OT Bonus

[Mark in Rochester]

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[browningautorifle]

Korea? And the height they are on the hills, those guys are shooting a long ways off. They aren't worried about cover so I wonder if they're a firebase?

[RCS]

I have seen this photo before and believe it is from Burma around 1945

[ed skeels]

Lots of brass in the foreground.

[browningautorifle]

Burma

I'd believe that, forgot about that place.

Lots of brass in the foreground.

Looks like there was a .30 cal sitting there. Lack of belt links means cotton belts like the far gun, all in one spot forward is right where a .30 will dump it out the bottom...we'd push it forward with both hands to make it go away. Sometimes it would be right up to the gun...

[Boonie Stomper]

First guy with the M1903A3 with M1 web sling. Is that "HELL" scratched on the stock?

[CINDERS]

If you look in front of the .30 M.G the dust is still evident from just firing, the enemy must be well and truly suppressed and legging it as that reminiscent of the scene like the WWI episode of the ANZAC's at Gallipoli stopping the huge Turkish attack our boys were actually fighting each other to get up on the fire step to have a go at Johnny Turk some rifles got so hot the boy's could not hold them.

"Between 3.30 am and noon on 19 May, Turkish soldiers hurled themselves at their enemies. As always in this war, when close-packed masses of men attempted to storm strong trench positions defended by thousands of riflemen and machine guns, disaster ensued. Thousands were killed or wounded within metres of the Anzac line, but nowhere was it breached. It was calculated that more than 948,000 rounds of rifle and machine-gun bullets were fired at the Turks.

When the attacks ceased, the scene was horrific. Charles Bean wrote:
... the dead and wounded lay everywhere in hundreds. Many of those nearest to the Anzac line had been shattered by terrible wounds inflicted by modern bullets at close ranges. No sound came from that terrible space.

Of the 42,000 Turkish soldiers involved, 3000 lay dead along the ridge and another 10,000 had been wounded. That day gave new Turkish names to positions on the Anzac battlefield -- Kanli Sirt, Bloody Ridge; Kirmezi Sirt, Red Ridge; and Shehidlar Tepe, Martyrs Hill. Anzac losses amounted to 160 killed and 468 wounded.
Within days, the bodies lying out in no-man's-land, along Second Ridge and elsewhere were rotting in the sun. The smell became unbearable. A truce was arranged for 24 May to bury the dead, and for a few brief hours the firing ceased as Turks, Australians and New Zealanders moved hundreds of corpses into large, hastily dug pits.

Bodies of men killed in earlier struggles along the ridge were also discovered and buried. Private Albert Facey of the 11th Battalion, from Western Australia, worked with the burial parties:
Most of us had to work in short spells as we felt very ill ... The whole operation was a strange experience -- here we were, mixing with our enemies, exchanging smiles and cigarettes, when the day before we had been tearing each other to pieces ... Away to our left there were high table-topped hills and on these there were what looked like thousands of people. Turkish civilians had taken advantage of the cease-fire to come out and watch the burial.

From that time forward the Anzacs gained a new appreciation of their adversaries. They were soldiers like themselves, bound to the business of war, but experiencing equally its brutalities and sufferings.

[browningautorifle]

Most of us had to work in short spells as we felt very ill

Because decaying bodies exude poisonous gasses...

[#1oilman]

Ethyl Mercaptan the same agent used as odorant natural gas

[13Echo]

the smell comes from various amines two of which are rather colorfully named putricine and cadaverine. At autopsy we could mask the odor but not eliminate it. The amines would cling to the skin, I think they dissolved in the sebaceous gland secretions, and you could smell it on your skin for days after. Forensic pathology was interesting but it smelled bad and was frequently depressing.