Research is Hard

Rijksmuseum Research Library
(Source)

So yes, I left you, the readers, hanging yesterday. I didn't want to follow that post with another the next day (that would be today) telling you what happened, I wanted to let the story line simmer a bit. Truth be told, I've been keeping a lot of characters alive because I like them. Which in the realm of combat is rather unrealistic. It was time for Brandt's Boys to take some hits.

Now the chaps in the 6th Battalion Royal Scots Fusiliers, led by Sergeant Billy Wallace have taken a number of casualties over this series of posts. That's because historically, that particular battalion took heavy casualties in the British drive to seize the city of Caen. Something which Field Marshal Montgomery thought could be accomplished no later than the evening of D-Day itself. (Yes, he was wrong.)

Well, it's been more than a month since D-Day and the British are just now capturing the ruins of Caen. As the 15th (Scottish) Infantry Division was not directly involved in the fight for Caen, I won't be covering that except to mention it in passing.

So far some of the heaviest fighting has occurred around Caen, multiple German armored divisions were involved, the terrain wasn't as closed in as the hedgerow country the Americans are slogging through. As for that hedgerow country, Generals Omar Bradley and Joe Collins had this to say:

As early as 8 June, General Bradley called the Bocage the "damndest country I've seen." General Collins of VII Corps was equally surprised by the nature of the hedgerow terrain and told General Bradley on 9 June that the Bocage was as bad as anything he had encountered on Guadalcanal. (Source)

So far for Sgt Brandt and his squad there have been no grand events, only the slog forward through this environment where around every corner is another German machine gun or sniper. As members of the Big Red One (the American 1st Infantry Division), I initially thought that finding material on the activities of that division would be easy.

I was wrong.

Most of the accounts I can find online deal with the 1st on D-Day, with damned little to follow them through the hedgerow country. While I was fortunate with finding the War Diaries of the 15th Scottish online, I have yet to find anything on the American 1st which doesn't involve acquiring paper copies from the National Archives.

It's been my experience so far that the British and the French were far better at documenting the entire campaign, not just the D-Day landings, at least online. Which is probably why I had Sgt Brandt's squad on the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula, which in reality the 1st was nowhere near. It's also why Sgt Wallace's Lowland Scots were in Normandy well in advance of their division!

Sometimes you have to bend the rules in order to make a good story. Having been part of operations which the rest of my Wing had nothing to do with¹, I see these things happening as plausible, even if they didn't really happen.

From this point forward I think I'm going to abandon the day-by-day D + whatever format which seems to have worked so far, but has been somewhat restrictive to my story telling. (What do you mean the 6th RSF are still in the rear? I haven't written of them for days now!) This will also give me the opportunity to start filling in the backstory on a lot of these characters. In addition to introducing more, I note that I have sorely neglected the aviators so far, I mean there was a brief appearance by a pair of Tiffies², but I crave more.

I also need to take a day or two to take what I have written so far and put it all in one big document. See how it all hangs together, and see where there are spots I need to fill in in order to make this exercise an actual book, not just a series of vignettes.

We'll see how that goes.

As to research, a couple of you have noticed things, such as white stars on British tanks. That really was a thing, sometimes you have to trust what the Internet caption reads, of course, a lot of that is based on the reliability of the website where you found the picture! Some websites are horrible, "Knocked out Tiger tank," - um, no, that's a Panther. Fortunately I am very conversant with the equipment used in WWII in the ETO, but even I can be fooled at times. (In other words, keep those corrections coming! Mike the EE noted that Corporal Wilson's first name went from Jack to Dave, since corrected, but it's easy to get lost in the details.)

Finding pictures of Germans who were not in the SS is another challenge, there is a certain element in the West who are infatuated with the uniforms, equipment, and activities of the Waffen SS, which was not a branch of the Wehrmacht but a separate entity all together. They did fight under Wehrmacht control, you can't really have private armies charging around, but were separate organizationally. They tended to get better equipment because they really were the Nazi Party's armed forces. Anyhoo, while Army heavy tank battalions operated in Normandy, the SS gets most of the press.

There are three good sources for pictures of WWII, the U.S. Army Signal Corps took a lot of photos during the war, most (if not all) GI pictures you've seen here were taken by them. I have noticed, online of course, that there are purveyors of photographs, for money of course, who have laid claim to photos taken by the Signal Corps (just chop the Signal Corps crossed flags* from the photo and bingo, some yahoo thinks he "owns" it). I've seen the same with photos from the Bundesarchiv (the German National Archives) which some "service" claims "they own it." If I can find the photo with the Bundesarchiv logo, then I know they're charlatans. Many photos which someone is willing to sell on the Internet are photos of reenactors. In other words they're fake. Some reenacting units uniforms look pretty good, too bad many of their "soldiers" don't look like soldiers. (A 400 pound dude in a Marine uniform is a sad, sad thing.) The British, again, are very good with available, public domain type photos.

So, I will keep charging on, unless the views go way down, which so far, they have not.

As to that shot from the sniper? Remember, he has buddies nearby whose mission is to delay and discomfit the advancing Americans. Brandt's Boys really need to keep their heads on swivels for the next episode at least.

Carry on...

(Source)

¹ Picture a single C-130 Hercules from Kadena AB, Okinawa, loaded with equipment and about fifty maintenance guys, following six fully loaded F-4D Phantoms up to Korea. We landed at Kunsan AB while our jets hit the bombing range. When they landed we handled any maintenance issues, which for us were nil, and back to Okinawa we went. That was the sole involvement of the 18th TFW. It was kinda cool. FWIW, we WCS guys were the only ones who made it off base. The others all wondered where we bought all the stuff we hauled back on the C-130! The whole operation lasted, IIRC, about 12 hours. A long day, but it was freaking awesome!
² RAF Hawker Typhoon ground attack aircraft.

* Flaming grenade of the Signal Corps, NOT. That's Ordnance not SC. Thanks Badger.