what was the most gruesome era of warfare for the soldiers /his/?
I would say musket line warfare
>have no armor
>have no hearing protetion
>rifles are inacurate af
>can't hide behind cover
>just stand still while you're being shot at
>go deaf from all the shooting
>the faggot with the flute is really annoying
>artillery tears you to shreds from several miles away
>die
>future generations think you look ridiculous with your colourful unifurm
Ancient warfare, where you actually have to destroy someone's body with your own body, while they are desperately trying to do the same to you.
>>1281418
Maybe not the most gruesome, but definitely the worst respected:gruesome ratio.Everyone loves spartans and shit but most people these days would just laught at the uniforms of the musket men.
>>1281418
If you look at the found bones, medieval combat was more than horrific, getting beaten to death with a mace is a lot worse than dying quickly from a gunshot
>>1281547
Depending on where you were hit, both can be pretty horrifying. I would much rather be killed quickly with a strike to the head with a mace than to bleed out after getting shot in the leg, and vice versa
>>1281418
>the faggot with the flute is really annoying
Now imagine having to be the faggot.
>>1281580
Then I'll be the best god damn faggot those nigs has ever seen!
>>1281418
>>future generations think you look ridiculous with your colourful unifurm
Maybe the homosexual elements of future generations, such as yourself. Those uniforms were fucking awesome.
>>1281589
>implying a homo would dislike that
Although yes, I agree. I miss Napoleonic uniforms so badly. Pre-Napoleonic can go suck a dick, though.
Is football hooliganism the spiritual successor to medieval sieges?
https://youtu.be/N6IUCO80d8A?t=636
https://youtu.be/Ul1sF5sX9D4
World war 1 was pretty atrocious.
Some of the veterans that got disfigured are unbelievably grotesque.
Mental trauma as well.
Medical knowledge was still not the best. I just could'nt imagine being in a battle at all. All warfare up to now basically is gruesome. Nowadays they have drones and computers for things like this.
>>1281577
wouldn't a helmet make instantly killing blows almost impossible to achieve?
>>1281600
needs more formation 2/10
>>1281609
add to that the fact that there was no clear seperation between battle and quiet time, you could be attacked in every second and you could never relax even for a day
>>1281600
Especially at 10:48 when all those people are running through the alley and down the stairway.
>>1281645
hooligans in full plate when?
>>1281600
This just got me interested in football/soccer.
>>1281587
>flute destroyed by a musket 5 minutes after the battle starts
What do?
>>1281841
It's just drunken idiots letting off some steam, good clean fun.
https://youtu.be/kmRmGQRvBmY
>>1281418
>>rifles are inacurate af
cringe
>>1281418
John Keegan's The Face of Battle has a great little bit about how the soldiers ate before the battle of Waterloo. While a few officers shot fowl and rabbits, most didn't, because they were afraid of being shot in the belly and having undigested food leaking out of them.
But there's another book I've read called A German Deserter's War Experience from an anonymous author and holy fuck I would never have wanted to be anywhere near the first world war.
>>1281609
There are accounts of being stuck in the same trench for a month, someone coming just over the ground to grab a pack of cigarettes a few feet in the dirt out front, and getting shredded by gunfire.
And worse, soldiers that were hit in no man's land and didn't die would scream for days for someone to help them to no avail. Everyone in the trenches was too scared.
>>1281418
Musket warfare did not consist solely of lines, light infantry and in particular Voltigeurs were supposed to hide behind cover
>>1281559
Have to disagree, gunshot wounds can take days to kill you, a dismemberment can kill you in minutes.
You know that nasty feeling in the skin on your face when something long and sharp is in the closeviccinity to your face?
16th century must have ben FUN.
Pre-history
>Wake up, can't find Munga my current fuck woman in cave
>Go out, Trog tells me he saw Munga fucking Bunga in exchange for a rabbit he stomped to death
>Anonga is a cuckold
>Find Munga and Bunga. Fight Bunga with big stick. Get hit hard in mouth, lose some remaining teeth. Finally get the best of Bunga, smash he head in with rock.
> Remember Bunga is member of the Onga tribe.
>ohshit.stonecarving
>Have to rally rest of clan to meet me later so we can all bring big sticks to bash them with
>oh well, at least we get to rape if we win
>this is the 9th time something like this has happened since the last cold period
>>1282610
I imagine being a cavalryman must've been so fucking horrifying from 1450 to 1600. Especially in Burgundy.
>>1282610
the diary of peter hagendorf really shows how cruel this age was
>>1282925
Got a link to an english read of it? Google only yields me german reads.
>>1281431
The most common injuries during hoplite warfare were in the neck and groin, I can understand where you're coming from.
>>1281600
were you lucky enough to be on /pol/ in 2014 during the Maidan Revolution live streams?
cause they had dudes in full plate armor and shields complete with heraldry. And battle priests.
>>1283014
These ones, right?
According to /tg/ the Ukraine Battle of The Nations team lost several members because of that.
>>1283024
glorious bastards
>>1281418 (OP)
>what was the most gruesome era of warfare for the soldiers /his/?
>I would say musket line warfare
Honestly, I would say that war gets more and more gruesome over time. War has gotten faster, louder, more chaotic, and more unpredictable. There aren't even national borders in the wars we wage: they're fought in concrete jungles where death can come for you at any moment from any angle, often from miles away. You think taking a mace to the head is a hard death? Try taking a napalm bath. Even when you're Americans curb-stomping Afganis with your overwhelming military superiority it's still a damn nightmare to deal with.
Pre-gunpowder melees were glorified shoving matches. Most of the actual casualties occurred during the rout, well after when the fighting was at its thickest. And even then you're talking about months of tedious maneuvering for a single day of sheer horror followed by more months of maneuvering, and far more soldiers in history died of diseases associated with waging war than were actually killed in pitched battle. Plus there was a war season. Fighting wasn't year round, it was only in the spring and summer, between when the farmers sowed their fields and when they had to be back in time for the harvest. And even if they weren't going home they were still being quartered for the winter.
And during Napoleonic times armies were surprisingly small, often no more than a few thousand soldiers. "It takes a man's weight in lead for every soldier killed in battle" comes from the American Civil War, which was fought with rifles, and those are far more accurate than the smoothbore muskets that Napoleonic soldiers carried into battle. Those musket lines would have been throwing out a shitload of shot for only a scattering of casualties.
>>1281547
>dying quickly from a gunshot
Tell that to Marshall Lannes..
>>1281859
Run at the enemy lines and choke the other fluter's faggot ass to death, then use his.
Not necessarily related to the overall gruesomeness of the battles themselves, but I often wonder about what the sounds of war would do for morale in the pre-gunpowder age. Things like concentrated archer fire on armored targets must've been absolutely cacophonous, with the occasional scream of a man hit in an unlucky spot or a wail of a horse brought down just punctuating that awful racket. Or the sheer racket one must've heard being stuck inside a roman formation during the encirclement of Cannae when the dust kicks up and all around are the clangs of weaponry.
Man, movies never even scrape the surface of stuff like that.
>>1282948
if you can't speak german, there is sadly not much for you but you can read parts of it here: https://books.google.de/books?id=sPz3BgAAQBAJ&pg=106&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false
>>1283280
You actually have accounts of the XIVth-XVth Century battles, when cannons were used for the first time. They weren't really powerful enough to be used as a proper battle weapon then, but the sound and the smoke was so loud, and incredible for people who never saw that, they some actually ran away completly scared.
At the battle of Formigny in 1450, the french canons were useless ; But the sound they made was enough to alert a nearby french detachment to intervene and save the day.
>>1281418
>musket line warfare
Close order formation fighting with musket and cannon has to rank up there, simply due to the fact that it was THE dumbest approach to warfare man had yet to come up with...
>mass formation shoots at other mass formation at close range
>charge with bayonet
>hope you don't get enfiladed with cannon
Just dumb...
>>1282610
Why did pike spamming take off so much in the 16th century?
>>1281418
>rifles are inacurate af
>rifles
>>>>>>>>"""""rifles"""""
retard
>>1283280
I'm always amazed at any sort of warfare with firearms where earplugs weren't a thing, like holy fucking shit guns are loud as hell how did people even deal
>>1283775
>like holy fucking shit guns are loud as hell how did people even deal
Sometimes you're too busy to notice...
>>1283736
>Just dumb...
It's not dumb when you consider how grossly inaccurate their muskets were and how the only real way to project force with them was massed volley fire.
The reason bayonet chargers were still a thing was because soldiers were extremely likely to run out of ammo (or powder) so it turned your now useless musket into a spear
>>1283736
It was murderously efficient, there was literally no better way to kill large groups of men with the tech of the time
>>1281418
The big battles of the western front in ww1. Objectively the most consistently horrible experience and large group of people has ever endured
>>1283789
No, it IS dumb.
There's absolutely zero reasons to attack somebody in the open when there is plenty of cover and concealment to be used, or when you can simply prepare fortifications.
>>1283885
Cover and concealment results in a very low density of muskets firing individually, aka totally worthless. You would get steamrolled by a block of line infantry or cavalry. also there was a whole class of light infantry that fought like that as sort of skirmishers or support
>>1283885
>There's absolutely zero reasons to attack somebody in the open when there is plenty of cover and concealment to be used, or when you can simply prepare fortifications.
You're not appreciating how shitty those muskets were. Like this anon said >>1283898 , in order to really make them effective battlefield weapons you needed to mass volley fire. Otherwise you weren't causing enough casualties to make a difference in anything but your limited stores of ammunition. And fortifications are all well and good but soldiers need to take ground and hold ground, and when you're hunkering down in a fort your enemy is outmaneuvering you.
These were not sports teams clashing and looking for ways to bend the rules, this was war where you went with the most practical option available to you. They fought like that for a reason and not just because they were flashy pricks.
>>1282659
lol underated
>>1283823
>there was literally no better way to kill large groups of men with the tech of the time
Sure there was, by shooting them from covered positions while they are channeled through obstacles you emplaced.
>>1283950
It has been repeatedly stated that that is not an effective use of muskets outside of very specific circumstances. For muskets to have effective killing power they need to be fired in large groups and all at once.
Aside from that, they had a very short effective range, so that you would only get the chance to fire off MAYBE 3 or 4 rounds before the enemy was clubbing you to death. Large bodies of men in formation was the most effective way to use muskets in most situations, and you not liking that fact doesnt make it less true
>>1283993
Whatever,you faggots just don't understand.Why I bet if I was a general in that time I wouldve curb stomped everyone
>>1283993
>Do you really think that if there were better ways to fight with muskets nobody would have thought of them?
But they did.
In North America....where they used the fucking trees and rocks to inflict casualties on the enemy without taking casualties in return.
Contrary to popular belief, it is indeed possible to mass fires from covered and concealed positions. You don't have to be standing out in the open like morons to do that. And if you're using obstacles to turn, channelize, and block your enemy, your massed fires will enfilade the fuck out of your target.
As a military dude, I can attest to the fact that military "leaders" more often than not do shit because "that's the way we always done it...." than because it's actually the best way, or even the right way, for that matter. This is demonstrated time and again throughout history, including the continued use of closed rank formation fighting.
>>1283062
shit mang, if everyone wasn't operating on international laws warfare by now would just be bombs and artillery shells full of horrible biological weapons
>>1284074
You do realize that the guerrilla tactics used by the Americans didn't really do much but piss the British off right? Things only started going in our favor when we lined up in blocks and fought head to head.
You do realize that if entire armies fought like this, spread out between cover, they'd just all be swept up by cavalry?
>>1284074
Are you talking about the civil war or fighting with the indians?
>>1284029
Holy shit your retarded
>>1283851
I completely agree. Soldiers would be entrenched deep in the mud (in certain areas) with decomposing bodies and their own filth strewn around them for weeks at a time. The constant artillery barrages drove men insane and the machine gun fire mowed down men unfortunate enough to be sent over the top of the trench by their commanding officers.The mustard gas used later in the war closed the throats of men and blinded them. I wholly believe that is the most extreme mass human experience in history.
>>1281589
>Those uniforms were fucking awesome
Why do people have such a trivial and childish understanding of line battles and general musket warfare? Is it the video games? Not everyone just "stood in a line and shot" and there was far, far more complexity to it
>>1281418
probably WW1
earlier than that you usually died from disease so it wasn't as gruesome.
>>1283024
>you will never storm Washington DC in full plate while wielding a war hammer
Why live?
>>1281418
Any combat involving what >>1281431 said:
>where you actually have to destroy someone's body with your own body, while they are desperately trying to do the same to you
Nothing can be more gruesome than that
>>1283024
Aye. A many a quests sprung up on /tg/ about the euromadan riots.
>>1284154
Another unfortunate victim of the combat. Those are arrow heads. Perhaps he was hit from behind unexpectedly... or turned around in a last ditch effort to hide from incoming arrow fire. We'll never know
>>1284145
>earlier than that you usually died from disease so it wasn't as gruesome
k
>What was the American Civil War
>>1284074
>Contrary to popular belief, it is indeed possible to mass fires from covered and concealed positions
This is why armies who attempted it have lost engagements every single time, right?
>>1284074
>In North America....where they used the fucking trees and rocks to inflict casualties on the enemy without taking casualties in return.
Sorry, but what the fuck are you talking about here, exactly?
>>1284159
>visby arrow AND warhammer casualty
Did the arrows not kill him? The poor son of a bitch.
>>1284192
No, sadly they did not. Despite almost every soldier present on the Visby battlefield lacking head protection - only a rare few had mail coifs on for protection - this man did not die from the arrows. A foe with a hammer smashed his head in at the end. Just like this other fellow missing much of his face.
The hammer is in the background
>>1281658
Full plate wanker
>>1281600
not maybe sieges but tribal warfare
>>1282561
Christ, they couldn't lasso them in or something? If that ever happens to me either save me or administer a mercy killing
>>1283014
don't forget that trebuchet
>>1284309
>>1283014
>>1284154
Damn, if this fella invested in some shin guards he'd be invincible.
>>1284317
Rhaya Kiev right
>>1281598
Pleb.
>>1283014
Yes
Maidan is my favourite revolution because of it
Freezing cold in the middle of Kiev, barricades, makeshift shields, Orthodox priests trying to keep the peace, using w/e you can find as a weapon and armour, nights filled with fire
I will fondly look back on my freshman year of uni, comfy in bed watching a government get overthrown
>>1284120
>your
how long will this fucking shit take before you idiots learn the difference between you're and your
>>1284074
I saw The Patriot too
ww1 was probably the most traumatic on soldiers
>>1284201
I wonder how conscious he still was after taking those hits. Surely he couldn't have been fighting; seems the Danes just picked off everything and everyone in that mess.
>>1284508
I'd assume he'd get knocked to the ground and trampled after a hit like that, maybe he lucked out.
>>1284305
From what I understand, certain aspects of the entrenchment fights could go on for weeks at a time with very little ground gained, and not the kind of resupplying that makes that possible. There are accounts of officers seizing vehicles and never being seen among their men again.
>>1284497
A few quotes from a german deserter's war experience
" At that time I began to notice in many soldiers what I had never observed before—they felt envious. Many of my mates envied the dead soldiers and wished to be in their place in order to be at least through with all their misery. Yet all of us were afraid of dying—afraid of dying, be it noted, not of death. All of us often longed for death, but we were horrified at the slow dying lasting hours which is the rule on the battle-field, that process which makes the wounded, abandoned soldier die piecemeal. I have witnessed the death of hundreds of young men in their prime, but I know of none among them who died willingly. "
" All of us greatly feared those night patrols, for the hundreds of men killed months ago were still lying between the lines. Those corpses were decomposed to a pulp. So when a man went on nocturnal patrol duty and when he had to crawl in the utter darkness on hands and knees over all those bodies he would now and then land in the decomposed faces of the dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny wound in his hands his life was greatly endangered by the septic virus. As a matter of fact three sappers and two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No. 17 died in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on that kind of patroling was given up or only resorted to in urgent cases, and only such men were employed who were free of wounds. That led to nearly all of us inflicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol duty. "
>>1281418
>what was the most gruesome era of warfare for the soldiers /his/?
American Civil War
massed rifled musketry
with virtually none of the European advances in tactics of the time
>>1284920
This is a reasonable answer. The combination of accurate rifles and napoleonic tactics was shockingly brutal
>>1284925
although arguably the (lack of) cavalry use in the ACW sort of made it slightly easier on the peeps on the ground
linear infantry getting shot up with rifled muskets is bad enough but then getting run down by cavalry would be straight out terribad
>>1284937
Cavalry werent as big a threat though due the previously mentioned rifled muskets. Cavalry had already had their day for anything other than harrassment or pursuit
>>1284305
>Christ, they couldn't lasso them in or something? If that ever happens to me either save me or administer a mercy killing
Some of the troops received training for mercy killing, actually.
And no, they couldn't just 'lasso them'. They'd have needed to head out into the no man's land between the two sides, which was guaranteed death during the day.
Going out and trying to either rescue or finish the wounded was a task for the night troops. But they could end up falling in the shellholes and become casualties too.
Because you know, chemical weapons? Gas falls to the ground, and tons of it ended up in the water that filled the shellholes, creating literaly pools of poisonous water.
Yeah, there were pools of toxic sludge all over the place, too. As if fields full of rotting corpses and screaming dismembered soldiers in agony weren't bad enough.
>>1284955
>Yeah, there were pools of toxic sludge all over the place,
Fucking gas man. Had virtually no impact on the fighting except to make everything that much more horrible for everyone
>>1283280
Well theres some WW2/Vietnam movies that achieve some of that atmosphere.
Platoon ending or Saving Private Ryan start for example.
>>1285337
Oh I totally get that, I just meant more of earlier period stuff. Braveheart etc.
>>1281418
Nothing else quite beats the Iran-Iraq War
>Modern equipment
>Shitty outdated tactics
>Theological indoctrination
>Trench Warfare
>Insane political leadership
>Incompetent General Staff
>Area Denial Weaponry in full use
>Both sides supplied and pushed into the fray by the same superpower.
>>1283062
War... War never changes.
>>1283199
His death was pretty shitty indeed.
>On 22 May, during a lull in the second day of the Battle of Aspern-Essling, Marshal Lannes went and sat down at the edge of a ditch, his hand over his eyes and his legs crossed. As he sat there, plunged in gloomy meditation on having seen his friend general de brigade Pouzet killed mid-conversation by a cannonball, a cannonball, fired from a gun at Enzersdorf, ricochetted, and struck him just where his legs crossed. The knee-pan of one was smashed, and the back sinews of the other torn. The Marshal said, "I am wounded; it's nothing much; give me your hand to help me up." He tried to rise, but could not. He was carried to the tête de port, where the chief surgeons proceeded to dress his wound. One of the marshal's legs was amputated within two minutes by Dominique Jean Larrey. He bore the operation with great courage; it was hardly over when Napoleon came up and, kneeling beside the stretcher, wept as he embraced the marshal. Lannes' other leg was later also amputated. On 23 May he was transported by boat to the finest house in Kaiserebersdorf. Eight days later he succumbed to his wounds at daybreak on 31 May.
>>1284074
>channelize
>Fucking americans butchering our tongue with this shit.
>>1281577
>killed quickly with a strike to the head with a mace
Probably wouldn't happen. You'd probably be armored (even if it was just a cap and leather shirt), and they'd be fighting to incapacitate you rather than killing you. War without quarter would've been very rare in Medieval times, since peasants were valued laborers and commanders were could fetch a pretty ransom.
>>1284320
He and many others would have been wise to, apparently
>>1284508
I feel like the sharp, direct blows to the head are done to foes lacking the ability to deflect or defend against them. These were either mercy blows or finishing blows... both have the same result
WW1.
Are there any other historical informations of such traums as "shell shock"?
>>1281418
>The human commander in this battle has three lines of infantry, all of them firing freely
>The first line is getting slaughtered by the people shooting them in the back
>>1284145
>you usually died from disease so it wasn't as gruesome
Do people really believe this? Dying of diarrhea is better than being shot?
>>1285411
Why didn't they just shot him?
>>1283851
>>1284129
this
Although some areas of the front were calm, if we focus on areas like Verdun and Ypres it's really hard to find an equal in horrific situations. After all, most battles before the American Civil War only lasted a couple days and Medieval battles were usually concluded in a single morning. I'd much rather take a mace to the skull in the frontlines than get cut off from supplies, nearly starve for weeks hiding from artillery fire before getting stuck in a shell hole and dying from blood loss.
>Be soldier at Paschendale
>Take a wrong step and foot slips deep into tar-like mud
>Cant get out
>Buddies cant pull you out
>Buddies decide not to mercy kill you and leave
>Enjoy sinking into the mud and suffocating in it for the next 18 hours
>Be soldier at Verdun
>Slip into shell hole on a rainy day
>The mulched up soil is oily with bodily decay, too slippery to climb out
>The hole has you waist deep in water containing a bloated body and deadly chemicals
>You can choose between starvation and disease or shooting yourself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4Pd527GN48
>>1285558
"battle heart"
I think at Marathon there was an account of a guy who saw an old comrade and fainted.
Maybe you mean't shell shock like the stress of inescapable barrage.
I think that's unique to to WWI and onwards.
I mean, that was when artillery was refined and men couldn't have just run away.
>>1285769
Do we still use Shell Shock and PTSD interchangeably today? There seems to be a big difference between men who "saw some shit" and men who were forced to endure several artillery barrages.
I imagine the damage of the former must be very physical as well, considering dense artillery must force you into an unfathomably strong "flight" response, yet there's literally no where for you to run... and it could last hours. Day after day. That has to damage you nervous system or upset some part of your biological functions, right?
>>1281418
Line warfare might be gruesome directly in battle, but it would prolly still be my favourite kind to be in if i had to choose.
At least once the battle is over you're kinda are safe.
Also you fight in the open air.in nature. Might be strange point but if you take in consideration that you could die in an U-Boat or in the ruins of Stalingrad, there are definitly worse death than dying on a field.
Also you get to wear a cool uniform.
Btfw: Did war prisoners in the 18th and 19th century still regularly get excecuted ? Or was it already considered barbary ?
>>1283885
tell me more how you are so much more intelligent than experienced generals who actually lived at that time and fought and studied those battles
>>1282561
>>1284305
I read once read in All Quiet On the Western Front that they they would sometimes send out search parties for the wounded, some were rescued, but many of the wounded had sunken into the mud and were impossible to find. The only way you knew the poor bastards were still out there was that they'd moan and jave there death gurgles for days until they eventually succumed to their wounds.
>>1284955
>>1284966
There are still "red zones" in France today where habitation is impossible doe to the sheer amount of unexploded ordnance, undiscovered bodies, and chemical weapons have heavily polluted the soil with things like lead, mercury, and arsenic.
>>1285355
Still not as bad as ww1 due to the smaller ammount of men and material thrown into the mix.
>>1284029
he's a troll
>>1281418
>have no armor
I don't understand why this is a thing. Cuirassiers wore their eponomous cuirasses, and these things were literally bulletproof: each one of them had to be tested to see if they could stop a bullet from a certain range before being given to the troops. Why the hell didn't Napoleon, or some other general from the same era, bother to give these breastplates to their infantry units as well? They're light and can prevent casualties in both melee and ranged combat.
Hell, why not include helmets instead of those silly hats that do fucking nothing?
>>1285755
metal as fuck to be honest
>>1286174
Because no nation has an unlimited supply of iron and an unlimited amount of smiths to outfit their entire army.
As a rule of thumb, the further you go in history, the more brutal does warfare become, when taking into account all factors.
Getting slowly hacked to death isn't really a nice death at all. Or getting disemboweled and then slowly dying in terrible pain.
Melee combat is a lot more intense and brutal than modern combat.
Even napalm, since someone mentioned it here, kills relatively quickly.
>>1286174
France won its revolutionary wars through Levee en masse, mass mobilization of deep columns of infantry. A fuckload of fairly well-drilled guys armed with muskets can outmatch a bunch of very well-trained soldiers in a shallow firing line.
That's not to say the French were winning with human wave tactics or not utilizing strategy/tactics, but that a fuckload of people were under arms, and quite a few of them were probably going to die at the end of battle. France simply a) didn't have the resources to equip them and b) were better off making more weapons and arming more of their men than giving all that protection to a single levy even if they did have the resources.
>>1281559
>A gunshot death
Depends on the type of gun used.
Any war fought in forests/jungles. Especially jungles
>trees
>trees everywhere
>behind every branch there could be some fucker with a gun
>boobytraps everywhere
>malaria so you shit yourself to death
>bugs
>all sorts of fucked up animals out to kill you along with the enemy
>if you're surrounded and they don't know you're there, stepping on a branch might give your position away
>something fell on the floor next to you, might be a branch, might be a bug, might be a hand grenade
>mines
>rainy season so that everything gets wet and you're fucking freezing when you try to sleep
>more trees
>more malaria
>>1282542
John keeegan is the shit and what was that other book about the First World War?
WW1 without a doubt
>>1285799
>That has to damage you nervous system or upset some part of your biological functions, right?
In a way yes, being under that much stress really screws with your brain's chemistry because it's an unnatural pattern to be in.
>>1286307
Well if you live inna jungle is pretty OK.
White People tend to be susceptible to Malaria anyway more than the locals. Its the meme disease for white people in the Philippines back in the Spanish period.
>>1286277
The type of bullet too. Dumdum bullets are downright cruel.
>>1286307
fuck trees
Full plate vs full plate would be terrible
>mace to head
>dagger to eyes, groin, armpits
>>1281418
I'd say the Hyperwar was the most gruesome
>>1286174
armor was incredibly expensive and needed a lot of maintaince, add to that the fact that most types of armor were nearly useless against napoleonic muskets, so it was better to send unarmored cheap troops en masse to the front than fewer armored ones
i wonder if people playing the battle flute (lol) and drum were shot at or of there were rules in place preventing that. kind of like reporters are supposed to be offlimits from direct fire in todays wars.
I feel like navy life would suck more than line warfare, because the weapons are more or less the same but with the added element of water everywhere so there is nowhere to run.
>Be me, merchant seaman returning to port, can almost smell the whorehouse where to spend the pay
>Warship comes in and presses me to service before we reach the dock
>Instead of beer and whores I get the best that British naval tradition has to offer: rum, sodomy and lash
>Run into the enemy, Captain Cockblower fucks up and the ship is riddled with cannonballs with splinters flying everywhere.
>Rest of the trip is filled with excitement like amputations without anesthesia, infections, gangrene and scurvy.
>"Rule, Britannia! rule the waves, Britons never will be slaves."
>>1283211
>fluter
It's flautist anon.
>>1283767
it gets me every time. Thanks for fighting the good fight anon.
>>1285863
I'm a hell of a lot more intelligent than those "experienced" retards because I've been able to examine their mistakes.
You idiots seem to believe that just because something was done a certain way, that it must have been the right way to do it, but that's simply not the case.
I guess you believe you couldn't improve on medical, sanitation, and hygiene practices of the time either, do you?
>>1286727
Underrated post. Go into detail more.
>>1286307
>>1286316
Americans cannot into any forest combat period.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_H%C3%BCrtgen_Forest
>>1283741
It, along with concentrated musket fire was the most effective way of repelling a cavalry charge, which until the 16th century was usually the deciding factor in a pitched battle.
>>1287474
Battle of the Bulge tho.
>>1281547
>than dying quickly from a gunshot
Only that didn't usually happen. You could get shot in the gut by a musket bullet that would splinter and bounce around your insides, lacing you with lead, so that you can die slowly. The lead also made it so that relatively minor wounds often had to be amputated to decrease risk of death. Without anesthetic, of course.
If you were lucky you got your head taken off by a cannon ball.
Could you imagine being a regimental standard bearer during one of these engagements? Hell, even in a Roman legion.
Niggas went wild trying to nab enemy standards. You were a walking target, and all the while you had to hold this giant heavy fucking standard.
>>1287591
The spanish wikipedia claims there's witness of standard bearers of the spanish tercios that, having lost both arms, catched the standard with the mouth to prevent it from falling.
Sounds like bullshit but cool.
>>1281418
17th century warfare in Europe was probably worse. The battles themselves were similar as you decribe, only with less advanced guns and more melle combat. The treatment of civilians, starvation and other effects of wars during that era were some of the worst in history.
>During the wars the Commonwealth lost approximately one third of its population. According to Professor Andrzej Rottermund, manager of the Royal Castle in Warsaw, the destruction of Poland in the deluge was more extensive than the destruction of the country in World War II.
>Warsaw, the capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, was completely destroyed by the Swedes, and out of a pre-war population of 20,000, only 2,000 remained in the city after the war.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(history)
> The war killed soldiers and civilians directly, caused famines, destroyed livelihoods, disrupted commerce, postponed marriages and childbirth, and forced large numbers of people to relocate.
>The reduction of population in the German states was typically 25% to 40%.
>The war ranks with the worst famines and plagues as the greatest medical catastrophe in modern European history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
>>1287077
You're a flautist
>>1283211
Underrated post.
>>1281580
>>1281587
>>1281859
>>1283211
>>1287077
>>1287697
For fuck sake, /his/
Never change.
I wouldnt say it was gruesome; it must have just been very boring and uninspiring
>>1287697
A person who plays a flute is called a fifer for fuck sakes
>>1288616
Fifers played fifes. Have I been baited I cant tell
>Most gruesome
>not ostfront circa WWII
>>1288633
WW2 ostfront was just a slightly less horrible ww1 western front without the gas
>>1281600
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6FfFfL7zGo
GANGS OF GLASGOW IN BANNERLORD FUCKING WHEN
>>1283736
> Just dumb
Are you legit? Line infantry developed as a tactic because it worked better than the alternative. Massed volley fire will shred through an opponent who can't match it.
Those formations only fell out of use when increased weapon accuracy, range, rate of fire and better artillery made them obsolete.
If you went into an 18th century battle with 18th century equipment, and fought using 21st century infantry tactics - you'd last 20 minutes.
>>1286809
considering that those instruments were used to signal what parts of the army where doing/supposed to be doing? They were fair game. There was a military purpose behind it, unlike reporters.
Whether or not they were actually purposely shot at is another matter however, considering that in certain periods the job was given to children too young to fight.
>>1288639
Please.
The Western front in ww1 is so fucking overrated. Soldiers were regularly rotated and all they had to do was sit in a trench.
WW2 Eastern front is on another level.
>>1287671
To think, it all started by throwing someone out of a window.
>>1287474
>Americans cannot into any forest combat period.
So who would have fought the battle of the Hurtgen Forest better?
The British? The Free French? The Soviets?
STFU Murican hater.
>>1287474
>>1287587
Lead is not very toxic. Musket balls were often left inside the body because there was no point in doing a dangerous surgery to remove them.
>>1283851
>Objectively the most consistently horrible experience and large group of people has ever endured
That would be the Eastern Front, WW2
>>1286783
A 16th century style pikeman's corselet, in its own time, cost about the same as a musket and usually a little less than a soldier's uniform.
>>1281418
>>artillery tears you to shreds from several miles away
>Several miles
>Miles
Even at the most extreme range, most cannonry/artillery didn't exceed 2 miles, and effective range can easily be half that.
>tears you to shreds
You sure as shit better not be talking about canister shot
>>1290148
I don't even hate America. That was the official observation made by Generalfeldmarschall Walter Model who led the German defense.
>>1284479
UNTIL THE NEXT RIOT LIKE MAIDAN
>>1291630
Are...
Are you retarded?
>>1281418
Literally native Americans. If you got captured, they would slowly torture you to death. For the sake of honor you had to bear it and keep insulting your captor throughout.
It's like blood eagle with more sound effects.
>>1281418
>muskets
>rifles
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE rifles were there but almost none of the soldiers had them reeeeee
>>1283014
I wonder where a person can see these besides youtube
>At Jaffa the 3000 defenders in the Ottoman garrison are promised by a French officer that their lives will be spared if they submit. But once inside the city, Napoleon orders them all to be executed.
>To conserve ammunition, the instruction is given for the condemned to be either bayonetted or drowned. The gruesome scene, reminiscent of Mongol customs but also of Richard I's atrocity at Acre in 1191, is one which even Napoleon's presentational skills later fail to justify. This event is rapidly followed by plague in the French army, and by the famous moment of flamboyant courage when Napoleon, to reassure his men, visits and touches the sick in the plague hospital at Jaffa.
>>1292372
ALL native americans?
>>1292353
Not sure about the surgery part, but he's right about lead toxicity. You don't get lead poisoning from lead balls/bullets, outside of extraordinary circumstances.
If anyone is retarded it's >>1287587. The fact that it's lead is irrelevant to what he said. You simply DO NOT get lead poisoning from being shot. People died slowly from stomach shots because the chance of persistent infection was insanely high and medical tech/knowledge simply had not caught up enough to deal with such severe wounds. If you were hit in the extremities and they were infected, they could *simply* be amputated (though the survival rate was atrocious still, again due to infection and poor medical practices), I dare you to try amputating someone's abdomen. And what caused seemingly 'minor' injuries to be problematic was, again, infection and poor medical practices. Furthermore, the entire part about the ball 'bouncing around your insides' is retarded. Lead is soft, and in the case of being shot with it, it deforms and flattens (particularly at the bones). So when you get shot in the stomach with a musket ball, it still deforms and flattens, except now there's a massive hole in you that festering with bacteria. When that gigantic open wound inevitably gets infected, the doctors do their best and cut out all infected tissue, but since they suck at it, the infection comes back. This happens again and again, leading to days of absolute agony. It had nothing to do with the musket ball causing lead poisoning, and everything to do with god damned infection, colossal holes in you, and shit ass medicine.
>>1286307
>go to Vietnam
>spend dong to see cu chi holes
>>1292506
Oh come on. It's like when people say "start with the greeks" when they really mean start with the Ionians. This was more of a thing for the North American tribes.
>>1292595
ALL North American tribes?
>>1292617
I've already explained this to you, I only mentioned north america to throw a bone. Which I now regret.
>>1287273
Nah you're just dumbfuck 12 year old who's in his "I'm smarter than everyone else" phase.
Protip: You're not and you don't know shit about line battles because you've never experienced it.
>>1281418
War is always gruesome.
For everyone.
>>1281418
>flute
it's a fife and marching tunes are great
>>1286727
>I'd say the Hyperwar was the most gruesome
>>1287377
>Go into detail more.
I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Lemuria.
I watched Finn-beams glitter in the dark near the Hwanhäuser Gate.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears...in...rain.
Time to die.
>>1293218
Thank you for your service.
>>1293237
My service? Mine?!
Thank all the brave Finnish soldiers and cute shieldmaidens, all the heroic Lemurian marines, erased from existence!
Let me quote general Spurdo Spärde III Spurdo on the war (he lost a leg and his social skills, but survived the whole thing):
>"I don't understand? Are you kidding? Me? Of course I understand. I mean, do you call this a war, this funny little thing? This is not a war. I fought in a bigger war than you will ever know. I did worse things than you could ever imagine, and when I close my eyes... I hear more screams than anyone could ever be able to count! And do you know what you do with all that pain? Shall I tell you where you put it? You hold it tight... Til it burns your hand. And you say this -- no one else will ever have to live like this. No one else will ever have to feel this pain. Not on my watch."
>>1288920
How so?
List daily life of a WW2 East-front soldier, pls
>>1287671
I have to wonder though if it was so gruesome compared to the times.
I absolutely agree that it was a horrendous blight, but looking at the elements of the society that gave birth to it, I see things like:
>Violent robbery was commonplace
>Cockfighting is still an extremely prominent form of child entertainment
>Torture inflicted at every criminal trial
>Horrible prolonged executions performed in front of great audiences
>The idea of taxation for things like public services was almost unheard of
>The peasants in Bavaria are forbidden from dancing, and men and women have to be housed separately
>Some of the most well-known of the elector palatinate in the HRE are mostly robber-barons, like Gotz von Berlichingen, who I'm pretty sure is the basis for Guts in Berserk
>Wheels where the corpses of murderers and gallows with swinging thieves can be counted in scores outside major towns
>Houses are too hot for summer, too cold for winter
>Hunting is an absolute mania among the noble class, and dangerous highly destructive game was unleashed on the serfdom's holds regularly
>The outcasts of society become mercenaries in ever higher numbers when the towns break those expansion and growth bubbles and start declining
>Joyless fucking Calvinism is going fucking crazy militant left-wing and turning protestants against all the other protestants, who are in turn against the catholics.
I'm not saying it wasn't a shit sandwich, but that people were so immured to the shit that things like peasant revolts were fairly uncommon. Like everyone was just so desensitized to their garbage life that they would only do something about it when immediate conditions were unbearable.
>>1293393
fug :DDD
>>1293574
It's always painful to read Spurdo's books about the Hyper War.
>"There was a war. A Hyper War. The last great Hyper War. My people fought a nation called the Hwan for the sake of all creation, and they lost. They lost. Everyone lost. They're all gone now, my family, my friends, even that sky. Ah, you should have seen it, that old planet. The second sun would rise in the south, the mountains would shine. The leaves on the trees were silver. When they caught the light every morning, they lit the forest on fire..."
They say the second sun and Lemuria phased out of existence in the same moment.
It was terrible.
The Nephilim, the Neanderthals... just diappeared.
2,000,000 dead, 10,000,000 wounded...
Jesus...
>>1281616
Maces are armour-piercing and the kinetic energy from a swing will crack your skull even if you're wearing a helmet. It's also likely the swing would cave your helmet in, which is just going to make things worse.
>>1291644
Arguable, but the western front in WW1 was as bad as any condition this planet has seen. Go hang out in Verdun for a day or two and tell me it's not as bad as the Ostfront in ww2
The Great War, because there was much more a seemingly unnecessary suffering than when fight was decided quick and would worth a little more, than one meter of the trench.
>>1292010
>Americans cannot into any forest combat period
I refuse to believe that this is a verbatim quote from Model. Please check your sources and recite.
>>1281418
Excerpts from the book >>1282542
mentions
>It was our task to make again passable for our troops the roads which had been pounded and dug up by shells...two men would take a dead soldier by his head and feet and fling him in a ditch. Human corpses were treated and used exactly as a board in bridge building. Severed arms and legs were flung through the air into the ditch in the same manner.
>Hundreds of shells were bursting very minute. We were ordered to pass that hell singly and at a running pace. We observed how the first of our men tried to get through. Some ran forward like mad, not heeding the shells that were bursting around them, and got through. Others were entirely buried by the dirt dug up by the shells or were torn to pieces by shell splinters. Two men had scarcely reached the line when they were struck by a bull's-eye (the heavy shell exploded at their feet leaving nothing of them). Who can imagine what we were feeling during those harrowing minutes as we lay crouching on the ground not quite a hundred feet away, seeing everything, and only waiting for our turn to come? Suddenly one of the officers would cry, "The next one!"
>All of us greatly feared night patrols, for the hundreds of men killed months ago were still lying between the lines. Those corpses were decomposed to a pulp. So when a man went on nocturnal patrol duty and when he had to crawl in the utter darkness on hands and knees over all those bodies he would now and then land in the decomposed faces of the dead. If then a man happened to have a tiny wound in his hands his life was greatly endangered by the septic virus. As a matter of fact three sappers and two infantrymen of the landwehr regiment No. 17 died in consequence of poisoning by septic virus. Later on that kind of patroling was given up or only resorted to in urgent cases, and only such men were employed who were free of wounds. That led to nearly all of us inflicting skin wounds to ourselves to escape patrol duty."
>>1281431
Yeah, the Iliad is pretty gruesome, especially the parts where they brain each other with rocks. Though I've heard conflicting opinions on whether bashing people's skulls in with rocks was commonplace in bronze age warfare.
>>1284164
fuck me, this would be filling my nightmares if it wasn't eradicated.
except stocks of it are still maintained.
>>1285355
It has always deeply disturbed me that the world stood with Iraq, yet given me a strong feeling of justice that Iran held out in the end.
Insofar as there is ever an unambiguous bad-guy in history, it was Iraq for starting a war of aggression and using chemical weapons. The later tactics of the Iranians such as human wave attacks and indoctrination are undoubtedly horrible, but wouldn't have occurred if not for Iran being attacked in the first place.
The Gulf War feels all the more poetic in that light.
>>1283851
agree 100%
>>1293406
>be Hans circa 1943.
>thinking about how the Bolsheviks broke through a few days ago, were contained
>thinking about how they reached the field hospital and massacred the wounded and raped and killed the nurses before being repelled.
>thinking about how Rudolph froze while on watch last night.
>another enemy attack expected at dawn - leutnant says intel is a at least three battalions will be attacking your company section of the line
>attack begins with pounding of artillery - your divisional guns remain almost quiet due to lacking munitions
>Bolsheviks break through in different sector - retreat ordered too late.
>chaotic dash to southwest, no maps
>your supply unit gets ambushed by partisans and massacred - meats off the menu. So is everything else.
>now 72 hours since start of battle - still marching, Bolsheviks on your tail
>Reach next allied line.
>Rinse and repeat for 3 years, or until dead.
Late period German grunts had it rough as fuck.
>>1288616
>>1296452
thank fuck my grandfather was wounded before the winter and was sent back home, I wouldn't be here if it hadn't been the case! (He was 16 or 17 and met my grandma when he was recovering [spoiler] on the wrong side of the Oder [/spoiler] )
>>1296452
>replace Bolsheviks with japs
>replace supply unit with supply ship
>replace partisans with Jap ships
Exactly like the Pacific front desu. The difference is that Russians and Germans surrender. Japs don't.
>>1296490
I would argue at least freezing was not a risk.
And by 1943 Ostfront was pretty much a no-surrender dealio. Unless murder while unarmed or slow, malnourished death at a POW camp was you cuppa.
>>1281418
Galley warfare
>often involves boarding an enemy ship to duke it out in a narrow area
>may be fucked from the outset by ramming or Greek fire
>if losing, your options are drowning or getting stabbed to death
>>1296502
>at least freezing was not a risk
Oh right, I forgot.
>replace freezing with any number of tropical diseases, 90% humidity and temperatures over 100 degrees year round
>>1296452
If there was a tier system of brutality, the western front of WWI would be at the very top. There's a reason that generation was called "the lost generation"
>>1296980
That was because of the Spanish flu though
>>1287577
I knew an American who was in the battle of the Bulge.
He did not have a good time.
>>1296984
It's applied to the people, mainly men, who reached maturity during or right after WWI.
>>1296980
The Ostfront veterans are very under-analyzed, actually.
In Germany they were left as broken men in a destroyed country - despite what they themselves had suffered through. No time for analysis, and no interest - don't mention the war, move forward.
Similar in the USSR, with the exception that they were left in a country still under Uncle Joe. You know why Victory day (May 9th) was not celebrated until the fucking 70s? Because they party rats were afraid of angry frontoviks in their prime - who would not have taken kindly to fat bastards that never so much as smelled gunpowder appropriating their valour. So no one really analyzed their state of mind, or what they really experienced at that time. Later - it all became "WE WON, THANKS GRAMPS" - which did even less to facilitate any introspection on men who actually fought that war. The book "Ivan's war" is one of the few that actually tries to tackle this, beyond the myth.
Battle of Kursk was over 1 million KIA, MIA and WIA - roughly the same as the Somme.
Except Kursk lasted 5 weeks and the Somme lasted 5 months.
The Ostfront was hell incarnate.
>>1283014
>Maidan
I remember seeing that and just thinking, "What a time to be alive."
>>1298101
Which retard made this?
That is literally the wrong president, you dumbass.
>>1298129
I made it, and I realized afterwards it was the wrong person but I was too lazy to fix it.
>>1298032
>You know why Victory day (May 9th) was not celebrated until the fucking 70s?
Why do you lie on the internet?
>>1293697
>war on autism: on going
Top kek
>>1298032
Stop using German terms like some fat autistic germanboo
>>1283823
>murderously efficient
Nope. Napoleonic war casualties go for around 7% of engaged forces per battle.
>>1298179
>1965 is now the 70s
>becoming an official holiday = celebrating
yeah, some """"point"""" you got there lel
>>1298221
9th of May was not a big deal until Brezhnev made it one - ask your grandparents. That's what mine have told me.
Look at all the massive monuments - all built in the 60s and 70s. 9th of May was not a massive thing until Brezhnev made it one.
Getting stuck like a pig must have been pretty shit, regardless of the time period.
>>1284955
I thought they had truces during certain times of day (or right after the battle) so the wounded and dead could be collected...or Maybe that was the American Civil War?
>>1283211
I lost my shit. 10/10 posting.
>>1298179
Du bist scheiBe, to be honest, you Untermensch
>>1298299
Nah, m8. My gramps was deemed worthy for Germanization.
>>1298235
so suddenly it's the sixties, and suddenly it's not about 'celebrating' but about being a 'massive thing', okay haha
>>1293697
>Jesus
>>1281841
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEiRE_-qdo8
>>1298608
You sound extremely butthurt
World War 1, nothing else compares
>>1298235
>9th of May was not a massive thing until Brezhnev made it one.
First off,
>Moving goalposts the post
Second, that's a load of shit. Victory Day has been a holiday since 1945, since day fucking one mate.
>ask your grandparents. That's what mine have told me.
You're so full of shit it hurts. Just stop. Victory Day has always been a big holiday.
>>1298032
I admit that you got me with the battles such as kursk. However, my point still stands regarding WWI since it was 24/7 of shit conditions. It was so bad that even nurses got PTSD.
