“We are dealing with distances half way around the world. We are dealing in personnel by the million. We are dealing with supply in millions of tons. A mass of detail and delicate timing is involved.” – General Brehon B. Somervell, USA, Commanding General, Army Service Forces, May 15, 1945 (as quoted by Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “Logistics of a One-Front War,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)
Category: History
“That final victory over Japan was assured, there was no longer any doubt in U.S. councils. Timing was the vital question. American staffs, reflecting the temper of American public opinion, were impatient. Their impatience, nevertheless, did not permit them to underestimate Japanese ability to resist. To the Army staff, at least, mass invasion seemed the quickest way, indeed the only way, in which Japanese capitulation could be assured. It was also undoubtedly the costliest way both in human lives and resources.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The Pacific in Transition,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“Surprise from above is never as shocking as one from below.” – Dan Gilroy, “The Axe Forgets,” Andor
“There is a history in all men’s lives, figuring the nature of the times deceas’d; the which observ’d, a man may prophesy, with a near aim, of the main chance of things as yet not come to life, which in their seeds and weak beginnings lie intreasured. Such things become the hatch and brood of time.” – William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Second Part 3.1
“Byzantine art was anonymous and impersonal. In the art of western Europe, at any rate since the late Middle ages, individual personalities attract much of our attention, so that the history of European art does not concern itself merely with the evolution of forms: it is also the story of persons who lived known lives, who introduced innovations, who expressed their opinions on art, who exerted an influence on other known artists. Nothing of the kind applied to Byzantine art. In Byzantium artists were regarded as craftsmen and no interest was felt in recording their names or their personalities.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Time in its irresistible and ceaseless flow carries along on its flood all created things, and drowns them in the depths of obscurity, no matter if they be quite unworthy of mention, or most noteworthy and important, and thus, as the tragedian says, ‘he brings from the darkness all things to the birth, and all things born envelops in the night.’ But the tale of history forms a very strong bulwark against the stream of time, and to some extent checks its irresistible flow, and, of all things done in it, as many as history has taken over, it secures and binds together, and does not allow them to slip away into the abyss of oblivion.” – Anna Comnena, Alexiad (trans. Elizabeth A. S. Dawes)
“The body of history is indeed mute and empty if it is deprived of the causes of actions.” – Theophanes Continuatis (as quoted by Cyril Mango in Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome)
“The city was the setting of dances and jests, of taverns, baths and brothels. Women went about with uncovered heads. Everything about them was indecent: their speech, their gestures, their costume, their hair-style, the movement of their limbs and the sidelong glances they cast. Young men, too, such as were to be seen in the city, simulated effeminacy and let their hair grow long. Indeed, people went so far as to decorate their boots.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The human soul was visualized as a citadel that had to be vigilantly guarded against external attack. Its weakest points were its gates which were five in number, corresponding to the five senses. The first gate, that of speech, needed to be fortified by the braces and cross-bars consisting in the constant recitation of Holy Scripture: in this way all undesirable entrants would be excluded. The second gate was that of hearing: it was essential not to admit through it any idle gossip or anything unseemly. The third gate, that of smell, had to be bolted in the face of all sweet scents which had the effect of slackening the ‘tension’ of the soul. The gate of sight was particularly exposed; hence it was important to see as few women as possible and avoid the theatre. The proper function of sight was to behold the beauties of nature. The fifth gate, that of touch, had to be guarded against soft clothing, comfortable beds and contact with other human bodies.” – Cyril Mango, “The Ideal Life,” Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Whatever the shortages of equipment that may have remained in the Pacific by the fall of 1944, none was so serious as the shortage of troop labor to perform the thousand and one tasks involved in the operation of a supply line in territory where facilities were primitive and native labor either nonexistent or totally unskilled. The shortage of service troops in the Pacific was a chronic condition—one that began with the arrival of the first American troops and endured until the end of the war. It was a contributing factor to practically every other problem of Pacific logistics. The shortage of port battalions contributed to every instance of ship congestion, the shortage of Quartermaster troops to every instance of spoiled rations, that of Engineer construction battalions to every instance of failure to build airfields, roads, and other facilities on time. The inadequate supply of service troops imposed far more severe limitations on the pace of the Pacific advance than did the supply of combat units. As General Somervell wrote from the South Pacific in September 1943, it was not ‘a case of “frills”—but one of getting beans, shoes and bullets to the men who are fighting and to save those fighting from being laid out with pestilence,’ of building facilities at primitive bases which the Japanese did not have the resources or ability to match. ‘It would be a great mistake,’ he said, not to supply service troops ‘in full measure and make the most of this advantage.’” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“God rules mankind by inspiring fear of Hell and promising reward in Heaven, in other words with a stick and a carrot. Likewise, the Emperor governs his subjects through fear: his enemies are thrown in prison, banished, disciplined by the whip, deprived of their eyesight or of their life. Even innocent people ‘serve him in trembling’: they may be sent into battle or given unpleasant tasks, but no one dares to disobey.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The first Engineer units sent out were too lightly equipped; they did not have either adequate quantities of equipment or heavy enough equipment for clearing jungles and building in jungle terrain. The initial conception, in fact, was apparently that much of the construction work in the Pacific would be pick and shovel work. It soon became clear that one of the principal points of American superiority over the enemy lay in heavy construction equipment—bulldozers, cranes, rollers, graders, crushers, drilling equipment, power shovels, power saw mills, and so forth—that could do the work of many men.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“Multiple handling and transshipment at several points took their toll in breakage, deterioration, and pilferage. Storage north of Australia or New Caledonia was usually inadequate, and deterioration in open storage in a tropical climate appallingly swift. Rations spoiled, canvas rotted, ammunition became unusable, and machinery rusted. ‘There has been considerable wastage in all types of supplies . . . ,’ wrote Somervell from the South Pacific in September 1943. ‘This loss has been particularly high in ammunition and rations. No one really knows how much food has been spoiled. It is certain, however, that as much as 50 percent of some types of ammunition has gone to waste and hundreds of thousands if not millions of rations have been lost.’ In June 1943 an observer thought at least 40 percent of the rations in SWPA [Southwest Pacific Area] spoiled or unconsumable.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, “The War Against Japan, 1943-44,” Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt but, being season’d with a gracious voice, obscures the show of evil? In religion, what damned error but some sober brow will bless it, and approve it with a text, hiding the grossness with fair ornament? There is no vice so simple but assumes some mark of virtue on his outward parts.” – William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice 3.2
“If the Japanese were not, in the last analysis, such formidable opponents as the Germans, their preference for death to surrender, and the mere physical difficulties of mounting operations against their entrenched positions, combined to make them seem so.” – Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945
“When a human being was about to expire, a throng of demons would hasten to his deathbed in the expectation of gaining possession of his soul and would be opposed in so doing by the guardian angel. Once the soul had been parted from the body, it had to journey through the air and stop at a number of ‘customs posts’ or ‘toll houses’ (telônia) manned by demons who examined it on its deeds on earth and either let it proceed upon payment of the appropriate due, calculated in good works, or seized it there and then.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Demons were always ready to enter the bodies of humans and domesticated animals where, attracted by the warmth and moisture, they could dwell, like parasites, for long years. In doing so they caused various diseases and a derangement of the senses. Not all diseases, of course, were due to demons, and some would respond to medical treatment or curative waters; yet a great many were the result of possession and lay, therefore, beyond the physician’s competence. Only an exorcist could help, and his methods were rough. He would often strike the patient in the chest or throw him to the ground and step upon his neck. The demon, always unwilling to depart, could cause levitation; when forced out, he convulsed the patient, made him tear his clothes, and then left him unconscious. But the cure, once effected, was complete.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.” – Tony Gilroy, “Rix Road,” Andor
“Avoid all gentile books. For what need have you of alien writings, laws and false prophets which lead the frivolous away from the faith? What do you find lacking in God’s Law that you should seek those gentile fables? If you wish to read histories, you have the books of Kings; if rhetorical and poetic writings, you have the Prophets, you have Job, you have the Proverbs, wherein you will find a sagacity that is greater than that of all poetry and sophistry since those are the words of our Lord who alone is wise. If you have a desire for songs, you have the Psalms, if for ancient genealogies, you have Genesis; if for legal books and precepts, you have the Lord’s glorious Law. So avoid strenuously all alien and diabolical books.” – Apostolic Constitutions (as quoted by Cyril Mango in Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome)
“Higher education [in the Byzantine Empire] was dispensed by the rhetor or sophist and was available in the larger cities only. The rhetor/sophist, if he held an established chair, was appointed by the local council and received a salary as well as benefitting from certain exemptions. In practice he also received payments or gifts from his pupils. If, on the other hand, he was a free-lance (and many of them were), he depended entirely on fees. There was thus an in-built competition between teachers which occasionally erupted into fights and the kidnapping of students. Boys normally took up higher education at the age of fifteen and pursued it as long as long as their circumstances or their desires dictated: a complete course took about five years, but many left after two or three. Naturally, most of the students came from well-to-do families.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“If there was one institution that left an indelible mark on the Late Roman and Byzantine way of life, that was surely taxation. The imposition of regular and extraordinary levies—in kind upon the farmer and in money upon the merchant and artisan—was meant to be equitable; in fact, it hit the agricultural population harder than the urban, the poor much more than the rich.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“If the slave was generally absent from the rural landscape, the tenant farmer (colonus) was an important feature of it. A man of degraded and anomalous status, the colonus was theoretically free, but in practice tied to his plot. He was, as a law of [AD] 393 puts it, ‘a slave of the land’. His condition was hereditary, his freedom to marry restricted, and he could not even join the army. The master of his land collected his taxes and was empowered to put him in chains if he tried to run away. It was openly admitted by the government that there was little difference between the status of a slave and that of a colonus. The authorities, of course, were not animated by pure sadism in curbing the liberties of the tenant farmer; their primary concern was the collection of tax.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The archaeological exploration of the Limestone Massif in northern Syria, a region that attained great prosperity thanks to the cultivation of the olive tree, has shown not only the co-existence of large and small holdings, but also a general trend, in the period extending from the fourth to the sixth century [AD], towards the break-up of the bigger estates and the growth of villages composed of relatively well-to-do, independent farmers. While the conditions in the Limestone Massif were probably untypical of the rest of Syria, not to speak of other parts of the Empire, they serve to emphasize the danger of drawing general conclusions from literary and legislative texts.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“We have from the sixth century [AD] a much more elaborate classification of the civilian part of [Byzantine] society into ten groups, namely: 1. The clergy; 2. The judiciary; 3. Counsellors (senators?); 4. Those concerned with finance; 5. Professional and technical; 6. Commercial; 7. Those concerned with the provision of raw materials; 8. Subordinates and servants; 9. The useless (in other words, the old, the infirm and the insane); 10. Entertainers (charioteers, musicians, actors).” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“The records of the central government (and it should be remembered that the Byzantine Empire was a bureaucratic state par excellence), of the provincial administration, of the Church, of secular landlords, tenants, merchants and shopkeepers have all disappeared. As a result, we have no reliable population figures, no registers of births, marriages and deaths, no trade figures, no taxation figures—practically nothing, in short, that can be counted and used for statistical purposes.” – Cyril Mango, Byzantium: The Empire of New Rome
“In a world full of wonders man invented boredom.” – Wendy Northcutt, The Darwin Awards: Next Evolution
“The bombers, both of the attacking and the diversionary force, came through with no losses and with a minimum of damage. Enemy opposition had been slight. Antiaircraft fire was observed at two places, but only two planes sustained damage, and that slight. Fighter opposition was negligible. Three Me-109’s attacked the formation, and several others put in a silent appearance. Of those attacking, one was claimed as damaged by fire from the B-17’s. The bomber crews received no injury at all from enemy action, the only casualties having occurred when, on the way home, one plane hit a pigeon and the shattered glass from the nose of the bomber slightly injured the bombardier and navigator.” – Arthur B. Ferguson, “Rouen-Sotteville No. 1, 17 August 1942” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“The advisability of getting its crews into the United Kingdom outweighed the desirability of more thorough training before departure. But this meant that crews arrived with little or no experience in high-altitude flying. Pilots and co-pilots had received little instruction in flying formations at any altitude, to say nothing of maintaining tight formations at the extreme altitudes planned for day bomber missions. Many of the radio operators could neither send nor receive the Morse code. Worse yet, the gunners proved to be almost completely unfamiliar with their equipment. Many of them had had little or no opportunity to shoot at aerial targets, and several had never operated a turret in the air. This deficiency was especially disturbing to the Eighth Air Force experts because they felt sure that the ability of the heavy bombers to destroy enemy targets by daylight without prohibitive loss would depend in large part on their ability to defend themselves against enemy fighters.” – Arthur B. Ferguson, “Rouen-Sotteville No. 1, 17 August 1942” (from James Lea Cate and Wesley Frank Craven, The Army Air Forces in World War II, Vol. One, Plans and Early Operations)
“Let us sit upon the ground, and tell sad stories of the death of kings:—how some have been depos’d; some slain in war; some haunted by the ghosts they have depos’d; some poison’d by their wives; some sleeping kill’d; all murder’d:—for within the hollow crown that rounds the mortal temples of a king keeps Death his court.” – William Shakespeare, The Life and Death of King Richard II 3.2
“When Canens sang, cold rocks were moved to tears, or seemed less granite than a rock should be, the trees were swayed, rough beasts grew sentimental, and busy rivers winding miles away began to rest, to float, to fall asleep, and birds who heard her half-forgot to fly.” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory