Rogue Sword, CHAPTER IV.
Lucas sees a ship which he identifies as:
"...a cheland, lighter and swifter than the galleys." (p. 71)
The cheland is moved by oarsmen.
I was unable to find "cheland" on line. See She Would Come Back. However, by searching this blog, I have found that "a Cheland-class transport" is a kind of spaceship in the Polesotechnic League period of Poul Anderson's Technic History. See Men On Cain.
There must be a wealth of such connections still waiting to be found but that is all that we have time for tonight.
The Forties Fest is superb. We will return to it tomoz. People turn out in period costumes and uniforms, including at least one German.
16 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I assume festival goers dressed in WW II era uniforms, both British and German? Any surviving WW II veterans must be nearly 100.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes and an American "Shore Police" man. (The uniform was American. The man was Scottish.) I saw one German uniform. Also, men's and women's civilian garb of that era. Didn't see any vets. Those that still survive are indeed old.
Paul.
I searched and got: The Chelandion (plural: chelandia), also called chelandium or chelandy, was a ship used in the Byzantine Empire. It was a predecessor to the later Italian galea sottile, the final form of the Mediterranean war galley.
Sean,
Winston Churchill picked raffle tickets, judged costumes and delivered a speech about Victory in Europe.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: That bit about American "Shore Police" made me think you saw someone wearing the uniform of the US Navy military police.
At a minimum my guess is any surviving WW II veterans were about 18-20 years of age in 1945, so now aged 98 to 100. Can't be many left!
The gentleman dressed as Churchill might have read THEIR FINEST HOUR, where we read of how Churchill was at his most defiant as Hitler was overrunning western Europe in 1940.
Mr. Stirling: I did wonder about "cheland." So a kind of small, light, swift galley.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes, he explained to me that "Shore Police" were naval military police.
If I understood it right, the Churchill look alike had memorized quite a long part of a speech that Churchill did make about Victory in Europe.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I thought so, re "shore police."
Churchill, the single greatest of all UK prime ministers! I need to get back to reading THEIR FINEST HOUR.
Ad astra! Sean
Churchill did several extraordinary things. One of them was stay alive until 1940 -- he nearly died half a dozen times that I know of.
If he hadn't been alive in 1940, Lord Halifax would almost certainly have been Prime Minister... and Halfax wanted to make a deal with Hitler after the Fall of France.
So did Hitler, btw. He didn't want to invade Britain, he wanted Britain as a friendly neutral -- or at least genuinely neutral neutral -- to keep the US out of Europe, and was prepared to offer fairly generous terms.
(Italy was a complicating factor; that's why Mussolini got into the war, so Italian colonial claims couldn't be disregarded.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
It was absolutely fortunate Churchill survived to become PM in 1940! But I am not so sure about Lord Halifax. I read up a bit about him and the sources I read say Halifax did not want to be PM in 1940. But I agree that whoever else became PM in 1940 would not have Churchill's indomitability and absolute determination to continue the war against Hitler.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: he didn't want to be PM after the Fall of France. Who would? Presiding over a disaster isn't everyman's cup of tea. But without Churchill, he would have been as soon as Chamberlain's health problems became impossible to ignore.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
The catastrophic situation faced by the UK in May/June of 1940 would cow most of us! I also think, assuming Churchill's absence in 1940, given how both the Conservative and Labour parties wanted Halifax to be PM, so a deal would be made with Hitler, despite the long range disaster that would be.
Ad astra! Sean
Well, Churchill was (irrationally) confident, for one thing, that the US would eventually enter the war against Hitler. FDR -wanted- to do that, but American public opinion, while on the whole pro-Allied, was "once bitten twice shy" about getting involved in a European war against Germany. It took Pearl Harbor to get them into it, and Hitler's lunatic declaration of war on the US in addition.
On the whole, Chamberlain and Halifax had a more realistic view of Britain's options in 1940 - the fact that it was about to go bankrupt, for example. Which it did in 1941, hushed up by American financial aid, with strings attached.\\
What Churchill did, crucially, was keep the "Second World War" going between the Fall of France, Hitler's attack on the USSR, and Pearl Harbor.
If Halifax had been PM, the war would have ended in the summer of 1940, and it would have been a short European war ending in a settlement.
Then Hitler would have attacked the USSR in 1941, but without a war in the West and the Mediterranean to distract Germany and tie down resources.
In that scenario, the USSR would probably have done a lot worse, and the Japanese would probably have piled on by attacking the Soviet far east rather than the US, thus cutting the USSR off from the (absolutely crucial) outside aid.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Te smart thing for Japan to do was to, at all costs, to avoid war with the US. Given their disparities in strength Japan simply could not win a war with the US. And the last thing Hitler should have done was declare war on the US, even if he thought war inevitable. A US focusing on Japan first would keep it off Germany's back for at least a while.
And Hitler should have postponed Operation Barbarossa till the war in the west was somehow settled. Doing that might have made it almost impossible, even with the US, for the UK and America to invade Europe.
One thing I've long regretted was all that aid showered on the USSR by the UK/US after Barbarossa. Far better to let Hitler and Stalin rip each other apart in the east while the UK/US attacked Germany in the west. My hope being that both of the horrendous Nazi and Soviet regimes being destroyed.
Why prop up the vile and evil USSR?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the USSR was tying down the bulk of the German army, but they needed help to do it.
Otherwise we would have had to fight the bulk of the German army... and that would have been very, very expensive in lives. Spending money and letting the Russians do the bleeding was a good option. Mind you, they should have cut the aid off in the spring or summer of 1944.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Your first sentence: Again, that makes me I think Hitler should have postponed Barbarossa.
You made a good point, however sickening the Marxist-Leninist regime was it makes sense to prop up the USSR just enough to prevent an early collapse after Barbarossa began. Then cut off the aid in the spring of 1944--which, btw, might have kept Stalin from grabbing eastern Europe in 1945-46.
Another thing I've long regretted was how the UK/US did nothing to save at least Bulgaria from Stalin's fangs. A few hundred UK or US troops sent there might have persuaded Stalin to back away.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment