Considering that she's the single most-decorated female soldier in world military history, a grizzled seven-year veteran of three wars fought across two continents, a two-time recipient of her country's highest award for military bravery, and a poor farm girl who single-handedly captured at least fifty enemy combatants and two enemy trenches during her career, there's not a whole lot of digital ink on the Internet dedicated to Sergeant Milunka Savic that isn't printed in a language with so many consonants and accent marks that it looks like someone fell asleep on the keyboard with their character map open.
There should be.
Milunka Savic was born in Koprivnica, Serbia, some time in either 1888 or 1889, depending on whether you're down with the Gregorian Calendar or if you're still hung up on that Julian Calendar bullshit. We don't know much about her early life in this tiny rural mountain village, except that in 1912, at the age of 24, she got bored of her regular life, chopped off all her hair, dressed in men's clothing, and volunteered for the Serbian Army to help fight the First Balkan War and drive the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of Europe forever on a tsunami of bullets and brain matter.
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Pvt. Savic barely had time to swap the dried blood from her rifle before the Second Balkan War was on like Donkey Kong, and once again this estrogenocidal kicker of other peoples' nutsacks was back out on the front lines lobbing grenades with reckless abandon like the Ikari Warriors or a tennis ball machine juryrigged by the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski.
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The Second Balkan War ended in 1913, but even more nasty shit went down in Sarajevo Town on June 28, 1914, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire's Archduke Franz Ferdinand - a man famous solely for his ability to be shot to death - was assassinated by a Serbian Anarchist named Gavrilo Princip. [...] Long story short, Austria-Hungary was pissed, and they invaded Serbia. Serbia was allies with the United States, England, France, and Russia, and Austria-Hungary was friends with the Turks and the German Empire, and the next thing you know you've got World War I on your hands and the Austro-Hungarian Empire is marching half a million jackbooted Teutonic goons with stupid hats and large rifles across the Serbian border to turn their entire country into a flaming inferno.
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Sergeant Milunka Savic, commander of the Iron Regiment's Assault Bomber Squad, charged into the Battle of the Kolubara River armed with her Mosin-Nagant rifle and three bandoliers of hand grenades - one across each shoulder and one worn across her waist like a belt. She single-handedly assaulted an Austrian trench, rushing across No Man's Land (I feel like there's an Eowyn / Return of the King joke to be made here) hurling grenades out like Mardi Gras beads and blasting the fuck out of everything around her, then diving feet-first into an Austrian bunker with her bayonet at the ready. Inside, she found 20 men, all of whom threw their weapons down and surrendered to her. Once those POWs were secured, she continued on, dropping bombs like a Predator Drone and smoking enemy machine gun nests from distances so impressive that from this day forth her nickname was "The Bomber of Kolubara", stopping only when an enemy artillery shell landed next to her and planted a couple pieces of shrapnel in her head. For her exploits on the battlefield, Savic received the Karadjordje Star with Swords, the highest award for bravery offered by the Kingdom of Serbia, and the battle was such a success that the Serbs pushed the Austrians out of Serbia completely. They didn't return for 10 months.
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But the war was going badly for Serbia, and with the vengeful Bulgarians and Austrians burning Serb cities the Serbian Army evacuated as many civilians as they could and began a long, brutal fighting withdrawal through the knee-deep snow drifts and snow-covered mountains of Montenegro, Albania, and Kosovo as they withdrew to the coast. Milunka Savic was wounded seven more times during this fighting retreat (bringing her total wounds to nine!) as she and her people desperately attempted to evacuate tens of thousands of civilians and save the core of her army.
When she reached the coast and was evacuated by French and British warships, she was one of just 125,000 soldiers left in the Serbian Army.
The Serbian Army withdrew to Corfu, then Greece, where they joined up with the French Army and continued the war against the Turks and Krauts and other assorted villainy. Serving in the Serbian Brigade of the French Army, Sergeant Savic continued commanding the Assault Bomber Squad, fought through the rest of the war, ended up on the front page of some European Newspapers, and ended up winning enough awards from her service that her ribbon board weighed roughly the same as a suit of medieval plate armor. She received the French Legion d'Honneur twice, the Russian Cross of St. George (awarded for "undaunted courage by a non-commissioned officer), the British Medal of the Order of St. Michael, the Serbian Milos Obilic Medal, and was the only woman from World War I to receive the French Croix de Guerre (the highest bravery award they have).
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After the war ended and Serbia was liberated, Milunka Savic declined an offer from the French government to move her to Paris and put her up with a nice pension, instead opting to return to her homeland. She got married, had a kid, got a job at a bank, and adopted three children who had been orphaned by the war. When the Germans came through Belgrade during the Second World War in 1940, Savic refused an invitation to attend a banquet held in honor of the city's New German Overlords - a feat that got her a ten-month stint in Banjica Concentration Camp. She survived that as well, however, and after the war she was offered a state pension for being such a ridiculousy-hardcore war hero.
Milunka Savic, the world's most decorated female war hero, died in Belgrade on October 5, 1973, at the age of 84. She was buried in a famous cemetery there with full military honors.
Fonte:
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=97717212284
Mais:
http://vimeo.com/108887012
O Almirantado discutia a estratégia a ser empregada contra a poderosa Frota do Alto-Mar alemã sediada na parte sul do mar do Norte e contra os esquadrões de cruzadores que a Marinha alemã estacionara no estrangeiro - especialmente no Mediterrâneo e no Pacífico.
O bloqueio observacional foi abandonado um mês antes da deflagração da guerra. Em seu lugar adotou-se o "bloqueio a distância", planejado para controlar as saídas do mar do norte. Isto era possível devido à posição geográfica das ilhas Britânicas, colocadas como um quebra-mar entre as passagens que conduzem dos portos alemães e bases navais no Báltico e no mar do Norte aos oceanos. O plano britânico determinava que a frota do canal estacionada principalmente nos portos do estuário do Tâmisa, em Dover e Portsmouth, fechasse o canal da Mancha, enquanto a muito mais poderosa Grande Esquadra ficaria sediada em Scapa Flow, nos Orkneys e colocaria no mar uma linha de cruzadores ou navios mercantes armados (chamada patrulha do Norte) para vigiar as águas distantes e tormentosas entre as ilhas Shetlands, a Noruega e a Islândia. Tal era, em breve resumo, o plano de bloqueio naval que foi levado a cabo em agosto de 1914.
O Almirantado esperava que a resposta do inimigo ao bloqueio britânico tomasse a forma de um ataque ao comércio marítimo, como nas guerras anteriores, usando cruzadores e navios mercantes armados. Este era um tipo de guerra naval perfeitamente legal, sujeito às regras incorporadas pela convenção de Haia no que diz respeito à segurança das tripulações dos navios mercantes capturados. E de fato os atacantes alemães de superfície mostraram humanidade na observância dessas regras. Antes da guerra o Comitê Imperial de Defesa examinara as medidas necessárias para manter o tráfico [tráfego] marítimo em andamento, apesar das possibilidades de captura. A Convenção determinou que o Estado deveria receber 80% dos prêmios necessários para cobrir os riscos de guerra dos navios mercantes e responsabilizar-se por 80% das perdas. Contudo, de início, o Tesouro não estava disposto a aceitar tal intrusão no campo da iniciativa privada e o esquema de Seguro dos Riscos da Guerra não entrou em vigor até o início da guerra.
A 20 de novembro de 1914 um pequeno navio mercante britânico foi afundado por um submarino alemão no mar do Norte e a tripulação foi deixada em botes - o que era contrário à convenção de Haia. Outros afundamentos por submarinos vieram em seguida. Isso introduziu um elemento inteiramente novo no ataque alemão ao comércio - para o qual a Marinha Real estava completamente despreparada. As implicações deste fato foram muito sérias. No dia 11 de março de 1915, o governo britânico emitiu uma Ordem ao Conselho, normalmente conhecida como "Ordem para Represálias", já que fora emitida "em represália" ao uso ilegal dos submarinos. Declarava que os bens destinados à Alemanha poderiam ser apreendidos, mesmo que estivessem sendo conduzidos para um porto neutro.
Os países neutros e especialmente os Estados Unidos protestaram, considerando o gesto uma interferência com o que consideravam um comércio legítimo e sem dúvida altamente lucrativo. Os Estados Unidos nunca modificaram sua posição de que a Ordem para Represálias era ilegal - até sua entrada na guerra. Mas a razão verdadeira para a ordem era que o governo britânico sabia que os países escandinavos e a Holanda estavam importando quantidades muito maiores de bens da lista de contrabando britânica do que faziam antes da guerra. Obviamente o excesso estava sendo passado para a Alemanha. Desse modo, os serviços de transporte marítimo estavam substituindo a frota mercante alemã, a esta altura imobilizada. As falhas de bloqueio através da Itália nunca foram sérias e, quando ela entrou na guerra ao lado dos aliados, em maio de 1915, desapareceram completamente. O mesmo não acontecia com a Holanda e os países escandinavos, que conseguiam passar grande quantidade de mercadorias. Não foi fácil interromper este tráfico.
As dificuldades com os países neutros tornaram-se agudas. Os navios interceptados ficavam sujeitos a longos atrasos e algumas vezes eram afundados enquanto navios britânicos os conduziam para inspeção. Depois da guerra o governo britânico pagou o valor total das mercadorias mais 5% de juros por todos os navios afundados nessas circunstâncias. O governo britânico tinha que agir com moderação e cautela, devido às susceptibilidades dos países neutros. Isso se aplicava muito especialmente aos Estados Unidos, onde os grupos de pressão contrários aos britânicos eram poderosos e barulhentos.
A resposta alemã ao endurecimento do bloqueio britânico consistiu em declarar todas as águas em volta das ilhas Britânicas, a partir de 4 de fevereiro de 1915, "zona de guerra". Qualquer navio poderia ser afundado nessa zona, sem qualquer aviso prévio. Começou então a campanha submarina sem restrições. Ela durou até agosto, quando o aumento dos protestos dos países neutros levou o governo alemão a ordenar o retorno a métodos menos flagrantemente ilegais.
O bloqueio comercial da Alemanha ganhou em importância a partir do impasse na frente ocidental.
Os britânicos demonstraram grande talento nas pressões que exerceram para reprimir essas atividades. Era possível à Grã-Bretanha privar os navios de carvão e outros suprimentos essenciais, já que os depósitos de carvão em muitos portos estrangeiros eram controlados pelos britânicos. O fato da maior parte dos negócios bancários e de seguro estar situada em Londres permitia recusar crédito e seguro às firmas que não estivessem acima de suspeitas. O controle britânico sobre a maioria das comunicações mundiais por telégrafo e cabo submarino tornou improvável que negócios com a Alemanha e seus aliados pudessem ser ocultados por muito tempo. E, por fim, se um navio partisse com uma carga ilícita, o Almirantado seria chamado para interceptá-lo. Se a marinha britânica conseguisse alcançá-lo, quase certamente sua carga seria apreendida.
Mas o Ministério do Bloqueio não trabalhou apenas para impedir o embarque de carregamentos para o inimigo. As importações das nações neutras foram racionadas com severidade crescente, de modo a não ultrapassarem os totais anteriores à guerra. Bens que eram particularmente vitais ao esforço de guerra inimigo, tais como minerais especiais (tungstênio, por exemplo) usados na manufatura de armas e chapas blindadas, foram controlados através da compra preventiva de todo o estoque disponível.
Certamente os alemães não aceitaram de braços cruzados a escalada das medidas aliadas com relação ao bloqueio e em março de 1916 eles recomeçaram a campanha submarina sem restrições.
Embora suas Forças Armadas ainda não tivessem sofrido demasiadamente, já que tinham a prioridade para todos os suprimentos disponíveis, as condições da população civil estavam começando a se deteriorar seriamente. As colheitas tinham sido más em 1915 e 1916, especialmente devido à falta de fertilizantes importados. Os territórios conquistados na Europa Oriental não tinham conseguido substituir os suprimentos vindos do além-mar. Os produtores domésticos de alimentos estavam retendo sua produção ou vendendo-a no mercado negro. O valor calórico da ração civil vinha caindo constantemente e a escassez de roupa tornava-se cada vez mais aguda. Com a aproximação do inverno de 1917 - que seria lembrado na Alemanha como o "Inverno do Nabo" - as perspectivas pareciam extremamente sombrias.
Fonte:
http://www.grandesguerras.com.br/artigos/text01.php?art_id=147
THE VOICE OF RUSSIA
6 December 2013
The Battle of Galicia
The Battle of Galicia took place during the early stages of the World War I and became one of its most dreadful battles. From August 5th to September 8th of 1914 the Russian army fought relentlessly for the freedom of its Motherland.
The Battle of Galicia has started with the two separate military operations - the Lublin-Cholm and the Galich-Lvov. General Nikolai Ivanov, the Russian commander of the Southwest Front, was expecting an Austro-Hungarian offensive in eastern direction.
"Four Russian armies and four Austro-Hungarian armies participated in the operation. The latter were led by Archduke Friedrich and chief-of-staff Conrad von Hötzendorf. The German forces fought under the command of general Remus von Woyrsch. The opposing sides had about equal amount of soldiers. The total number of troops reached two million, says Konstantin Pahaluk, leading researcher for the Russian Military-Historical Society.
"It was one of the major front-line operations of the First World War. Each party had about one million soldiers and officers but the battle ended with the severe defeat of the Austro-Hungarian army. They suffered 400,000 casualties against 300,000 that the Russian forces lost. Some 100,000 prisoners were taken by Russians. The operation revealed the great leadership abilities of the Russian commanders such as general Alexeev, general Sakharov, general Brusilov and general Lechitzky. It also demonstrated the skills of Russian officers and ordinary soldiers who surpassed the servicemen of the enemy. It is important to mention the high morale of the Russian troops after defeating the Austro-Hungarian army, which is especially significant given the fact that the army wasn't ethnically common and some of the Slavic divisions had gone over to the Russian side,"Konstantin Pahaluk said.
According to the plans of the Austrian commandership, the attack was supposed to start at the region of Lublin and Cholm. The operation was carried out by the Austro-Hungarian 1st Army under Viktor Dankl and 4th Army under general von Auffenberg. They were supported by the Army group of general Kummer and the German corps of general von Woyrsch.
On the left flank of the Southwestern Front the Galich-Lvov operation started. On the right flank of the Austrian forces the 3rd Army of general Rudolf Brudermann and the Army group of general Kövess positioned, says Oleg Chistyakov, the head of the scientific department of the Russian State Military-Historical Archive.
"In accordance with the prewar plan, two fronts were created - the Northwestern front against East Prussia and Germany, and the Southwestern front against Austro-Hungary and Galicia. General Zhilinsky commanded the Northwestern Front and general Ivanov was in charge of the Southwestern front. The first front consisted of the armies of general Rennenkampf and general Samsonov. They approached in the direction of Koenigsberg. At first, Russian troops carried the palm - the first army defeated Germans in the battle of Gusev, the troops led by Samsonov triumphed too, but, unfortunately, in the chaos of the combat, the 13th and the 15th corps of the army had been surrounded by the enemy and forced to capitulate," Oleg Chistyakov said.
The crushing defeat of Samsonov's army in East Prussia gave German troops the opportunity to advance in the Southern direction towards the Austro-Hungarian forces attacking Liblin and Cholm. The possible alliance of the two armies near Warsaw could lead to the encirclement of the Russian armies in Poland. But Germans concentrated on freeing East Prussia from the Russian forces.
Having lost faith in the support of the allies, Hötzendorf tried to stop the Russian offensive heading from the Western direction of Galich-Lvov. The colonel used a clever maneuver - he left a moderate covering force against the 5th Russian army near Cholm and shifted the 4th army to Lvov. Attacks from the north and south were supposed to crash the left flank of the Southwestern front and help recapture Lvov. There was only the 1st army of general Dunkl and part of the 4th army forces left of the Lublin-Cholm line. They were ordered to take on the defensive and contain the Russians coming from the north.
On August 17th general Ivanov directed both armies to attack Lvov. The goal was to hold the enemy on the Lvov-Mikolaev position. The next day the situation changed. Now the 3rd army was needed in Lublin. General Alekseyev worked out a plan to encircle the main Austro-Hungarian forces. To make that happen the 8th army of general Brusilov had to hold the enemy to the east of Lvov and the 3rd army - to take in the rear. However, on August 18th general Ruzsky makes orders to prepare for the assault of Lvov.
After the fight on the river Gnila Lipa the defeated Austro-Hungarians abandoned their ammunition and disorderly retreated in the direction of Lvov, Nikolaev and Galich. The 3rd army achieved a victory too. The 21st Corps attacked the enemy from the right flank and defeated the military group under the command of Dempf, putting them to rout. On August 21 Russian forces seized Lvov and the next day - Galich.
The Russian army was confident of the future victory. The correlation of forces and the position of the army on the battlefield looked promising. The 4th and the 5th armies received reinforcements, and the 9th army under the command of general Lechinsky was based nearby on the Vistula River. Russian headquarters ordered all the armies to launch an attack.
The 4th army started the offensive defeating the enemy at the battle of Suhodol. The 5th and the 9th armies followed. The only chance for the Austrians to escape was to crush the 3rd and the 8th Russian armies. The Austrian 2nd Army was recalled from Serbia for support but it was too late. Having numerical superiority, Russians launched a direct attack, pushing the enemy to the Carpathians.
At the battle of Tarnavka on August 26-27 the three Russian armies defeated the 1st Austrian army and Archduke Joseph Ferdinand's military group. On August 25, the 8th army of general Brusilov held out against the two Austrian armies at the battle of Gorodok. All that brought Russians a glorious victory.
Conrad had to cover the retreat with a cannonade and numerous counterblows. The withdrawal of troops was also protected by five cavalry divisions. The 2nd Austrian army stretched out at the extended front locking up the Carpathians' pass.
On the 1st of September the Austrian high command ordered further retreat to the river Dunajec and a preparation for the counter-offensive together with Germans. The Russian army was facing problems providing food for the troops and disorder in the rear so they were forced to stop the pursuit near the Austrian fortress of Przemysl, which Russians then sieged for over a hundred days. The next day the armies of the Southwestern front regrouped for the defensive warfare. Only the 9th army went after the retreating enemy. The 5th army was preparing for the transfer to the Middle Vistula River. The 3rd army sieged the Przemysl, while the 4th and the 8th armies shielded it, says Yuri Bahutin.
"At the Battle of Galicia the Russians suffered 230,000 casualties. The Austro-Hungarians lost approximately 100,000 more, including some 130,000, which equals one third of their armed forces. The battle severely damaged the Austro-Hungarian Army, destroyed a large portion of its trained officers, and crippled Austria. Henceforward it couldn't achieve success at the Russian front except for when supported by Germany. The victory of the Russian Imperial Army at the Battle of Galicia somewhat made up for the defeats at the early stages of the war such as the rout of the Russian forces in East Prussia. This also helped Serbia to repulse Austro-Hungarian attacks that year," Yuri Bahutin said.
Fonte:
http://voiceofrussia.com/radio_broadcast/254124597/254732715
Mais:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrWPsj6fVbeWE9ZqDmJm6pcT7h17h10_f
