doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Netflix The Crown, Shooting Party Scene

Hey, I saw that scene, but to nit pick it, Kaiser Wilhelm II did not shoot a Model 12 like they said in the program. As stated he did have a withered left arm as a result of the Doc's screwing up when he was born. He did in fact love to shoot and did several times in England prior to the Great War. Why they said he had a Model 12 is beyond me. He couldn't even cut his food, he had a servant do it for him. He shot a lightweight 20ga Sauer double. He also shot lightweight Purdeys that he ordered or were a gift from his Grandmother, Queen Victoria. Oh well, that's Hollywood or some such rot.

Best,

Greg

And Patton had him pegged, even before Patton showed him up in Sicily. Why Ike gave that Limey idiot the OK for the biggest Fubar before the Battle of the Bulge Dec 1944- that being "Market Garden"- staggers the mind. Ike was a good leader, but he had to kiss Limey ass under orders from Marshall and FDR- Patton would have been a way far better Commander of SHAEF--and Monty would have been sent home to play cricket with the King. Limeys-- what a bunch of snobbish fops..

Ike was the only commander who could have kept the Alliance and SHAEF together, Fox. Who else could have handled prima donnas like Patton, Clark, Montgomery, deGaulle? Ike and Marshall to my mind were at the top of the US military pantheon.

Yes, but we would have been much better off without Montgomery.

Here's a quote from the US Army Museum's write-up on Operation Varsity:

In his wartime memoir, A Soldier�s Story, GEN Bradley contended that the Germans had diverted the bulk of their forces east of the Rhine to the Remagen bridgehead, leaving weak forces around Wesel. He added that if Montgomery had crossed the Rhine on the run as Hodges and Patton did, or had allowed Simpson to do so with his Ninth Army, Varsity would never have been necessary, and that the operation was typical Montgomery overkill. Other officers had even harsher words, claiming that Montgomery used airborne forces to simply �put on a good show� and to further to his own standing as a military genius.

Link: https://armyhistory.org/operation-varsity-the-last-airborne-deployment-of-world-war-ii/

My father's unit (the 771st Tank Battalion) fought in the area of Wesel. My father's opinion of Montgomery was even lower - he said that Montgomery killed more brits and GI's than the Germans by the airborne operation rather than simply crossing the Rhine on the surface. My father was a 1LT combat medic who served through the battle of the Bulge and the push through Germany - combat medic's badge, purple heart and 3 bronze stars, all from pulling wounded men from between the lines from what his men told my mother. Less than a year before he died in 2014 at the age of 95 he was still cursing Montgomery for wanton slaughter of his own men.

Field Marshall Ervin Rommel outfought Montgomery for hundreds of miles plus the operation after D-Day in front of Caen.
D-Day plus one?

Montgomery couldn't get there until early August.

Of course those 'Bloody" German tanks had a lot to do with also.

Montgomery and Gen. Haig- aka- "The Bloody Butcher of the Somme"- something about that stiff upper lip and swagger stick mentality that allows such men to send enlisted and NCO's into certain death-- or head into the Wehrmacht and the M-42's MGs with the sound of bagpipes at full blast-

And certainly not a Model 12 (or Model 1912) with a Cutts in pre-WW1 Eduardian Europe. Maybe a Model 1897 however. Not quite proper form, old boy--

Even today, you're not likely to see pumps or autos on a driven shoot. But plenty of those evil, improperly oriented OU's!

Is there any way we bottom feeders can see that episode?

Depending on whose history, the Normandy operation was to draw the Germans on to the British-Canadian forces and the Americans to close the gap---hence the brutal massacre of the Falaise Gap behind Caen. The Canadians---to be precise, regiments of my region---struck farthest into Normandy that day, seven miles.

Montgomery wasn't out-fought as you say, for all his fubars and every other Allied commander. No particular general under his command got Canadians in front of Caen that day, simply well-led formations leavened by veterans of the Italian and North Africa campaigns. Our tanks were no match for SS Panzer Kurt Meyer's. (He was imprisoned in our region for his troops' atrocities.)

Canada had a couple generals of the Patton cut-and-slash style. Wars aren't won through bravery and sacrifice alone. Ike didn't have particular field experience. Canadians were part of restoring his losses at Kasserine Pass. But Ike had formidable negotiating skills and the back-up of Marshall's intellect in building an indefatigable war machine.

They're my reasons for putting Ike and Marshall at head of the pack on the Western Front. Rommel knew the jig was up before the end of June. It cost him his execution. PS, I lifted this on Rommel's whereabouts and actions from "World War Two database:"

"Early 1944, Rommel was approached to participate in the July Plot to assassinate Hitler. It is popularly believed by historians today that Rommel had refused due to his loyalty, but the exact facts are still unknown.

"After the western Allies launched the Normandy landings in Jun 1944, Rommel was out of the area and unable to get a clear picture of the situation, and then Hitler hesitated to approve a counterattack by armor until it was too late. Rommel's nightmare came true over the next six weeks as the Allied beachhead strengthened. On 15 Jul, he communicated to Hitler that Germany should seriously consider ending the war on favorable terms when it was still possible . . ."