Forums at Society of the Military Horse

Pat,
I have exactly the same record...what a coincindence!
Joe P

Pat...my complaint, if it can be called that, is more with the title than the content. I realize that pratically nothing is known about the subject but I feel that the title should reflect that. Just about everything pre-Mexican war should have been included in the introduction and the title somethi...

If you are interested in the period 1776 to abut 1850 I wouldn't bother. It really begins with the period just before the CW, the earlier stuff veing both scant and vague.

JV Puleo

I've never heard the Camp Funston theory but I have seen a special on British television that posits that the flu began in a huge British transit camp in France (the name of which I've forgotten) much earlier than is generally thought. Wartime censorship and the real reluctance to let the germans be...

Pat... They are probably cutting up black bread. It was a major part of the ration. Actually, the US Medical observer in the Russo-Japapnese War was so impressed with these mobile field kitchens that he strongly recommended they be adopted here. The Kaiser liked them so much he did introduce them in...

I seem to remember that after Waterloo there were something in the area of 25,000 dead horses on the field...far more than could be buried. They were dragged into piles (with draft horses?) and burned.

JVP Puleo

Pat,
Exposing my yankee eastern ignorance, I have to ask, what is a Buckaroo and a Californio? I've never seen the second word before but I always thought of "buckaroo" as a sort of silly slang for a cowboy.

Joe Puleo

Joe, Thats what the Russians thought would be the case at the beginning of WWII - if they destroyed their rolling stock the Germans wouldn't be able to use the railroads. Unfortunately, since their track was wider, all the Germans had to do was pull up one set of rails and move them closer together....

Another interesting point is the the Russian gauge was an American invention - actually decided on by the American who built the first Russian Railroad - the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow. He was Major (I think) Whistler, a West Point graduate and the father of James McNeil Whistler, the painte...

I'm not too surprised at the trains. ALCO (American Locomotive Company) did a huge business with Russia before the revolution and therefore had experience with both kind of material needed and the odd Russian gage width - their railroads are wider than any others in the world. The locomotives were b...

I've seen it many times and it is impressive. It's right across the street from the Bulfinch dome - the original Massachusetts State House - on the corner of Boston Common.
Of course, the sculpture was Augustus St. Gaudens.
JV Puleo

I have a copy of Morgan's "Recollections of a Rebel Reefer" (by which he obviously meant sailor.) The parts dealing with Egypt are interesting but, as the author of the web material says, he was outrageously inept at working for a foreign potentate. I do think that most of the officers hir...

Why New Orleans? Seems like an odd choice unless there is some need for a local "pork barrel" expenditure. I remember from reading the tables in Dusan's book that they spent pratically all of their time on the western frontier fighting Indians etc. I'd think that Texas or the Indian Territ...

When I find it I'll post a very similar picture I have. . . only its my father doing the shaving. In the 30's he was a barber as well as playing in the NG band. He always looked forward to summer camp because he hot only got paid for going, but all he had to do was play the horn. In between practice...

Pat, http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu/r/RUN00000/RUN00000/RUN00059.JPG On the right of this picture, above the heads of the men, is a huge six-cylinder touring car ca. 1910-1912. I can't tell what make but it would have been very expensive no matter who made it. Not the sort of thing I associate with Me...

In refrence to blunt posters, I have the famous WWI poster of a big bloody handprint labeled "The Hun, His Mark, Blot it Out."
Joe Puleo

In the book its an American privateer . . .
Though I wonder how many of them were built to Constitution class standards. They would have been extremely expensive as a private undertaking.
JV Puleo

Years ago I saw the Abel Glantz movie "Napoleon" - the reconstructed version complete with a new musical score. It was put on in genuinely heroic fashion, the entire RI Philharmonic Orchestra provided the music. What sticks in my mind however was that the technical details were quite good,...

I play, or played would be a better description, the Scottish Bagpipes. I was never very good and am now many years out of practice but I still have them and even occasionally pick them up. The case is open on my desk right now. And yes, I do like singing though there are few occasions left where it...

The hymn, "Men of Harlech" is so good that it has a whole series of different versions in Welsh, English and, of all things, German. I googled it and found a site with five or six versions which adds, at the end, that the version used in ZULU is different from the generally used ones. I no...