Cavalry were the "eyes of the army"

I may just be showing my ignorance here but I read something pretty dang interesting in Gods and Generals, Jeff Shaara's terrific book about events leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. He mentioned at one point how the cavalry was "the eyes of the army," which I had no conception of, but which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

We're talking zero electronic communications back then, when Indian smoke signals were probably about as advanced as anything the white men had. So you've got all these armies walking wherever they went and a much smaller band of soldiers on horseback who could cover a lot more ground. They' go out and poke around and go riding back with whatever they've learned.

Here's a bit I found on a website:

The cavalry were the eyes of the army. They traveled in the rear area of the enemy where they searched for information about the enemy force. Also, they captured enemy officers and men whom they took away as prisoners for questioning . . . When a cavalry unit became engaged they usually broke off contact at once and rode away. The advantages of the cavalry were: 1) they could search the enemy's area to learn their strength and location and, 2) they could screen their army's size and location from the enemy.

I'm sure a lot of you with military experience yawn about this, because it's old hat. But I never knew this before and now I do. And if you didn't know it before, you do now.

Stalin Saved the World for Democracy(???)

I'll bet that got your attention. What should get your attention even more is that apparently it's true.

I'm referring to a review of a number of books, titled "Stalin's Gift," that was published in the May 2007 issue of Atlantic Monthly. The reviewer, Benjamin Schwarz, looks broadly at a number of recently published books that fill in gaping holes in our knowledge about World War II's eastern front, between Germany and the Soviet Union. These books are based on information that was not available for decades, but is now that the Cold War has ended.

Among the startling bits of information are these:

• More than 400 German and Red Army divisions fought along a 1,000-mile front for four years; in the West the battle never amounted to more than 15 Allied and 15 German divisions.
• Approximately 88 percent of the German military dead were killed on the eastern front.

In fact, Schwarz quotes Norman Davies, author of Europe at War, 1935-1945, who said:

The Soviet war effort was so overwhelming that impartial historians of the future are unlikely to rate the British and American contribution to the European theatre as much more than a sound supporting role.

Not only that, according to Schwarz, Stalin himself was instrumental in the success of the Soviet effort. First, he surrounded himself with the best advisers available and trusted them, and second, he mastered the considerations of war and was actually calling the shots. Schwarz does not in any way overlook the brutality of Stalin's policies, or the mistakes he made in the learning process, but he closes the article quoting Geoffrey Roberts, author of Stalin's Wars, saying:

To make so many mistakes and to rise from the depths of such defeat to go on to win the greatest military victory in history was a triumph beyond compare . . . Stalin . . . saved the world for democracy.

Now that(!!) is pretty dang interesting!

Here are a few of the other books mentioned in the article:

Thunder in the East: The Nazi-Soviet War, 1941-1945 - by Evan Mawdsley

800 Days on the Eastern Front - by Nikolai Litvin

A Writer at War: A Soviet Journalist with the Red Army, 1941-1945 - by Vasily Grossman, translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova

Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945 - by Catherine Merridale

Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War - by Rodric Braithwaite

Today's "Private" Used To Be A "Private Soldier"

You don't see it much today but apparently what we now call a "private" in the army was once universally known as a "private soldier." Which raises the question, was this in contrast to a "public soldier"? I don't think so, but it makes me wonder about the term.

I did some digging and I found out about the term "soldier." Here's what I found:

A Soldier is one who serves in the Army and fights for pay. The name originates from Latin word soldus, short for the classical Latin word solidus. Solidus was an ancient Roman coin used for paying soldiers.

But what about "private soldier"? I've seen this is in a lot of old writings, such as a book of the collected writings of George Washington and, more recently, the book Andersonville. Andersonville is the first-hand story of a Union soldier captured during the Civil War, and the full title of the book is:

Andersonville
A Story of Rebel Military Prisons
Fifteen Months a Guest of the So-Called Southern Confederacy
A Private Soldier's Experience in Richmond, Andersonville, Savannah, Millen Blackshear, and Florence

I found this:

Private - The earliest record of this word dates to 1384, derived from the classical Latin word privatus, meaning to "set apart, belonging to oneself" (rather than the state or feudal lord). The phrase Private soldier meaning "one below the rank of a non-commissioned officer" - also known as a common soldier - entered usage in 1579 when individual citizens gained the privilege of enlisting or entering private contracts to serve as private soldiers in army units. It later became known as privateer in 1664, from the term private man of war, as in volunteer or buccaneer.

So it seems that what was once a privilege—the choice to enlist and get paid for fighting—has been replaced with the simple usage of just being the grunt who is low man on the totem pole. And the term has been shortened to just "private" in the same way that "general officer" has been shortened to "general."

Pretty dang interesting how language evolves.

Those English Just Spell Differently Than We Do

We all know the English spell certain words differently than we do here in the U.S. What is "color" to us is "colour" to them. We "realize" things and they "realise" things. And let's not even get into the different meanings they have for words.

So I wouldn't make a point of pointing out a different spelling except that I recently ran into one that was new for me. And at the age of 56, if it's new to me I'll bet there are a lot of other people who have either never run across it, either, or never figured it out. Actually, now that I say that, it occurs to me I have seen it before but never knew the meaning.

OK, quite beating around the bush. What's the word?

Gaol

Is that a misspelling for the thing the English kick a soccer ball (excuse me, football) through?

No, that's something we know as a "jail." As in "jailbird/gaolbird," or "jail/gaol house rock."

I was reading a collection of pieces by Oscar Wilde and one was entitled The Ballad of Reading Gaol. And I was clueless. Fortunately, my wife lived in England for six months so she clued me in.

Just another "pretty dang interesting" bit of information I've run into.

Want to Pay to Sleep with a Total Stranger? It Used to be the Norm

You've been on the road all day, you're exhausted, and all you want to do is drop into bed and get a good night's sleep. So you check into the hotel and go to your room and . . . there's a total stranger in your bed. Or maybe two of them. What do you do? Why you climb in and go to sleep. That's the way it used to be.

I first ran across this while reading the An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt. Then I ran across it in a book about Abraham Lincoln, The Lincoln Reader. It seems that back in those days it was absolutely normal to share not just your hotel room but your bed with total strangers. Of the same sex, of course.

None of these 200-room establishments with pool, bar, and gift shop. You were lucky if the place had four rooms to rent and you took whatever quarters they had to offer. I guess you just hoped the other guys took their boots off and didn't snuggle up to you too much in their sleep.

Get the News on Your Money

Think about it. A couple millennea ago communication was a little tougher than today. So the Romans came up with an ingenious idea. They printed news on their money. On the back side of their coins, to be exact.

According to Michael Grant, in his book The World of Rome:

. . . in the absence of modern media of communication, the only official announcements which the central government could be sure that very many people would see were those on the enormous network of official coinages that circulated throughout the empire. . . there was no better medium for the diffusion of news . . .

Grant says the Romans might issue as many as 150 new versions of a coin in a year. Nothing different on the front, but the hottest news on the obverse. Pretty dang interesting.