Experiences We Can Only Imagine

[Anthropoid]

Does anyone ever wonder about some of the more visceral or extreme experiences of this age and sort of wish you could experience them first hand? Examples:

Several thousand guys with sabres or lances on big horses galloping across the landscape . . . just a small number of wild horses galloping is an awe inspiring sight. But several thousand adorned in tack and harness with regaliant uniformed troops charging them into battle!?! I cannot imagine what that would do to your physiology to be near and watch such a spectacle . . . Talk about dropping a load . . .

Lining up in formation with thousands of others guys as the cannon shot and bullets fly . . .

The line of naval battle . . .

The aftermath of some of these battles must have been mind numbingly horrifying . . .

I think that more than any later or earlier period, it is the imagery and the grandeur of the warfare of the Napoleonic Age-=-sitting astride the Rennaissance with its Archaic chivalry, and flourish and the Industrial Era with its brutal mass-power-=-that gives it a large part of its special interest to us modern folks.

[Mus]

To me it is mostly about the crazy uniforms. The other aspects that are difficult to imagine, such as the officers exposing themselves to inordinate risk to show how brave they are and fighting in close order (as a shooter of modern firearms I find the necessity of this because of the crudeness of the weapons involved fascinating), are present in other time periods.

[Anthropoid]

As a fellow NRA member, I too find the firearms of the era to be fascinating. It is almost like a different planet, not simply a different period.

[Marshal Villars]

I was reading through "The Wars of Frederick the Great" by Showalter, and some of the after battle scenes described first hand in there sounded simply horrific.

Men groaning in agony. Riderless horses running around the battlefield with their bowels hanging out or missing legs.

I see this all as a duty I owe to the men who died to understand what happened so that we can work to prevent folly like that again. In a strange way they built a Europe at peace for 70 years now. With hundreds of years of wars and bloodletting finally too crazy to continue. And I believe we have the nuclear bomb to thank for that as well. In a strange way.

Since then, all the superpowers could afford to do was to fight war by proxy. Exporting death around the world. I love Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Beyond Vietnam" speech.

[Mus]

Holding a fortified place for days even weeks waiting for relief while being methodically shelled from closer and closer positions as the enemy digs approaches and parellels for the placement of their heavy guns.

Was thinking about that earlier today after the topic of the current AltHistA Siege of Dresden came up.

[Pistachio]

And yet, maybe not all that different today than it was then:

Nearly all the men in the hollow were wounded, one man --- a recruit named Devlin, I think --- frightfully so, his arm being cut short off. He lived a few minutes only. All were calling for water, of course, but none was to be had. We lay there till dusk,--- perhaps an hour, when the fighting ceased. During that hour, while the bullets snipped the leaves from a young locust-tree growing at the edge of the hollow and powdered us with the fragments, we had time to speculate on many things---among others, on the impatience with which men clamor, in dull times, to be led into a fight. We heard all through the war that the army "was eager to be led against the enemy." It must have been so, for truthful correspondents said so, and editors confirmed it. But when you came to hunt for this particular itch, it was always the next regiment that had it. The truth is, when bullets are whacking against tree-trunks and solid shot are cracking skulls like egg-shells, the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way. Between the physical fear of going forward and the moral fear of turning back, there is a predicament of exceptional awkwardness from which a hidden hole in the ground would be a wonderfully welcome outlet. David Thompson, 9th NY Volunteers

http://www.nycivilwar.us/antwit.html

I agree, warfare today has so much sterility or video game like aspects (TV-guided smart bombs, etc.), but it's still pretty visceral.