. MacLeish and Ivens liked Welles's performance, but Hellman and several other members of the Contemporary Historians group didn't. They thought Welles had been too theatrical, and suggested Hemingway read the narration himself.

The director eventually agreed. "When Ivens informed Welles that his own recording was going to be junked," writes Lynn, "Welles was miffed, especially since he had waived his right to a fee." 

On July 8, 1937, Ivens, Hemingway and Martha Gellhorn, a journalist who had been with Hemingway in Spain and who would later become his wife, traveled to the White House to show the film to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The visit had been arranged by Gellhorn, who was a friend of first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

A few days later Hemingway and Ivens traveled to Los Angeles to show the film to Hollywood moguls and movie stars. F. Scott Fitzgerald attended the screening, and the party afterward. It was the last time Hemingway and Fitzgerald saw each other. When Hemingway was back on the East Coast, Fitzgerald sent him a telegram: "THE PICTURE WAS BEYOND PRAISE AND SO WAS YOUR ATTITUDE."

The press reviews for The Spanish Earth tended to be a bit more equivocal. Some felt the film descended into out-and-out propaganda, to which Ivens later replied, "on issues of life and death, democracy or fascism, the true artist cannot be objective." But the writer of a 1938 article in Time magazine saw the film in a positive light:

“Not since the silent French film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, has such dramatic use been made of the human face. As face after face looks out from the screen the picture becomes a sort of portfolio of portraits of the human soul in the presence of disaster and distress. There are the earnest faces of speakers at meetings and in the village talking war, exhorting the defense. There are faces of old women moving from their homes in Madrid for safety's sake, staring at a bleak, uncertain future, faces in terror after a bombing, faces of men going into battle and the faces of men who will never return from battle, faces full of grief and determination and fear.”

In the end, with its mix of documentary and re-constructed elements, The Spanish Earth is at once a less elaborate but more complex film than that first conceived by Ivens. One critic aptly describes it as "an improvised hybrid of many filmic modes." This gives the film a curiously contemporary feel, but what really marks it out as a landmark of documentary filmmaking is its directness, its sense of immediacy, and its refusal to have any truck with spurious notions of "objectivity."

Ivens himself states that "My unit had really become part of the fighting forces," and again, "We never forgot that we were in a hurry. Our job was not to make the best of all films, but to make a good film for exhibition in the United States, in order to collect money to send ambulances to Spain. When we started shooting we didn't always wait for the best conditions to get the best shot. We just tried to get good, useful shots."

When asked why he hadn't tried to be more "objective" Ivens retorted that "a documentary film maker has to have an opinion on such vital issues as fascism or anti-fascism - he has to have feelings about these issues, if his work is to have any dramatic, emotional or art value," adding that "after informing and moving audiences, a militant documentary film should agitate - mobilise them to become active in connection with the problems shown in the film." Ivens would later justify his beliefs by stating, "on issues of life and death, democracy or fascism, the true artist cannot be objective."

Not that The Spanish Earth is in any sense strident - indeed, quite the reverse. Ivens understood fully the power of restraint and suggestion, quoting approvingly, à propos his film, John Steinbeck's observation of the London blitz that "In all of the little stories it is the ordinary, the commonplace thing or incident against the background of the bombing that leaves the indelible picture."

Ivens's visual restraint is matched by that of the commentary. The original commentary by Orson Welles did feel out of place and I would agree with Ivens sentiment that, "There was something in the quality of Welles’ voice that separated it from the film, from Spain, from the actuality of the film." Hemingway's manner of speaking, however, perfectly matched the pared-down quality of his writing. Ivens saw the function of the commentary as being "to provide sharp little guiding arrows to the key points of the film" and as serving as "a base on which the spectator was stimulated to form his own conclusions." He described Hemingway's mode of delivery as sounding like that of "a sensitive reporter who has been on the spot and wants to tell you about it. The lack of a professional commentator's smoothness helped you to believe intensely in the experiences on the screen."

Overall the film's avoidance of overt propagandising reflected not only Ivens' conception of the documentary aesthetic - it was also hoped that this might help The Spanish Earth achieve a wide theatrical release. However, as in Britain, there was thought to be no cinema audience for documentary films, and the plan failed. Nor did it help the film to escape the watchful eye of the British Board of Film Censors (who had previously attacked Ivens' New Earth) , who insisted that all references to Italian and German intervention were cut from the commentary, those countries being regarded as "friendly powers" at the time.

Photo (above): Ernest Hemingway and director Joris Ivens During the shooting of "The Spanish Earth" (1937).

[back-and-totheleft]

"Moments that stay with you forever"

The process of seeing [the war] as something else, how long did that take? What was that process?

It takes time. First of all, you come back numb. You're alienated. You're not really cogent in that way we're talking [about] now. I mean, I was angry, and being in civilian life is very different than the military; especially in a prospering civilian life in New York where people are making money. Big money was being made for the first time. I met a woman, my first wife, Najwa, who was working at the Moroccan mission to the United Nations. She was Lebanese and she helped me come back to civilization, in a sense. We'd be in the streets and I'd hear a backfire of a car and I'd be on the sidewalk. That kind of nervousness. 

You're very candid about the aspect of war that's invigorating. You write at one point: "Soldiers might say it was hell, but I saw it as divine. The closest man would ever come to the Holy Spirit was to witness and survive this great destructive energy."

Yeah. I think many people who are in combat will tell you, late in their life, that they will always remember those moments, you know. Moments that stay with you forever. This night I'm describing, that night, was my experience of an all night human wave attack, which is very rare. You don't see those very much in Vietnam because the enemy is not interested in human wave attacks. There's too many casualties. But for some reason, because they were on the trail down from Cambodia into Saigon and they were planning for the Tet Offensive at the end of January (and this was the night of January 1, '68) they came at us, full out, from the moment dark fell till dawn and it didn't end - and that battle was amazing. The power, the force of that battle was like a hurricane, being in a hurricane. Of course, the irony of the whole thing is that this is the largest battle I'm in, but I don't see one enemy. I don't fire my rifle. All I do is get blown up by my own side. 

I'm concussed. I'm thrown in the air. I get up, no blood, and I go back into the field. I report to my line, whatever it was called, my perimeter. Didn't see one of them [the enemy] the whole night. People were scared. These guys, the NVA [North Vietnamese Army] were inside the perimeter at times. It was very close fighting, but I was spared. I compared it to Greek mythology, where Pallas Athena comes down and cloaks an Odysseus type in her mist and takes him away from the battle; lifts him off, away from the dangers. There was a godlike intervention. Strange night. And that's what I was talking about. Powerful night. It stayed with me for the rest of my life. Still is with me. 

After that, it got dirtier. I was wounded twice and I got involved in a lot of dirty combat. One time, I saw an enemy soldier about ten feet away, behind an anthill. I was behind some kind of protection, but I had an M79, which is a different kind of weapon than an M16. It needs fifty to sixty yards to explode. You can't explode it at ten feet. Those kinds of incidents were crazy. 

-Louis Theroux interviews Oliver Stone, Grounded with Louis Theroux, Jan 4 2021

[geeknik]

31 Days of Halloween: Day 13, The Haunted Gettysburg Battlefield

On Day 13 of our 31 days of Halloween journey, we find ourselves at the Gettysburg Battlefield in Pennsylvania, a place steeped in history and ghostly legends. Known as one of the most haunted locations in America, the battlefield retains echoes of the tragic events that unfolded during the Civil War. Prepare to delve into the haunting tales and paranormal encounters that haunt this hallowed ground.

Historical Background

The Battle of Gettysburg, fought from July 1-3, 1863, was a turning point in the American Civil War. Thousands of soldiers lost their lives in the battle, resulting in a massive loss of life and untold suffering. Today, the battlefield serves as a memorial to those who fought and died, and a reminder of America's tumultuous past.

Haunting Tales

The ghostly legends associated with the Gettysburg Battlefield have captured the imaginations of many visitors and paranormal enthusiasts. Here are a few notable haunting tales associated with this historic site:

Devil's Den: This rocky area witnessed intense fighting during the battle. Visitors have reported seeing apparitions of soldiers, hearing phantom gunshots and cries of agony, and feeling an oppressive atmosphere in this haunted hotspot.

The Wheatfield: Considered one of the bloodiest areas during the battle, the Wheatfield is believed to be haunted by the restless spirits of soldiers. Visitors have experienced unexplained cold spots, strange smells, and even sightings of ghostly figures among the tall grass.

The Triangular Field: This area served as a staging ground for Confederate troops during Pickett's Charge. Visitors have reported seeing spectral formations of marching soldiers, hearing phantom drumming, and feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness in this haunted field.

Exploring the Gettysburg Battlefield

Visitors to the Gettysburg Battlefield can embark on guided tours that highlight significant battle sites and share chilling tales of the paranormal. From the famous Devil's Den to Little Round Top and Cemetery Hill, these tours offer a glimpse into the tragic history and ghostly phenomena that permeate the battlefield.

For those seeking a more immersive experience, overnight ghost hunts and paranormal investigations are available. Armed with ghost-hunting equipment, participants can explore the haunted areas of the battlefield, potentially encountering the spirits of soldiers and experiencing unexplained phenomena firsthand.

Conclusion

Day 13 brings us to the hallowed grounds of the haunted Gettysburg Battlefield. As you venture through this historic site, keep an open mind and listen carefully for echoes of the past. The ghostly manifestations and paranormal encounters that permeate these battlefields serve as a potent reminder of the sacrifices made during the Civil War.

Whether you visit during the Halloween season or any time of the year, the Gettysburg Battlefield offers a unique opportunity to connect with history and the ethereal realm. Explore, reflect, and honor the spirits of the fallen as you navigate the haunted tales and lingering spirits of this storied battleground.

[warningsine]

Violent wildfires, fuelled by climate change, have killed scores of people across the Mediterranean. 

Deaths have been reported in Greece, where a plane dropping water on the blaze crashed, killing both pilots. 

Yet, the heaviest death toll so far is in Algeria where there have been 34 victims, including 10 soldiers surrounded by flames during an evacuation in the coastal province of Bejaia, east of Algiers.

Two people died in southern Italy on Tuesday. 

Scorching temperatures have blasted several countries across the Med for days now, creating tinder box conditions. 

Extreme weather events such as these are linked to human-induced climate change. Scientists warn they will only grow more frequent, severe and longer unless people and governments drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. 

Algeria

In Algeria, firefighters continued to tackle 11 fires ravaging the northeast, after managing to put out around 80% of the deadly blazes that killed at least 34 people over the last three days.

Local media images show fields and bushes on fire, charred cars and shops reduced to ashes.

In Toudja, a badly hard-hit area in the northeast, the fire was almost entirely stopped, despite a few persistent outbreaks. Sixteen people died here. 

Firefighting planes dropped water for two days on this wooded area, located on the shores of the Mediterranean.

Fires have also raged in neighbouring Tunisia, where 300 people had to be evacuated from the coastal village of Melloula.

Greece

Greece has been particularly hard hit, with authorities evacuating more than 20,000 people in recent days from homes and resorts on the holiday island of Rhodes.

Two Greek airforce pilots - aged 27 and 34 - died yesterday when their water-dropping plane, crashed on the island of Evia, east of Athens. 

Savage forest fires have ravaged the country for ten days, with firefighting teams from around Europe scrambling to help. 

On Tuesday, temperatures were pushed back into the 40s, with strong winds whipping by the flames. 

With apocalyptic images of decimated forests continuing to shock Greece, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis warned the struggle against wildfires would remain "difficult".

In reference to the dead pilots, he said: “They offered their lives to save lives.” 

“They proved how hazardous their daily missions in extinguishing fires are ... In their memory, we continue the war against the destructive forces of nature.”

Successive evacuations of locals and holidaymakers have been ordered on Corfu, Evia and Rhodes. Tourist flights have now largely been cancelled, though some providers were still running flights in affected areas. 

Italy

While storms batter the north, parts of southern Italy are going up in flames.

Firefighters on Tuesday battled wildfires in Sicily, one of which got so close to Palermo airport it was shut down for several hours on Tuesday morning.

The tarmac melted and authorities urged people not to come to the airport for “security reasons.”

At least 1,500 people have so far been evacuated from the Palermo area. The national fire brigade, Vigili del Fuoco (VdF), said the situation was “critical” in five areas around the city, where several houses had been affected by the fires.

Sicily's civil protection agency reported temperatures of up to 47.6 degrees Celsius in Catania on Monday.

The bodies of two septuagenarians were found charred in a house engulfed in flames and an 88-year-old woman died near Palermo, media reported on Tuesday evening.

The president of the Sicilian region, Renato Schifani, has indicated that he wants to ask the government, which meets on Wednesday, to declare a state of emergency on the Mediterranean island.

In Italy's northern Lombardy region, a powerful storm accompanied by heavy hail caused flooding and power outages and was blamed for the death of a 16-year-old girl at a scouts' camp.

France

Firefighters fought in overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday a virulent fire threatening three villages in Haute-Corse, south Corsica. 

The fires were close to three villages, Corbara, Pigna and Santa-Reparata-Di-Balagna. 

Parts of two hamlets have "many sensitive points, dwellings, religious points", according to the firefighters.

Some 130 hectares of vegetation have already been ravaged by the flames according to a latest assessment.

Croatia

Flames came within 12 km of Croatia's medieval town Dubrovnik late on Tuesday.

Dubrovnik was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1979 recognition of its outstanding medieval architecture and fortified old town.

Turkey

In Turkey, authorities evacuated a dozen homes and a hospital as a precaution on Tuesday. 

Wildfires are raging through a rugged forest area near the Mediterranean resort of Kemer, in Antalya province.

Another wildfire in the western province of Manisa was brought under control a day after it burnt at least 14 homes.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[Boston Globe]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

February 1, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

On February 1, 1862, in the early days of the Civil War, the Atlantic Monthly published Julia Ward Howe’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” summing up the cause of freedom for which the United States troops would soon be fighting. “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord,” it began.

“He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:

His truth is marching on.”

Howe had written the poem on a visit to Washington with her husband. Approaching the city, she had reflected sadly that there was little she could do for the United States. She couldn’t send her menfolk: her husband was too old to fight, her sons too young. And with a toddler, she didn’t even have enough time to volunteer to pack stores for the field hospitals. “I thought of the women of my acquaintance whose sons or husbands were fighting our great battle; the women themselves serving in the hospitals, or busying themselves with the work of the Sanitary Commission,” and felt there was nothing she could give to the cause.

One day she and her husband toured the troops surrounding the city and, mingling with troops on the way home, sang a popular song: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave; his soul is marching on.” A friend challenged Howe to write more uplifting words for the marching song.

That night, Howe slept soundly. She woke before dawn and, lying in bed, began thinking about the tune she had heard the soldiers singing the day before. She recalled: “[A]s I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind.... With a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen... I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper.”

Howe's hymn captured the tension of Washington, D.C., during the war as soldiers protected the government from invasion, strung in camps around the city to keep invaders from the U.S. Capitol.

“I have seen Him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps,

They have builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;

I can read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps:

His day is marching on.”

Howe’s Battle Hymn of the Republic went on define the Civil War as a holy war for human freedom:

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,

With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.

As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,

While God is marching on.”

The Battle Hymn became the anthem of the Union during the Civil War, and exactly three years after it appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, on February 1, 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Joint Resolution of Congress passing the Thirteenth Amendment and sending it off to the states for ratification. The amendment provided that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." It gave Congress power to enforce that amendment. This was the first amendment that gave power to the federal government rather than taking it away. Three quarters of the states had ratified the Thirteenth Amendment by December 6, 1865.

When the measure had passed the House the day before, the lawmakers and spectators had gone wild. “The members on the floor huzzaed in chorus with deafening and equally emphatic cheers of the throng in the galleries,” the New York Times reported. “The ladies in the dense assemblage waved their handkerchiefs, and again and again the applause was repeated, intermingled with clapping of hands and exclamations of ‘Hurrah for freedom,’ ‘Glory enough for one day,’ &c. The audience were wildly excited, and the friends of the measure were jubilant.” Indiana congressman George Julian later recalled, “It seemed to me I had been born into a new life, and that the world was overflowing with beauty and joy, while I was inexpressibly thankful for the privilege of recording my name on so glorious a page of the nation’s history.”

But the hopes of that moment had crumbled within a decade. Almost a century later, on February 1, 1960, David Richmond, Franklin McCain, Ezell A. Blair Jr., and Joseph McNeil set out to bring them back to life when they sat down on stools at the F.W. Woolworth Company department store lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. The men were first-year students at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University who wanted to find a way to combat the segregation under which Black Americans had lived since the 1880s.

Woolworth’s would sell products to Black students but would not serve them food. So the men forced the issue by sitting down and ordering coffee and doughnuts. They sat quietly as the white waitress refused to serve them and the store manager ignored them. They came back the next day with a larger group. This time, television cameras covered the story. By February 3 there were 60 men and women sitting. By February 5 there were 50 white male counterprotesters.

By March the sit-in movement had spread across the South, to bus routes, museums, art galleries, and swimming pools. In July, after profits had dropped dramatically, the store manager of the Greensboro Woolworth’s asked four Black employees to put on street clothes and order food at the counter. They did, and they were served. Desegregation in public spaces had begun.

Exactly 63 years later, on February 1, 2023, Tyre Nichols’s family said laid their 29-year-old son to rest in Memphis, Tennessee. He was so severely beaten by police officers on January 7, allegedly for a traffic violation, that he died three days later.

Also today, the College Board released the official curriculum for a new Advanced Placement course in African American Studies. In January, right-wing Florida governor Ron DeSantis complained that the draft course was “indoctrination” and “lacks educational value and is contrary to Florida law,” and said he would ban it. The version released today has been stripped of information about Black feminism, the queer experience, incarceration, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Mine eyes have seen the glory.

Rest in power, Mr. Nichols.

—

Notes:

Julia Ward Howe, Reminiscences, 1819-1899, pp. 273-276, at google books: https://books.google.com/books?id=n1g4AAAAYAAJ&pg=PA244&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4#v=onepage&q&f=false

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/01/tyre-nichols-funeral/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/us/college-board-advanced-placement-african-american-studies.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2023/01/23/desantis-defends-florida-rejecting-ap-african-american-studies-course/

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[magnetarbeam]

A few random chains of thought just came together about the question of how Ship found the Lost Tribe.

First thing is this passage in Abyss:

"If Ship was what the records aboard the Omen indicated he was, he was a servant of the ancient Sith. Everything he had done since finding the Tribe - even the fact that he had researched the Battle of Kirrek and gone to the trouble of tracking them down - certainly supported that assertion."

This could, potentially, be read as meaning that the Omen came directly from the Battle of Kirrek. It is also reasonable - more tempting, to my tastes - to interpret the way it's phrased as meaning that researching the Battle of Kirrek and tracking down the Tribe were separate actions.

The way that the incident at Phaegon III that resulted in the Omen's crash is shown to us in Crosscurrent makes it kind of difficult to believe any logs could have made it out at the time. There were three hyperspace-capable ships there: Omen, its sister ship Harbinger, and the single Jedi Infiltrator (some kind of two-person stealth fighter) that delivered Relin aboard Harbinger. In the perspectives aboard Harbinger, nobody even proposes sending word of the engagement to forces elsewhere. The Infiltrator was destroyed near the end of the battle, and Drev spent about the whole time too busy dodging lasers to report the situation himself.

We don't get a whole lot of detail about events aboard Omen, but they don't even start to realize something's wrong until they pick up weird readings from Harbinger's hyperdrive, less than twenty seconds before the synchronized jump, and Captain Korsin seemingly doesn't have time to move his ship when Harbinger ends up on a collision course due to Drev's kamikaze impact.

That collision, for those of you who haven't read this book, is what knocks Omen off course from its jump, and ultimately sends it to Kesh.

Just knowing about the Battle of Kirrek would not allow anyone to find Kesh. The two dreadnoughts were detached from the primary Sith fleet prior to the battle, and it's very unlikely that any reports of their fate made it out at the time. They weren't even attempting to jump to Kirrek. They wanted to go to Primus Goluud.

However, a whole plot thread in Crosscurrent is that Relin's sabotage meant the Harbinger didn't fully enter the hyperspace tunnel, and instead accelerated to near lightspeed in realspace, in the process experiencing relativistic effects that mean that in a couple minutes aboard the ship, thousands of years passed outside. It comes out of its jump in 41.5 ABY, shortly after the end of the Second Galactic Civil War and in time for Jaden Korr to encounter it while in the process of coping with their experiences in that war.

Also in time for everyone's favorite Sith meditation sphere to have defied the One Sith and gone looking for other Sith.

At that point, the Harbinger is still carrying a shitload of lignan, and I think maybe Ship sensed that in the Force. Harbinger and its diabolical cargo are pretty thoroughly destroyed by the end of the book, but my tentative idea is that there was some kind of log, like the equivalent of a black-box recorder, that still held the sensor data from the incident at Phaegon III. I propose that this was found by Ship, using his knowledge of the time's warships to pick out that particular piece of metal out of the debris field, and he used the data to generate an outbound vector on the Omen's jump, and by following that trail he found Kesh.

I think way too much about this weird little book, the one that did time travel in Star Wars but in a way that makes sense.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 3.9

141 BC – Liu Che, posthumously known as Emperor Wu of Han, assumes the throne over the Han dynasty of China. 1009 – First known mention of Lithuania, in the annals of the monastery of Quedlinburg. 1226 – Khwarazmian sultan Jalal ad-Din conquers the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. 1230 – Bulgarian Tsar Ivan Asen II defeats Theodore of Epirus in the Battle of Klokotnitsa. 1500 – The fleet of Pedro Álvares Cabral leaves Lisbon for the Indies. The fleet will discover Brazil which lies within boundaries granted to Portugal in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494. 1701 – Safavid troops retreat from Basra, ending a three-year occupation. 1765 – After a campaign by the writer Voltaire, judges in Paris posthumously exonerate Jean Calas of murdering his son. Calas had been tortured and executed in 1762 on the charge, though his son may have actually died by suicide. 1776 – The Wealth of Nations by Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith is published. 1796 – Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais. 1811 – Paraguayan forces defeat Manuel Belgrano at the Battle of Tacuarí. 1815 – Francis Ronalds describes the first battery-operated clock in the Philosophical Magazine. 1841 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules in the United States v. The Amistad case that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them had been taken into slavery illegally. 1842 – Giuseppe Verdi's third opera, Nabucco, receives its première performance in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera composers. 1842 – The first documented discovery of gold in California occurs at Rancho San Francisco, six years before the California Gold Rush. 1847 – Mexican–American War: The first large-scale amphibious assault in U.S. history is launched in the Siege of Veracruz. 1862 – American Civil War: USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (rebuilt from the engines and lower hull of the USS Merrimack) fight to a draw in the Battle of Hampton Roads, the first battle between two ironclad warships. 1908 – Inter Milan was founded on Football Club Internazionale, following a schism from A.C. Milan. 1916 – Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa leads nearly 500 Mexican raiders in an attack against the border town of Columbus, New Mexico. 1933 – Great Depression: President Franklin D. Roosevelt submits the Emergency Banking Act to Congress, the first of his New Deal policies. 1942 – World War II: Dutch East Indies unconditionally surrendered to the Japanese forces in Kalijati, Subang, West Java, and the Japanese completed their Dutch East Indies campaign. 1944 – World War II: Soviet Army planes attack Tallinn, Estonia. 1945 – World War II: A coup d'état by Japanese forces in French Indochina removes the French from power. 1945 – World War II: Allied forces carry out firebombing over Tokyo, destroying most of the capital and killing over 100,000 civilians. 1946 – Bolton Wanderers stadium disaster at Burnden Park, Bolton, England, kills 33 and injures hundreds more. 1954 – McCarthyism: CBS television broadcasts the See It Now episode, "A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy", produced by Fred Friendly. 1956 – Soviet forces suppress mass demonstrations in the Georgian SSR, reacting to Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. 1957 – The 8.6 Mw  Andreanof Islands earthquake shakes the Aleutian Islands, causing over $5 million in damage from ground movement and a destructive tsunami. 1959 – The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York. 1960 – Dr. Belding Hibbard Scribner implants for the first time a shunt he invented into a patient, which allows the patient to receive hemodialysis on a regular basis. 1961 – Sputnik 9 successfully launches, carrying a dog and a human dummy, and demonstrating that the Soviet Union was ready to begin human spaceflight. 1967 – Trans World Airlines Flight 553 crashes in a field in Concord Township, Ohio following a mid-air collision with a Beechcraft Baron, killing 26 people. 1974 – The Mars 7 Flyby bus releases the descent module too early, missing Mars. 1976 – Forty-two people die in the Cavalese cable car disaster, the worst cable-car accident to date. 1977 – The Hanafi Siege: In a 39-hour standoff, armed Hanafi Muslims seize three Washington, D.C., buildings. 1978 – President Soeharto inaugurated Jagorawi Toll Road, the first toll highway in Indonesia, connecting Jakarta, Bogor and Ciawi, West Java. 1987 – Chrysler announces its acquisition of American Motors Corporation 1997 – Comet Hale–Bopp: Observers in China, Mongolia and eastern Siberia are treated to a rare double feature as an eclipse permits Hale-Bopp to be seen during the day. As the comet made its closest approach to Earth on March 26, all 39 active members of the Heaven's Gate cult committed ritual mass suicide over a period of three days, in the belief that their spirits would be teleported into an alien spacecraft flying inside the comet's tail. 1997 – The Notorious B.I.G. is murdered in Los Angeles after attending the Soul Train Music Awards. He is gunned down leaving an after party at the Petersen Automotive Museum. His murder remains unsolved. 2011 – Space Shuttle Discovery makes its final landing after 39 flights. 2012 – A truce between the Salvadoran government and gangs in the country goes into effect when 30 gang leaders are transferred to lower security prisons.

[ledenews]

Civil War Tales - Philippi, the First Land Battle

(Publisher’s Note: This is the first of a series of historical accounts composed by local educator and historian Pete Chacalos. Pete, a former Ohio County Board of Education member and a retired science teacher who spent more than three decades in classrooms, will offer LEDE readers tales about how the Civil War impacted areas that would become the 35th state in the Union, West Virginia, on June 20th, 1863.) Fort Sumter fell on April 14, 1861. The next day, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 state militiamen to put down the rebellion. Thousands in the Midwest immediately volunteered. In Ohio, Governor William Dennison lobbied George McClellan to assume command of Ohio’s militia forces. McClellan accepted on April 23, 1861. Governor Dennison sent McClellan to Columbus to evaluate the state of Ohio’s arsenal. McClellan, accompanied by Jacob Cox, found crates of rusted muskets, mildewed harnesses, and some inoperable cannons. This did not deter him from creating an exceptional force of volunteers. McClellan’s efforts were noticed in Washington. The buildup of forces in the Midwest following Sumter's fall was so swift it outpaced the existing structure. This lack of organization was evident when, on May 3, 1861, the Union War Department issued General Order Number 14 to consolidate regiments from Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois into the Department of the Ohio. Later, regiments from Missouri would be added. On this day, McClellan rejoined the Army, was promoted to Major General, and assigned to command the Department of the Ohio, headquartered in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, Robert E. Lee had cast his lot with the Confederacy. He was appointed to command military forces in Virginia. On May 4, 1861, he sent Colonel George Porterfield to Grafton to organize troops that were being raised there. Grafton was a key strategic point in western Virginia, as it was at the junction of the Parkersburg-Grafton Railroad and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Lee, however, did not foresee the amount of resentment that the people west of the Alleghenies had for the so-called elitist populace of the Tidewater region. The few men who rallied to the Confederate cause had little or no training. Ammunition was lacking, and some of the few companies raised in nearby towns didn’t have weapons.   As Porterfield would later say in his report:  “This force is not only deficient in drill but ignorant, both officers and men, of the most ordinary duties of the soldier. With efficient drill officers, they might be made effective, but I have to complain that the field officers sent to command these men are of no assistance to me and are, for the most part, as ignorant of their duties as the company officers, and they as ignorant as the men.” Col. Benjamin Franklin Kelley Porterfield received intelligence that Federal troops were approaching from Wheeling. Realizing that he could not hold Grafton (a pro-Union town) with the 800 troops at his disposal, Porterfield withdrew 25 miles south to Philippi (a secessionist town). As he retreated, Porterfield burned a few bridges to slow any pursuit from the federals. On Sunday, May 26, General McClelland received word that bridges on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in western Virginia had been burned the previous night. The B&O was a vital link between Washington and the Midwest.  It provided an easy path through the Appalachian Mountains but passed through Confederate “territory” in three places.  McClellan launched an invasion into Virginia to protect against the B&O and the loyal citizens in western Virginia.  He ordered the 1st Virginia, the 9th Indiana, the 16th Ohio, and some companies from the 2nd Virginia to advance from Wheeling towards Fairmont and the 14th and 18th Ohio to advance from Parkersburg towards Grafton. Early on May 27, the 1st Virginia, commanded by Colonel Benjamin Franklin Kelley, left Camp Carlile on Wheeling Island and marched across the Suspension Bridge to the B&O depot. On May 29, the train picked up the regiments of the 16th Ohio at Camp Buffalo on the way to Fairmont. As Kelley moved east on one branch of the B&O Railroad, he was under orders to take no risks. If confronted by a force superior in manpower or firepower, Kelley was to observe and send for support. Kelley’s main objective was to protect the railroad and bridges on the way to Fairmont. The Battle of Philippi resulted in the retreat of Confederate forces to avoid capture by Union soldiers. The casualty totals - four Union and 26 Confederate - were considered to be light at that time. The 14th and 18th Ohio, based in Marietta, crossed the Ohio River, marched to Parkersburg, and boarded a train heading east towards Grafton. In Indianapolis, Brigadier General Thomas A. Morris received orders to prepare for a move, with the 6th and 7th Indiana, to Grafton. General Morris arrived at Grafton on the evening of June 1. He met with Colonel Kelley, who had organized an expedition against the Confederates at Philippi that night. After conferring with Kelley, Morris determined that the attack would occur the following night. At 9 a.m. on June 2, four regiments, organized into two divisions, left Grafton and headed for Philippi. One division (the left column) of 1,600 troops, under the command of Colonel Kelley, consisted of six companies of Kelley’s First Virginia, six companies of Colonel Irvine’s Sixteenth Ohio, and nine companies of Colonel Milroy’s Ninth Indiana. The left proceeded east on the B&O Railroad for six miles. This was intended to give the illusion of an advance on Harper’s Ferry. The men then disembarked and marched (on a little traveled road) southeast the remaining twenty-five miles to Philippi. The march was regulated, so the column arrived at its designated spot, behind the town (south) as close to 4 a.m. as possible. Colonel Ebenezer Dumont (commanding the right column) proceeded by rail to Webster with a force of 1,400, including the eight companies of his Seventh Indiana regiment. At Webster, Dumont was joined by Colonel Steedman and five companies of the Fourteenth Ohio, along with two field pieces, and by Colonel Crittenden, with six companies of his regiment, the Sixth Indiana. From Webster, the right column marched to Philippi, so it arrived in front of the town (north) at 4 a.m. The objective of Dumont’s column was to divert attention until the attack made by Colonel Kelley and to aid him if resistance was offered. Once the two columns joined, the force was to be under the command of Colonel Kelley. Both columns advanced on Philippi through torrential rains. Porterfield was aware of the approaching Federals. After conferring with his officers that evening, Porterfield decided the only hope of avoiding capture was a retreat (at daybreak) to Beverly. Most likely due to the storm and a lack of training, the Confederates had not set pickets that night to warn of any approach by the enemy. The covered bridge in Philippi was constructed in 1852 and is the oldest and longest in the state of West Virginia. Colonel Dumont’s column arrived on a ridge east of the town known as Talbot Hill. An artillery battery was placed here to support the column as it crossed the covered bridge into town. Dumont was to wait for a signal (a single shot) from Colonel Kelley indicating his troops were in place before commencing the bombardment. At this point, Kelley should have been circling around town and approaching from the south. The plans, however, had already gone awry.  Kelly’s column had taken a wrong fork in the road and ended up on the same side of town as Colonel Dumont’s men. As Kelley’s column approached Philippi, it passed by the home of Matilda Humphreys. Mrs. Humphreys sent her son to Philippi to warn of the approaching Federals.  He was immediately captured. Mrs. Humphreys fired a single shot from a pistol at the men capturing her son. Hearing the shot, Dumont ordered the battery to commence firing to support his advancing troops. Colonel Porterfield ordered two companies to prevent the Federals from crossing the covered bridge. They put up a light resistance, but it was too late. Colonel Frank W. Lander, seeing this resistance, made a mad dash (on horseback) down the hill through heavy underbrush to rally the men in their attempt to enter the town. At the same time, Kelley was advancing into town. Upon seeing two Federal columns entering the town, the Confederate forces panicked and ran.  Kelley and Lander entered the town simultaneously.  As he led his men through the town, Kelley was shot through the chest and fell from his horse. It was reported by Brigadier General Thomas A. Morris, in his report to the adjutant general’s office, that Colonel Lander personally captured the man who shot Kelley. Kelley’s wound was thought to be mortal.  The June 7 edition of the Richmond Enquirer reported Kelley’s death. Kelly, however, would recover and go on to command the Department of West Virginia. Pete Chacalos taught science for over 30 years at Wheeling Park High School and is an avid historian of the Civil War era of America. The Confederates withdrew southward and reached Beverly that evening. The next evening, they withdrew even further to Huttonsville. They remained there until General Richard Garnett arrived with reinforcements to relieve Colonel Porterfield. On July 4, A court of inquiry convened at the request of Porterfield. He was praised for his coolness and courage during the retreat but was censured for not taking precautionary measures beforehand.  He never held command again. There were conflicting reports on the number of casualties. Some indicated dozens killed and wounded, while others reported none killed. It can be said, however, that casualties were extremely light considering the carnage that was to come. Had Kelly’s column not gotten lost, the Confederates, running south as fast as they could, would have likely been captured. Hence, the Battle of Philippi (more a skirmish than a battle) became known as The Philippi Races. Cincinnati Rover Guards, Ohio History Central, https://ohiohistorycentral.org/index.php?title=Cincinnati_Rover_Guards&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop Battle of Philippi, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-philippi Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. II, No. 1, Reports of Colonel George A. Porterfield Ruth Woods Dayton, The Beginning Philippi,1861 http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh13-1.html McClellan Orders Invasion of Virginia, http://civilwardailygazette.com/mcclellan-orders-invasion-of-virginia Ibid Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. II, No. 1, Reports of Brigadier General T. A. Morris Ibid Ruth Woods Dayton, The Beginning Philippi,1861 http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh13-1.html Battle of Philippi, http://www.historynet.com/battle-of-philippi Historical marker, The Battle of Philippi – Talbott’s Hill, Philippi, WV Ruth Woods Dayton, The Beginning Philippi,1861 http://www.wvculture.org/history/journal_wvh/wvh13-1.html Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. II, No. 1, Reports of Brigadier General T. A. Morris Battle of Philippi, Richmond Enquirer, June 7, 1861 Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Vol. II, No. 1, Reports of Major General George B. McClellan Read the full article

[sa7abnews]

Syria: Fighting in eastern Deir Ez-zor kills at least 13

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/11/syria-fighting-in-eastern-deir-ez-zor-kills-at-least-13/

Syria: Fighting in eastern Deir Ez-zor kills at least 13

Fighting between pro-Iranian groups supporting the Syrian regime and Kurdish-led forces killed 13 people, mostly civilians, a war monitor said on Friday.

Six children were among the victims of intense shelling of Dahla in the eastern province of Deir Ez-zor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.

Fighting erupted on Wednesday when pro-Iranian fighters attacked Kurdish-held areas, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) also reported that 11 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in Dahla.

The SOHR said pro-Iran fighters carried out a “massacre” that “resulted in the death of 11 people, including women and six children,” in Dahla.

Two members of Iranian-backed militias were meanwhile killed and three wounded in shelling by the SDF targeting Al-Bulil village on the western bank of the Euphrates river, the monitor said.

The US-backed SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated the Islamic State group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.

Arab-majority Deir Ez-zor province, a resource-rich region which borders Iraq, is bisected by the Euphrates river and home to dozens of local tribal communities, some of whose fighters joined the SDF in its battle against IS.

On Wednesday, pro-Iran groups supervised by Syrian regime officers succeeded in crossing the Euphrates, coming dangerously close to the Al-Omar oil fields where American troops are based, the SOHR said.

Pro-Iran fighters were subsequently pushed back to the opposite side of the Euphrates following fighting that left seven dead, among them an SDF fighter, three pro-Iran militia men, and three civilians, it added.

The fighting comes amid growing regional tensions between Iran and its allies on one side, and Israel, currently waging a war in Gaza, and its backer Washington on the other.

Iran and Hezbollah have promised to respond to assassinations of the chief of the Palestinian Hamas group and the military leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, widely blamed on Israel.

Iran has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces through more than a decade of civil war.

The United States has around 900 troops in Syria that are part of an anti-jihadist coalition and also maintain a base on the Conoco gas field.

In September 2023, the United States intervened to stop similar fighting in Deir Ez-zor from escalating, in a country devastated and fragmented by more than 13 years of war.