Sweet suffering Christ, but this sounds like a thoroughly Irish* kind of situation.
To wit: left out in the open, arse hanging in the breeze; heavily outnumbered and surrounded by people uninterested in the niceties of war; and, of course, low on supplies and if you want more you can try whistling ’em up and see if that works. God, how many times have I heard a version of that story from my elders? It’s probably happened in every war my ancestors and distant cousins have ever fought in…
Oh, wait, I forgot the other common element of this typically Hibernian tale: the part where the Irish proceed to make war like the mad poetry-addled bastards that we all are anyway and then pile up bodies in job lots. Because it’s not that the Irish can’t fight. We often don’t factor in who is going to win when picking sides, but we’re certainly not afraid of a scrap. The men at Jadotville certainly weren’t.
Show comes out on Netflix on October 7th.
Moe Lane
*I am as close to ‘pure’ Irish stock as you are likely to find in America, so I feel as entitled as Hell to couch this post in the terms that I have couched it in. Neener, I say. Neener.
Damn shame, the way Company A and its commander were treated after coming home. Not a particularly shining moment in the history of the Republic, to say the least.
#@*%ing over the military is a common human tradition, so history is filled with those ‘not particularly shining moments’.
*
I would like to see this movie.