The Forgotten Battle (De Slag Om De Schelde)

Alligator amphibious vehicle passing Terrapin amphibious vehicle on the Schledt.

This is a 2020 Dutch film which has been released with dubbed English, in place of Dutch, on Netflix.

The Battle of the Scheldt, which this film deals with, is hardly a "forgotten" battle, but it is a battle which is no doubt more remembered by the Dutch and the Canadians than it is for Americans.  A continual complaint of European audiences is that American films tend to treat World War Two as if the United States was the only Allied nation in it.  The complaint really isn't true, as there are certainly plenty of contrary examples, but this film is a little unusual for an American audience as it doesn't involve the US at all, while still dealing with a very important battle.

The Battle of the Scheldt was an October 1944 to November 1944 series of Allied campaigns that were aimed at opening up control of the Scheldt estuary so that Allied shipping could make it to Antwerp.  Antwerp had been taken intact, but because the Germans controlled the banks of the Scheldt it was of no use to the Allies, which desperately needed the port.   The task fell to the Canadian army which, in a series of attacks beginning on October 2, 1944, and running through November 8, 1944, took the banks of the Scheldt. It was a hard fought campaign.

This fictionalized portrayal of those events are centered on three principal characters.  One is a Dutch a young Dutch woman,Teuntje Visser, played by Dutch actress and model Susan Radder, who comes into the underground basically both accidentally and reluctantly, a British paratrooper, William Sinclair, played by Jamie Flatters, and a young Dutchman who is a German soldier, Marinus van Staveren, played by Gijis Blom.  The story involves three intersecting plot lines in order to construct a story that involves the climatic battle.

The story actually starts off, surprisingly for a Dutch film, with the Van Staveren character, opening up with a battle on the Russian front.  Van Staveren, who is wounded in the battle, turns out to be a willing volunteer.  While the Dutch are justifiably remember for their opposition to the Nazis, a little over 20,000 Dutch citizens did serve in the German armed forces.  Cornelius Ryan noted in his book A Bridge Too Far that the number was significant enough that parents in some regions of the country worried about what to do with photographs of their sons in uniform taken while they were in the German Army.

Van Stavern is befriended by a mentally decaying wounded SS lieutenant in the same hospital who, as his last act, gets him transferred to a desk job in the west, in what turns out to be a unit that's going to Holland, his native country. That's where he first encounters Visser, who reports with her father to a newly appointed German commander who calls them in as he's aware that Visser's brother was involved in an incident in which he threw a camera through a windshield of a German truck, resulting in a fatal accident.

That ties into an earlier scene setting up that the brother is part of the Dutch underground.  We're introduced to the Visser's there while they watch the Germans retreating in a scene that's much reminiscent of the opening scenes of A Bridge Too Far.

William Sinclair we're introduced to in the context of the topic Ryan's book addresses. He's a British glider pilot in the British airborne whose glider is damaged over the Scheldt and is cut loose to crash on a flooded island.  This occurs before the offensive on the Scheldt commences and he and the party of men he is with try to make their way towards dry land and the Allies.  Sinclair eventually makes it to the Canadian army and is in the battle with it.

The stories all, as noted, intertwine.

The film is well presented and presents good, and credible, drama.  It's realistically portrayed but avoids the post Saving Private Ryan gore that American films have tended to engage in.  None of the characters, interestingly, is without significant personal failings, thereby presenting a much less heroic and more nuanced picture of people at war than is usually the case.  A Dutch film, the central portrayed Dutch characters all have significant personal defects and are not heroic. As a movie, its a good movie.

So how does it do on history?

Well, fairly good  It is a dramatized version of history, but the battle on the Scheldt did come after Market Garden and it was a Canadian effort, as the battle portrays.  The reasons for the battle are accurately presented.  It's nicely done.  Perhaps my only real criticisms are based on things that I don't know if they're accurate or not.  One is that the British paratrooper ends up fighting with the Canadians in Canadian uniform.  I tend to think that he would have simply been evacuated upon crossing into Allied lines.  And I'm skeptical that the Germans would have assigned a Dutch private in their service to a unit serving in Holland, as it opens up the obvious loyalty problem.  Having said that, this is speculation on my part.

In terms of material details, this film also does quite well.  Uniforms and equipment are all presented accurately  The glider scenes are unique for a film as far as I'm aware of, and are really horrifying.

So, well worth watching.

Labor Day, September 1, 1941. Marking Targets for Death and Labor Day Addresses.

It was Labor Day in the United States, falling of course on the first Monday in September.

On this Monday, the German government announced that all Jews within the confines of the territory controlled by it, at home or conquered, were required to wear yellow Stars of David.

German poster declaring that "Whoever wears this badge is an enemy of our people."

The barbarity of this action can hardly be imagined today.  It marked the wearer as somebody to be subject to public scorn merely for his religion, or ethnicity, and ultimately it would mark them for death.

The yellow badge seems to date as far back as the Muslim Umayyad Caliphate in the early 8th Century and have been subsequently revived and kept in force for centuries as a means of marking Jews living within the caliphates control.  Both Christians and Jews were subject to repressive religious laws within Muslim territories, and indeed in some Muslim countries today being an open Christian is extremely risky, and conversion from Islam, although widely occurring, illegal.  Clothing requirements were in fact expanded beyond this to include other features.

Having said that, the practice of requiring Jews, and Muslims, to wear distinct clothing also expanded to Christian countries by the 13th Century, although with a different concern in mind.  As has been dealt with here elsewhere, originally marriage did not require a Priest to officiate and could be privately contracted in a fairly informal manner.  There were concerns in the 1200s that Christians and non Christians were falling into sexual relations that gave rise to invalid marriages in a hasty fashion, and therefore clothing requirements were imposed so that couples in the heat of the moment might be aware that they were going where they couldn't legally go and contracting what would have been regarded as invalid marriages.

The Germans, of course, were readopting the practice in order to make the Jews despised "others".  It was resisted in some occupied areas, such as Denmark, where non Jews took up wearing them as well, and in occupied areas of Catholic Czechoslovakia the authorities had to ban hat tipping to those wearing them, where the residents had taken it up as a sign of respect to the victims.

On the same day, Leningrad came within German artillery range.

The Canadians began to accept enlistments for the Canadian Army Women's Corps.  Of note, the day prior the British had deployed women in mixed gender anti-aircraft units in the UK, a rare example of women in a Western Allied military having a combat role in the war.  

The United States assumed responsibility for Atlantic convoys from Newfoundland to Iceland.  This was undoubtedly an example of direct participation in the war, even though the United States had not yet declared war.

The Soviet Union murdered retired Estonian military commander Karl Parts.

Parts had served in the Imperial Russian Army but had gone over to his native Estonia upon its separation from Russia.  He'd served against the German Freikorps and the Reds there, but had retired in 1925 and was a farmer thereafter.  The Soviets took him into custody in 1940 when they invaded the country and then murdered him on this day.  He was 55 years old.

President Roosevelt delivered a Labor Day address in which he stated that American labor bore the responsibility of winning World War Two.

KYW-TV, the first US television station outside of New York City, went on the air in Philadelphia.  It's still on the air there. 

Ted Williams appeared on the cover of Life Magazine.

Cornell, Wisconsin, suffered a serious flood.

Oyster harvesting seasons commenced.

Wednesday August 13, 1941. Dominion Women At War.

The Canadian Army Women's Corps was created by the Canadian government on this day in 1941.  It was an auxiliary of the Army, not officially part of it, until 1942.

On the same day, coincidentally, the Australian Women's Army Service was also started.

The creation of both organizations reflected the growing manpower shortage in both countries as wartime service stretched their capacities to fully staff and man their military structures.  At the time, neither country had resorted to conscription to fill their armed forces.  Indeed, in both countries the restrictions on the service of conscripts would always be considerably more extensive than they were in the United States during the war.

Both organizations utilized women in administrative and support roles.  The recruitment of women for military service for the second time in twenty years clearly pointed towards a more permanent role for them in the military in the future.

In the US, the Administration suspended the eight-hour work day for mechanics and laborers employed by the War Department in order to speed the construction of military installations.  And Ford Motors introduced a plastic body demonstrator automobile.

On the same day, the German occupation authorities in the Baltic ordered the codification of all property belonging to Jews.

Poster Saturday: Recycling the old ones. . .

As we've noted before, the first half of the 20th Century was really the golden age of poster.  After that, color photography and television seems to have really killed it. As media became much more freely available, well, illustrations lost their allure.  By the 1950s, the age of mass posters was over, although it'd enjoy a brief revival in the 1960s, with a certain style unique to that period, for concert posters.

None of which means, ironically, that the posters of the early 20th Century still don't retain their original impact in some ways.  And for that reason, those of World War Two are frequently recycled and updated.  Here, the Canadian Army has done just that.

Pretty clever really.

Mid Week At Work: Howitzers head west: Military sends guns to B.C. for avalanche control

Howitzers head west: Military sends guns to B.C. for avalanche control: Castanet- The military has mobilized, moving large 105-mm Howitzers west from Manitoba. The annual pilgrimage is part of the Canadian Armed Forces efforts to keep drivers along the Trans-Canada . . .

Poster Saturday: If The Cap Fits

June 5, 1944. The Canadians pass through Rome.

Hearkening back to yesterday's entry, on this day Canadian troops fighting in Italy passed through Rome. By late that night the world's attention would be directed elsewhere as the first airborne operations of Operation Overlord commenced.

Americans are fond of the formulation of one war or another being "the forgotten war", some of which are, and some of which are not.  Canadians, however, have by and large forgotten that they even have a distinct martial history.

Canada's role in World War One and World War Two was enormous.  It's participation as part of the British Commonwealth forces was outsized and Canadians fought in every theater of the war, something that's been forgotten to a large degree. Even in the Pacific, which is not commonly associated with Canada in World War Two, there was a Canadian contribution, first in the form of Canadian troops attached to the British in the early stages of the war, and then as part of the largely American effort in the Aleutians, where one in six of the soldiers committed to that effort was Canadian.

Canadians are best remembered in World War Two for their role in the Dieppe Raid and their following large role in Operation Overlord and the campaign in France. But they were part of the Commonwealth effort in Italy prior to that.

June 4, 1944. The Allies Take Rome

Americans and at least one soldier (or perhaps a partisan) from some other army fighting in Italy in 1944.

We don't commemorate that many World War Two anniversaries here, but we would note a significant one that's likely to get lost with all of the focus on a huge World War Two anniversary this week.

On this day, in 1944, the Allies took Rome.

Fighting in Italy, which had commenced with the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and then spread to the Italian mainland with Allied landings in September 1944, had been a hard slog all the way.  The Italians collapsed but the Germans put up a stout resistance, although the fact that it was a resistance and that they proved incapable of pushing the Allies off of the Italian peninsula pointed inevitably towards how the war would resolve.

The Allies had been pushing towards and around Rome for months and attempted the infamous seaborne landings at Anzio in an attempt to accomplish it.  It's occupation on this day in 1944 was actually a strategic blunder as in order to accomplish it Gen. Mark Clark allowed the German 10th Army to escape.

Americans entered Rome on this day in 1944.  The Canadian Army passed through the city without stopping the following day. The German Tenth Army would be responsible for doubling Allied casualties in the following weeks, so while the occupation was momentous, it wasn't without significant delayed costs that would have been avoided to some degree if a different more strategic approach had been taken.

The Kiwis had the coolest hats.

April 25, 1919. Anzac Day, J'Accuse, Canadians return.

On this day in 1919, the French film J'Accuse was released.  

J'Accuse can legitimately be regarded as one of the very first anti war movies ever made.  The message of the film was made all the more potent by the fact that the director had used actual French soldiers for its filming while the war was still on.  Reportedly 80% of the soldier extras in the film were killed in action before the war was over.

The movie famously features the ghosts of the dead in accusation, but it also features a somewhat complicated betrayal by a love interest plot fairly typical of early films.

Also on this day, Australian soldiers marched for ANZAC Day parades in several cities, but those in Sidney were cancelled due to the Spanish Flu.  Contrary to widespread popular claim, this was not the first ANZAC Day. The official date had been established in 1916.  This was the first post war ANZAC Day.

While Empire troops were marching in Australia, they were arriving in New York on their way home to Canada as well.

Canadian officers Sir Henry Worth Thornton (president of the Canadian National Railway in civilian life) and Air Commodore Alfred Cecil Critchley arriving in New York City on the Aquitania.  Both general officers are wearing classic examples of British officer dress.

The troop ship Aquitania arrived with Canadian soldiers on their way home, greeted by at least one British dignitary.

Gen. Thornton with Sir James Benjamin Bell, Timber Comptroller for the British government.

Ranger Texas, April 25, 1919.

Ranger Texas was photographed.

Ranger was where famous western historian Walter Prescott Webb went to school, being from a nearby farm.

March 23, 1919. Wilson Tours, The Sun's Readers tour the Wedding Party

On this day in 1919, President and Mrs. Wilson toured the former front, taking in a gun emplacement that had been occupied by the Paris Gun.

As readers here will recall, the Germans were supposed to destroy the huge artillery pieces but instead they carted them off, where they disappeared into chaotic post war Germany.

Readers of the New York newspaper The Sun saw a photo of Princess Patricia of Connaught's wedding party.

The princess had a huge US and Canadian following, in part because she had travelled in Canada in her youth.  Canada honored her by placing her image on a one dollar bank note in 1917 and then again in 1918 when Canada contributed Alexander Hamilton Gault's privately raised and equipped Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry to the Great War in 1918.  The unit, in which she was an honorary colonel in chief, was the British Empire's last privately raised unit, and the fact that it was successfully raised when the Irish Canadian Rangers really weren't, even though both were raised from Montreal, says something in and of itself.  In February 1919 she married Royal Navy Commander Alexander Ramsey, who was of royal blood.  He would live until 1972, she until 1974.  She was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

Cap badge of the Princess Pat's.  The unit still exists.

Canadian Special Operations Forces troops and American Rangers on parade. How are you going to tell them apart? Berets everywhere.

An odd thought occurred to me yesterday after posting this item, for which I've reset out the photograph below.

But Wait Once Again, the Canadian Special Operations Forces Pink & Green service uniform. Was Lex Anteinternet: But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the ...

 Canadian soldiers of the Canadian Special Operations Forces marching past sailors and airmen of the Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.  This Canadian Army photo is about the only one available to illustrate the new service uniform of the unit which is distinctly different from the Canadian Army's in cut and color.  It's odd to realize the extent to which an American uniform is adopted here by a military that really doesn't like to be confused with American services as everything about the uniform except for the beret and the insignia recalls an American World War Two item. It's also interesting to note the extent to which World War Two uniform items have been either retained or brought back into use by various armies. . . indeed nearly every army that fought in World War Two.

Now that the U.S. Army, in late 2018, did what the Canadian Special Operations Force did in 2017, how are you going to tell who is who when they're in their pink & green uniform?

It won't be easy, at a distance.  And headgear has a lot to do with that.

Now, with the American uniform, troops are authorized to wear the wheelhouse cap or the garrison cap, but they're also authorized to wear the beret.

Now, as I've commented on it from time to time, I'll be frank on what everyone already knows.  I hate berets. They're just silly headgear. But I will concede that they look sharp in some military applications. And those applications, in my view, are in other armies, not the American Army.  Americans don't know how to wear berets and they look weird when they do.

But they've come into U.S. use and they don't seem to be leaving anytime soon, unfortunately.  In fact, beret coloration is expanding.

While I know that I've posted on it before, I'll briefly recap here, so that my comments above make sense.  The U.S. Army first used berets in 1956 when the Special Forces started wearing them in a green coloration that soon came to identify them. That first use was unauthorized but it soon came to be approved.

Special Forces troops in 1956 before the wearing of the beret was authorized.  These were obviously private purchase and lacked the stiffner that later U.S. berets featured.

The color was "Rifle Green" which is a color the British also had used for awhile, but not for commandos.  It was really close, however, to the British "Commando Green" which was worn by the Special Boat Service, one of several British special forces units created during World War Two, albeit one that was part of the British Marines.

The similar coloration was no doubt intentional as the British really brought their style of beret, which is generally what the U.S. and Canada both use, into military use when it adopted berets early in World War Two. The French had been wearing a differently pattern for a long time for their mountain troops, the Chasseurs Alpine, but that pattern is both huge and distinct.  By going with the British style beret and the dark green color, the Special Forces were intentionally adopting the British coloration and use.  That other British units use green berets of other shades was apparently not noticed or, because there was no intent to adopt berets for general use at the time, simply not worried about.

It's odd, however, that tan or khaki wasn't chosen, as we'll see.

Special Forces Warrant Officer in blue dress uniform wearing the Special Forces Rifle Green colored beret.  Note the crossed arrows that are the symbol of this branch.

Canada, it might be noted, also has a green beret in a dark shade, that being Canadian Forces Green.  It's issued to every soldier in the Army who doesn't wear a different shade, in keeping with the post World War Two effort of the Canadian Army to have a distinct looking uniform.  In their current dress uniform, therefore, they look just like U.S. Army members of the Special Forces back when the U.S. Army Class A uniform was the Army Green Uniform.

Oops.

Anyhow, the U.S. Army adopted the black beret for general use when berets went Army wide.  We've discussed this before but this upset Rangers who had worn it unofficially in Vietnam, as had tankers in the 1970s.  The tanker use actually also relied upon the prior British use going back to the 1920s, which was ironically copied soon thereafter by German tankers, in adopting black berets, something that probably reflected the grime present in armored vehicles.  Canadian tankers also wear black berets, leaning on the British pattern.

German Panzerjaeger in 1989 wearing a black beret of the British pattern.

Indeed, British tankers were the first to wear the type of beret that has spread to general military use.  It came about due to British tankers being exposed to French Chasseurs Alpine during World War One and deciding that their headgear would be handy for use in tanks.  The British didn't like the giant French beret however, and redesigned the modern beret based on its style but using the Basque beret size, for a new pattern.  The resulting beret is smaller and closer fitting than the American and Canadian ones.

The U.S. Army beret is in fact really close to the Canadian one but we never quite got the shape and size right.  Some American troops, for that reason, buy the Canadian ones aftermarket, as they look better.

U.S. Army private shortly after the black beret was first authorized.  The cut of the American beret has never been quite right.

This, therefore, meant that there was also a time when Canadian tankers in dress uniform looked identical to American regular soldiers of all branches, save the Special Forces and the Airborne, in dress uniform.

The Airborne of both nations, we'd note, was different as the United States also went with the British maroon beret for airborne, after the black beret came in, which the Canadians had been doing ever since World War Two when their troops served with the British airborne, who had adopted that color in one of the worst choices for military headgear of all time.  It was particularly bad as red stands out and the British airborne had a very strange practice of wearing their berets in combat, which was very ill conceived.  Canada doesn't have many paratroopers however so confusion would be unlikely, and the British beret looks quite a bit different when worn by a British soldier.

Brigadier General of the 82nd Airborne when the Army Combat Uniform was in use.  It's photographs like this which show why the Army had adopted the pinks and greens as use of a combat uniform for a portrait shows that your dress uniform is really disliked.

All of this really upset Rangers who had unofficially had a beret at one time only to have the color co-opted by the Army for everyone.  To rectify that situation, the Army adopted the tank beret.

Ranger Colonel in the ACU uniform with the tan beret.

And that's where we get back to our point.

The tan beret, like the green beret, went back to World War Two British commandos for inspiration, in this case the Special Air Service, the commando branch of the World War Two British Army (well. . one of them anyhow).  They use that color and have since World War Two.

So does the Canadian Special Operations Forces, for obvious reasons.  So does the Australian SAS.  So did the Rhodesian SAS.  In other words, everyone inspired by the British, have done the same.

Which means that American Rangers in the new Army Green Uniform will look just like the Canadian Special Operations Forces commandos in theirs.

Odd.

Well not quite identical.  Or maybe not.

The Army is authorizing Airborne units to wear World War Two style russet paratrooper boots with their pinks & greens. The Canadian Special Operations Forces did the same in 2017.  Will that extend to Rangers?

I don't know.  But if it does, and I think it likely, that has to be a bit aggravating to the Canadians who got there first.

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Postscript

As we've discussed every other sort of beret in use by the U.S. Army we ought to mention the new Security Forces Assistance Brigade, which is a military advisory group.

They wear brown.  It's supposed to symbolize mud, i.e., "boots on the ground".

This is also the color, fwiw, worn by British cavalry units, or at least a couple of them, so there's obviously no intent to follow the British here.  However, it was also the color used by Rhodesian Selous Scouts, which is a bit awkward.

One thing we noted here is that the Canadian Special Operations Forces are not a branch of the Canadian Army, but a separate force made up of members of other branches of the Canadian Forces.  We also noted that the Canadian Forces in general have a beret and that originally the troops of the Special Operations Forces at one time wore the beret and insignia of the units they were drawn from, much like European mercenaries once did (oops).  This same practice, we'd note, is sort of done now by the U.S. Security Forces Assistance Brigade in reverse.  It includes members of the Air Force who wear that beret when serving with it.

French Chasseurs Alpine wearing their distinctive enormous blue beret.  They also have a dress white giant beret.  Blue is the same color worn by French air commandos.

Indeed, the Air Force has its own set of berets, some of which lean on the Army's colors.  Air Force pararescue men wear maroon berets, which recalls the British Airborne's use of them and which is also done by the U.S. Army's airborne.  They also use a scarlet beret for combat controllers for some reason, which is odd.  That same color is the traditional color of the British military police who have worn a scarlet cap for eons and who now wear a scarlet beret.  Canadian military police also wear a scarlet beret. In spite of that, the USAF policemen wear a dark blue beret.  Oh well. The Boy Scouts at one time also wore a scarlet beret.  Dark blue in British use is now the general issue beret, like the American black, for everybody who isn't otherwise issued one of the many colors they issue, replacing the khaki colored (OD) beret of World War Two in that use.

French Marine paratroopers (its complicated) wearing British style maroon berets.  French Legionnaires wear green berets in all uses.  French soldiers often wear remarkably inconsistent uniforms and this is an example.  The soldier on the left is carrying a French pattern bayonet and wears combat boots that are based on the old U.S. M1943 type.  The soldier on the right is carrying a bayonet of a different pattern that resembles one for a Soviet AKM.  His combat boots are also two buckle boots but are of a different pattern.

Bizarrely, USAF Special Operations Weather Technicians have their own beret, and it's pewter grey.  And Survival Operations and Escape specialist wear a sage green one.

USAF Survival and Escape specialist wearing a sage green, British style, beret.  Note how closer fitting it is compared to the typical U.S. Army beret.

And their Survival Escape and evasion specialists wear a sage green beret for some reason.

Navy Seal, Vietnam War.  The Seals have never had an official beret, but obviously at least a few of them wore them unofficially back in the day.

All of which is more than a little confusing.

But Wait Once Again, the Canadian Special Operations Forces Pink & Green service uniform. Was Lex Anteinternet: But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the ...

Ah, the seductive nature of those Pinks and Greens.

Just yesterday we published this item reconsidering our item of earlier this week criticizing the Army's new re-adoption of the officers uniform for World War Two, to be issued to all ranks:

Lex Anteinternet: But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the ...: Signal Corps lieutenant, World War Two. On Monday, I ran this item criticizing, I guess, the Army's adoption of a new Army Green U...

Something I didn't note is that the U.S. Army isn't the only Army that's taken this path recently. . . the Canadian military has, on a very limited basis, as well.

 Canadian soldiers of the Canadian Special Operations Forces marching past sailors and airmen of the Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force.  This Canadian Army photo is about the only one available to illustrate the new service uniform of the unit which is distinctly different from the Canadian Army's in cut and color.  It's odd to realize the extent to which an American uniform is adopted here by a military that really doesn't like to be confused with American services as everything about the uniform except for the beret and the insignia recalls an American World War Two item. It's also interesting to note the extent to which World War Two uniform items have been either retained or brought back into use by various armies. . . indeed nearly every army that fought in World War Two.

What the heck?

Yes indeed.

This uniform was adopted solely by the Canadian Special Operations Forces and if it appears to strongly recall The American officers uniform of the World War Two era, it is supposed to.  Indeed, other than the khaki beret, it looks a lot like the Army Service Uniform for the American airborne.

The reason for this is that Canadian armed forces are making an effort to provide for a distinctive uniform for the Canadian Special Operations Forces command, which otherwise would have worn the dress uniform of the Canadian Army.  Having a special dress uniform for a single unit would be a really odd thing in the American Army but not in the Canadian Army in general which is, after all, an heir to the  British tradition, and the troops of the Special Operations Forces aren't actually in the Canadian Army, as odd as that may seem.

In the British Army individual unit uniforms are extremely common and at one time were in fact the rule.  I'm not an expert by any means on British uniforms but I can relate that they followed a somewhat similar path to that of American uniforms in that the British Service Uniform was at one time its field uniform except that the  British wisely never phased it out as a dress uniform and it simply kept on in use in a somewhat modified form as the No. 2 Dress uniform.  It's a sharp looking uniform and its sort of what the U.S. Army is basically trying to get back to.  Be that as it may, where the U.S. Army and the British Army really depart is that the U.S. Army has never liked distinctive uniforms for individual units for their dress uniform and the British have always done that.

The Canadian Army was naturally heavily influenced in every fashion by the British Army and that has reflected in its uniform heritage.  It adopted British Service Dress early in the 20th Century when the British did but it's also traditionally had a lot of individual unit dress uniforms.  When the Canadian military was technically unified (which even some Canadians either don't realize or refuse to actually acknowledge) the Canadian Army somewhat followed the path of the American Army, however, and adopted a new Service Uniform of very dark green. At that time the Canadians were attempting to really break away from their British heritage for some reason in all things.  That made it plain that Canadians weren't British, but it also meant that the new uniform wasn't as good looking as the old one had been.  Indeed, at first glance its really difficult to tell the Canadian Service Uniform from an older shade of the Army Green Uniform, which gives rise to a common complaint in the Canadian Army that they look like the American Army, at any one point, of about twenty years prior.

The Canadian Special Operations Branch is technically a separate branch of the armed forces in the Canadian system which reflects the unified nature of the Canadian Armed Forces.  This is truly odd compared to other militiaries  but it is not wholly illogical.  It prevents Canada from having what the United States, and to a lesser extent the United Kingdom, have in the existence of a multiplicity of special forces. Canada only has one such unit but its technically not in the Army, Navy or Air Force and those in it have transferred into it from any branch of the Canadian military.  Given that, the thought was that it could have its own uniform that expressed its own heritage.

What that heritage is, of course, was a bit problematic. During World War Two Canada fielded its own airborne troops at the battalion level but it didn't field its own Special Air Service or Special Boat Service. At that time, if a Canadian wanted to serve in that capacity he could transfer to the British units.  A special unit was created during the war which included Canadians and Americans jointly, that being the First Special Service Force, however, and that unit was equipped and uniformed by the American Army.  Contrary to what is generally supposed, while that unit saw action in Italy, it was disbanded during the war with its members mostly going to the airborne units of their respective nations, showing the level to which airborne units were regarded as elite at the time.

At any rate, while Canada has occasionally had special forces units since World War Two, its chosen the 1st SSF as its origin point. When the Special Operations Branch was formed in 2006 it wore Canadian Army dress uniforms at first but recently, as it is its own branch, it's won the right to have its own distinctive dress uniform.  As it wishes to recall the 1st SSF in its heritage, it adopted a variant of the dress uniform worn by the officers of that unit, including Corcoran jump boots, as its dress uniform, although the insignia are distinctly Canadian. The headgear adopted is the tan beret which was also adopted by the Rangers of the U.S. Army but Canadians, in a practice that otherwise unintentionally recalls the practice adopted by post war European mercenaries, wear the badges of their former units that they transferred in from.

So what's this say, if anything, about the Pink & Green uniform?

Well, people like the way it looks.  And it also seems that for a lot of nations, ours included, World War Two, while it may have been a giant bloodbath, is looked back upon somewhat fondly.

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Related threads:

Pinks and Greens

But wait, Captain Crabby, maybe you've missed the point. More Pinks & Greens.

January 19, 1919. Echos from a distant wall. Red Army commences assault on Allies in Northwestern Russia, the first real democratic German election, the Atrocities of the Turks upon the Armenians in Film, Welcomes to Returning Troops and Odd News.

On this day the Allied Expeditionary Force in northwestern Russia came under attack in a series of events that would lead to its practical defeat at the hands of the Red Army, even though it fought well throughout the ordeal.

The prior summer and fall the Allies, under the command of British General Poole, had advanced south from their bridgehead at Arkhangelsk.  The Americans had dispatched the 339th Infantry, a unit made up of Michigan and Wisconsin draftees, to the mission in northwestern Russia without instruction.  Upon arrival, their commander, Lt. Col Stewart (MoH from the Philippines) agreed to Gen. Poole's use of American troops and in fact he basically sat the rest of the expedition out from Arkangelsk thereafter.  The most successful unit of the campaign, in turn, turned out to be Company A of the 339th which advanced sought of the resort town of Shenkursk that fall.

Shenkursk in 1919. Shenkursk was a pre war restort town and had only come under Allied occupation that previous fall when a British commanded offensive caused Company A of the 339th Infantry to capture it.

Allied Expeditionary forces, in this case American, British and Canadian troops, came under attack in a major battle of the Russian Civil War that's all but forgotten, as in fact is the case for the Allied expedition in the context of being direct combatants itself, on this day in a Red Army effort to regain the ground lost that fall.

The Battle of Shenkursk commenced on this day with a giant Red Army artillery bombardment on Allied, principally American, positions at Nizhnyaya Gora followed by a 1,000 man bayonet charge on a position held only by 47 American troops of the 339th Infantry, and supported by nearby company of White Cossack's.  The American force obviously had no choice but to withdraw, but it was ordered to do so only after putting up as much as a delaying action as possible.  While they were doing this the Cossack company arrived but withdrew after their commanding officer was wounded, showing the unreliability of White forces.  By the time the American retreat was authorized, the streets of the town were covered by Red machine guns so an alternative route under heavy fire and with no artillery support was undertaken at great loss.  The artillery, for its part, was White Russian and the cannoneers at first abandoned their posts until they were compelled to return at pistol point by the overall American commander, Cpt. Otto "Viking" Odjard. Unfortunately, they returned to their posts too late to provide covering artillery fire.  As a result, only American soldiers, including their commander Lt. Meade, made it through the fire to return to Allied lines.

339th Infantry in Russia in 1918.  The majority of the men were conscripts from Michigan, rounded out by conscripts from Wisconsin.

Showing the unreliability of the Red troops next, they failed to followup on their initial success and the Americans were able to return to the field during the day and recover their wounded.  By nightfall, only nineteen remained uncovered, of which six were known to be dead.  During the night, two of the missing made it through the Red lines back to Allied lines.  

Unit crest of the 339th Infantry recalling their Russian service.

Overnight, Canadian field artillery arrived with artillerymen who took over two 3 in. filed artillery pieces that had been abandoned by the White Russians.  The Cossack company undertook a strategic withdrawal from Ust Padenga to Vsyokaya Gora without being detected by the Reds.  Over the next three days outnumbered Allied forces held on against repeated attacks by a reinforced Red Army.  The Allied forces inflicted heavy casualties on the Reds, but were ultimately compelled to withdraw on January 22.  By January 24, after fighting a delaying action at Sholosha, they arrived at Shenkursk where they were quickly surrounded by the pursing Red forces.

At Shenkursk Cpt. Odjard requested instructions from his commander, British General Edmund Ironside, who was in Arkangelsk.  Ironside ordered the Allied force to withdraw.  That withdrawal was commenced at midnight of January 24 by way of an unguarded logging trail.  The Allied withdrawal was conducted entirely at night and the Red Army commenced firing artillery on a new empty Shenkursk the morning of the 25th.  The retreating men occupied Vystavka on January 27 where  they were again engaged by the Reds over several weeks.  

The resulting Allied retreat cleared the far north western Russia of Allied forces and therefore constituted an important Red victory.  With the Allies marginalized in the north, the only forces opposing the Reds in that region were the Whites, who would prove to be ineffective in the north.

The Allied mission in Russia never had a clear purpose to start with and was seen in strikingly different terms by the different Allied forces committed to it.  In the east, the Americans were strictly precluded from engaging in offensive actions.  In the north, they'd been given no instructions at all and fell under British command. The British saw their mission as being to directly provide for the defeat of the Reds and to aid the various White forces.  The British commanded forces performed well and outfought the Red Army, but they were never committed in sufficient strength to be able to really engage an army the size of their growing opponents and had, in fact, basically outrun their ability to control ground in any event that prior fall.

The German flag under the Weimar Republic . . and again for the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949.

In Germany, proportional voting for the Reichstag, featuring the first election in which women were allowed to vote, took place, although the election was trailed out as German soldiers stationed in the East, where things remained tense, did not vote until February 2.  The election is regarded as the first really democratic election in German history.

The results were that the Social Democratic Party took 163 seats out of 421 giving them the largest block in the Reichstag but not a majority.  Second position went to the Centre Party, a Christian Democratic Catholic Party, which took 91 seats, with the third position going to the left of center German Democratic Party.  The German Communist Party didn't take any seats, but the Independent Socialist, a heavily left of center party took 22 seats.  The SDP would add two seats after the soldiers in the east voted in February.

Because the structure of the German government varied from other parliaments, the immediate impact of this is a little difficult to explain.  Philipp Scheidemann of the SDP would become the chancellor, but would only take office in February, and would ultimately resign in protest over the terms of the Versailles Treaty.

The initial German election offered some hope for the future as holding an election, for a country that had never had fully fair elections before, right after a major defeat in war and during the midst of a civil war is a difficult feat.  Under the circumstances, the election was a triumph for German democracy and, moreover, for the SDP which, while it did not obtain a majority of seats, acquired more than any other party and essentially had its views ratified by the majority of Germans, including a majority of serving soldiers.  Democracy in Germany would prove to be fragile, however, and the Germans would hold four more elections prior to the Great Depression really setting in. In that last pre Great Depression election the German National People's Party, a right wing nationalist party, took second position demonstrating the rise of German nationalism even before that time.  In that same election the Centre Party and the Communist Party, in third and fourth places, were not far behind the SDP, although all were fairly far behind it.  In the next election, 1930, the Nazi Party was in second place with 107 seats to the SDP's 143 and the Communist Party in third with 77.  In the last democratic election prior to World War Two the Nazi's supplanted the SDP as being in first position, taking 196 seats to the SDP's 121 while the Communist took an even 100.  Oddly enough, even under the Nazi's first election in 1933, the last election in which other parties appeared, the Communist took 88 and the SDP took 120.  No party ever had over 50% of the German vote in any election.

In Washington state the Knights of Columbus dedicated a hut for returning servicemen on this Sunday, January 19, 1919.  The Knights had been one of the really active service organizations of the Great War, which is remarkable in that the country remained, at that time, very much a Protestant country in spite of having a significant Catholic minority.

Closer to home, and in-spite of ongoing combat involving American troops in Russia, and no official peace in Europe, troops were pouring home.  Service organizations were turning their attention on that in an era in which the support for soldiers did not have the infrastructure it later would, as this "yard long" photograph of a dedication of a Knights of Columbus hut in Washington state demonstrates.

Like all service religion based service organizations of World War One, the Knights hut served everyone, not just Catholics.  

I've talked about the Knights of Columbus a little bit, but not much, in my threads about service and fraternal organizations I've posted here.  The Knights were formed for a variety of reasons, including the fact that fraternal organizations were huge in the United States in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. So huge, that membership in one was practically necessary for people in certain lines of work.  Some of those organizations were Protestant or at least Anti Catholic in nature and therefore Catholics could not join them, or they were secret societies which Catholics are precluded by their faith from joining.  So, as a reaction, the Knights were founded.

I've seen it claimed, and indeed in a state journal run by one of the various Knights of Columbus state organizations, that World War One abated anti Catholicism in the United States but I don't think that's really true.  Indeed, Al Smith would loose the Presidential election of 1928 principally because he was a Catholic.  It would take World War Two and the GI Bill to mainstream Catholics into American society and it would take the Presidency of John F. Kennedy to really blend them into the American fabric to such an extent that their distinctiveness was substantially lost, in no small part due to their own accommodations with American life that they had up until then not acquiesced to.  Interestingly enough, in spite of notable Catholics rising to high position in American life, including the featuring of some of them absolutely abandoning the positions of their faith, a strong element of prejudice remains, as exhibited during the 2016 Presidential election in which a Clinton staffer insulted the entire faith. Recently, interestingly enough, liberal commentator Jill Filipovic called the Knights of Columbus an extremist group for holding traditional Catholic opinions on such things as abortion and the nature of marriage, which would also put the Knights in tune with the bulk of human history and nature.  If it were any other group other than a Christian one, and more particularly a Catholic one, there'd be cries of outrage over that.  But as is often noted, anti Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice in American life.

Another anti Christian prejudice hit the movie screens on this Sunday, January 19, 1919, that being the massacre of the Armenians by the Turks, which was both ethnic and religious in character, the Armenians being ancient residents in the region in which the Turks were originally an invader and also a people that had remained faithful to their faith, the Armenian Apostolic Church. That church in fact one of the Apostolic Churches and today is in the Oriental Orthodox branch of the Apostolic faiths.  The Ottoman Turks were of course Muslims.  But to be fair they were also aggressive against all non Turkic people in their empire.

Ravished Armenia, also known as the Auction of Souls is a film for which only twenty minutes survives but it is a powerful film even at that.  The film, perhaps partially because some of it is original footage (I'm not certain), or perhaps because it appears to be, is nearly a documentary in character.  What's so additionally remarkable about this is that the Turkish atrocities were well known almost at the very moment they were committed, and yet Turkey continues to deny they occurred to this very day.   The film was based on a book by an Armenian survivor of Turkish atrocities who also stared in the film, Aurora Mardiganian, who was only 18 years old at the time the film was released.  At that time, she was recalling events of just a few years earlier, and she had herself escaped death by being sold into slavery and then escaping.

Armenian stamp honoring Mardiganian.

The film, not surprisingly, was subject to some censorship because it includes nudity, in the form of Armenian women being crucified nude by Turks.  Mardiganian somewhat objected to the portrayal, however, not because it was cruel or because of the nudity, but rather because she maintained that the Turks raped Armenian women and then impaled them through their vaginas in a particularly masochistic fashion that the film makers determined not to portray as it was so barbarous.  The film itself used many Armenian extras living in Southern California, which has a large Armenian population even today.  Sadly, over twenty of the extras died due being exposed to the Spanish Flu during the film.  

Mardiganian herself lived to old age and died in Californian in 1994.

If that film was too heavy of content, and it likely was for many, a comedy entitled Here Comes The Bride oped that weekend as well.

It doesn't survive, but frankly, it sounds like a typical pre Hayes Code cheesy comedy.

The Dub also opened that Sunday.

It was a comedy too, and it's also a lost film.

Or maybe it'd just be more entertaining, sort of, to read the paper that day.  Russian revolutionaries who were "spry" and had "sass", discharged soldiers shaving off the mustaches of NCO's., bad beer in the UK and radicalism in Cheyenne. . . . 

December 13, 1918. Crossing the Rhine

American soldiers crossing the Rhine at Remagen, over the Ludendorff Bridge. This same bridge would be fought over fiercely in March, 1945 and was so badly damaged by German efforts and the battle itself that it would ultimately collapse.  By that time, it had served, for the second time, as a major American conduit across the Rhine.

Gen. Plummer takes the salute for the Canadian 1st Division as it marches into Germany over the Rhine, December 13, 1918.

Roads to the Great War: Canada's Golgotha

Roads to the Great War: Canada's Golgotha: "Canada's Golgotha" is a 32-inch-high  bronze sculpture by the British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood, produced in 191...

Countdown on the Great War, November 5, 1918. Heroism in the U.S. Army, Poland starts to form, German submarines hit again.

African American infantryman marching near Verdun, November 5, 1918.

1. The Allies inform Germany that negotiations may begin on the basis of President Wilson's Fourteen Points but that contact must be established through Marshall Foch.

2. Cpt. Marcellus H. Chiles engages in actions for which he would be awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor.  His citation reads:

When his battalion, of which he had just taken command, was halted by machinegun fire from the front and left flank, he picked up the rifle of a dead soldier and, calling on his men to follow led the advance across a stream, waist deep, in the face of the machinegun fire. Upon reaching the opposite bank this gallant officer was seriously wounded in the abdomen by a sniper, but before permitting himself to be evacuated he made complete arrangements for turning over his command to the next senior officer, and under the inspiration of his fearless leadership his battalion reached its objective. Capt. Chiles died shortly after reaching the hospital.

 Chiles entered the service from Denver Colorado.

 

Cpt. Chiles.

3.  The BEF cleared the Mormal Forest and the Canadians and British crossed the Grand Hornelle.

4.  The French take Chateau Porcien.

6. The Germans commence a retreat from the Meuse to Conde but order that the American Army is to be prevented from advancing north of Verdun.

7.  Enlisted sailors kill three officers and the captain of the battleship Koenig in the Baltic when they try to keep the sailors from hoisting a red flag as the sailors rebellion becomes increasing a radical Socialist one.  All German ships remaining in Kiel have the red flag hoisted on them on this day.

8.  The first Polish Soviet of Delegates meets to discuss establishing a Polish state. 

9.  The Lake Harris, an American armed merchant ship, was beached off of Lands End after a fire fight with a German submarine.  On the same day the Italian sailing ship Stavnos was sunk by the UC-74.

10.  Republicans win both houses of Congress by slim margins.  Due to the lack of instant reporting, however, you won't see any newspapers of today's date reporting that, as that would have to wait until the next day.