Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
Europe being Europe at that time, that's a dang big oversight.
Lang made his assumptions based on what worked in his experience. And it worked for the better part of 2 decades. That is actually a record in that region.
More China being China. Japan and Korea weren't gonna start anything. The Russian bear is caged until it splits the atom.
China though should have been an obvious faultpoint considering the issues of the KMT government.
I can imagine that the experience that the Germans had in China building the rail network convinced them that Chiang Kai-shek could not be trusted because of all the graft, kickbacks, bribes and corruption that went on, and the only reason that they finished the project was that it was too vital to leave uncompleted.
It is. But up until this point, some point of Europe is at war with some other part of Europe at least once a generation.
During the IOTL Korean War the United States Army used ROK soldiers to fill in the ranks and that became the Korean Augmentation to United States Army (KATUSA) program.
I can see the Germans adopting something like that with special emphasis on having trained Korean soldiers working with the KSK and I can see the Korean Marines being more of a special forces unit because of its relative small size.
I can see the Germans adopting something like that with special emphasis on having trained Korean soldiers working with the KSK and I can see the Korean Marines being more of a special forces unit because of its relative small size.
Part 95, Chapter 1501
Chapter One Thousand Five Hundred One
16th August 1962
Seoul, Korea
The letters were the sort of thing that Kat needed to feel like she was still connected to the real world. She had spent every day since she had arrived in Korea thinking of ways to make life uncomfortable for the Chinese on either side of the Yalu River. Even knowing the sort of damage that her people were committing didn’t bring a whole lot of joy to her. Somewhere along the line, her career had just become a regular job that kept her away from her family at times when it felt like her presence was sorely missed. Doug had said that the children missed her terribly but because they had gone to Canada with him to visit his parents, they didn’t really have a whole lot of time to miss her. Kat just hoped that Margot was wasn’t acting the way she had in the past by being cold to Kat’s children, Marie in particular. She didn’t feel she needed to concern herself with Sir Malcolm though. Doug said that Malcolm had taken the children on a trip to a farm in New Brunswick that had once belonged to Doug’s grandfather and now was home to some of their cousins.
The letter from Ilse was full of enthusiasm, she had been contributing to a book that was being published by an American author. The book was due out in September. Kat hoped that Ilse wouldn’t be disappointed by the result of this. Ilse desperately wanted to change the world and Kat feared that she would be an easy mark for a charlatan for that reason. Kat had never heard of this Rachel Carson before Ilse had started corresponding with her.
Then there was a letter from Gia, the issues that Kat had hoped that she had put behind her had come back to the surface.
Gia had made the decision years earlier that she should probably never have children of her own because of the fearful hereditary legacy of her family. Now that she was married, she was having second thoughts and her husband either didn’t seem to understand, or wasn’t too concerned with, the risks involved for not just them but her cousin Georgy as well. As Gia explained it, in Russia people’s memories ran long and if she had a son who was afflicted with Hemophilia then they would remember the role that it had played in the fall of her family decades earlier. Gia’s earliest memories were of watching her Uncle Alexei’s last agonizing years. After his death her Grandparents had died in the following months, giving in to grief and despair.
Anecdotal evidence suggested that Gia’s Aunt Maria and Aunt Anastasia had been symptomatic carriers of that disease. An incident when a tonsillectomy that had been performed on Maria that had resulted in excessive bleeding. The manner of Anastasia’s death had been by exsanguination as the result of a car accident that Doctors had been unable to treat. Her Aunt Olga had been left mentally broken, eventually had retreated into the fantasy that the revolution and exile to an isolated corner of British Columbia had never happened. It was still 1914 and she lived with her family in Saint Petersburg.
Tatiana, Gia’s mother, had tried to move on with her life but she had clearly had her own issues. She had decided that she would never allow the Bolsheviks to take her alive ever again. When gunmen in the service of Stalin had attacked the house that the Romanovs had lived in, she had not even tried to run. Tatiana had opened fire on her attackers after shoving Gia out the back door of their house. Kat had admired Tatiana since she had learned about what she had done and hoped that she would have had the courage to do the same thing under those circumstances.
Still, there was a huge question mark hanging over Olga and Tatiana. Had they been carriers? There was no way to know for certain. Supposedly, Tatiana had been greatly relieved that Gia had been born a girl for that very reason.
Kat didn’t have any answers for Gia. She remembered her fears in such matters, years earlier. The difference was that Gia’s reasons were much more tangible. Kat’s fears had revolved around a feeling that she would eventually share her mother’s fate. Fortunately, that had proven wrong.
Near Buseong, Korea
The lot of one of the Byeong was not one that most young men would aspire to. That was the reason why almost all of them were conscripts. Added to this was that Gang Ji shared the surname of a famous General. His instructors had enjoyed a great deal of sport because of that, even though they knew he was in no way related to General Gang. Ji was as far from a hero as one could imagine. Slight of build and introverted, he spent most of his time just trying to avoid being noticed. The Drillmasters had zeroed in on him for exactly those reasons. The idea was that they would make a man out of him and they had gone about that in the most sadistic ways. For the life of him, Ji couldn’t figure out what any of it had to do with masculinity, but he wasn’t in a position to argue with them. In the end, Ji was probably one of the few men who had welcomed it when they had been pulled from training and sent to the front as half trained cannon fodder.
The next surprise had been the German Soldaten. Big men who seemed to be completely fearless. Then there were the German Officers who were absolutely insane. Ji had been “volunteered” to be a stretcher bearer when he had seen a helicopter for the first time up close. A young Officer had jumped out of the machine and had started barking orders. The Officer came across like someone who was used to being obeyed, then Ji had seen the Officer up close and was shocked to see that the Officer was a woman just a couple years older than he was. The armor vest, helmet and sunglasses made it difficult to tell that about her. When she had glared at Ji over the top of her sunglasses, he had seen that her eyes were the color of an icy mountain lake. Completely unnerving.
16th August 1962
Seoul, Korea
The letters were the sort of thing that Kat needed to feel like she was still connected to the real world. She had spent every day since she had arrived in Korea thinking of ways to make life uncomfortable for the Chinese on either side of the Yalu River. Even knowing the sort of damage that her people were committing didn’t bring a whole lot of joy to her. Somewhere along the line, her career had just become a regular job that kept her away from her family at times when it felt like her presence was sorely missed. Doug had said that the children missed her terribly but because they had gone to Canada with him to visit his parents, they didn’t really have a whole lot of time to miss her. Kat just hoped that Margot was wasn’t acting the way she had in the past by being cold to Kat’s children, Marie in particular. She didn’t feel she needed to concern herself with Sir Malcolm though. Doug said that Malcolm had taken the children on a trip to a farm in New Brunswick that had once belonged to Doug’s grandfather and now was home to some of their cousins.
The letter from Ilse was full of enthusiasm, she had been contributing to a book that was being published by an American author. The book was due out in September. Kat hoped that Ilse wouldn’t be disappointed by the result of this. Ilse desperately wanted to change the world and Kat feared that she would be an easy mark for a charlatan for that reason. Kat had never heard of this Rachel Carson before Ilse had started corresponding with her.
Then there was a letter from Gia, the issues that Kat had hoped that she had put behind her had come back to the surface.
Gia had made the decision years earlier that she should probably never have children of her own because of the fearful hereditary legacy of her family. Now that she was married, she was having second thoughts and her husband either didn’t seem to understand, or wasn’t too concerned with, the risks involved for not just them but her cousin Georgy as well. As Gia explained it, in Russia people’s memories ran long and if she had a son who was afflicted with Hemophilia then they would remember the role that it had played in the fall of her family decades earlier. Gia’s earliest memories were of watching her Uncle Alexei’s last agonizing years. After his death her Grandparents had died in the following months, giving in to grief and despair.
Anecdotal evidence suggested that Gia’s Aunt Maria and Aunt Anastasia had been symptomatic carriers of that disease. An incident when a tonsillectomy that had been performed on Maria that had resulted in excessive bleeding. The manner of Anastasia’s death had been by exsanguination as the result of a car accident that Doctors had been unable to treat. Her Aunt Olga had been left mentally broken, eventually had retreated into the fantasy that the revolution and exile to an isolated corner of British Columbia had never happened. It was still 1914 and she lived with her family in Saint Petersburg.
Tatiana, Gia’s mother, had tried to move on with her life but she had clearly had her own issues. She had decided that she would never allow the Bolsheviks to take her alive ever again. When gunmen in the service of Stalin had attacked the house that the Romanovs had lived in, she had not even tried to run. Tatiana had opened fire on her attackers after shoving Gia out the back door of their house. Kat had admired Tatiana since she had learned about what she had done and hoped that she would have had the courage to do the same thing under those circumstances.
Still, there was a huge question mark hanging over Olga and Tatiana. Had they been carriers? There was no way to know for certain. Supposedly, Tatiana had been greatly relieved that Gia had been born a girl for that very reason.
Kat didn’t have any answers for Gia. She remembered her fears in such matters, years earlier. The difference was that Gia’s reasons were much more tangible. Kat’s fears had revolved around a feeling that she would eventually share her mother’s fate. Fortunately, that had proven wrong.
Near Buseong, Korea
The lot of one of the Byeong was not one that most young men would aspire to. That was the reason why almost all of them were conscripts. Added to this was that Gang Ji shared the surname of a famous General. His instructors had enjoyed a great deal of sport because of that, even though they knew he was in no way related to General Gang. Ji was as far from a hero as one could imagine. Slight of build and introverted, he spent most of his time just trying to avoid being noticed. The Drillmasters had zeroed in on him for exactly those reasons. The idea was that they would make a man out of him and they had gone about that in the most sadistic ways. For the life of him, Ji couldn’t figure out what any of it had to do with masculinity, but he wasn’t in a position to argue with them. In the end, Ji was probably one of the few men who had welcomed it when they had been pulled from training and sent to the front as half trained cannon fodder.
The next surprise had been the German Soldaten. Big men who seemed to be completely fearless. Then there were the German Officers who were absolutely insane. Ji had been “volunteered” to be a stretcher bearer when he had seen a helicopter for the first time up close. A young Officer had jumped out of the machine and had started barking orders. The Officer came across like someone who was used to being obeyed, then Ji had seen the Officer up close and was shocked to see that the Officer was a woman just a couple years older than he was. The armor vest, helmet and sunglasses made it difficult to tell that about her. When she had glared at Ji over the top of her sunglasses, he had seen that her eyes were the color of an icy mountain lake. Completely unnerving.
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FBKampfer
Banned
I was going to say, I suspect that the Koreans units are having a pretty rough time of it.
They don't have a lot of manpower, and any attrition is going to hurt them much more than the Chinese, especially as it sounds like they don't have a large reservist corps.
They may also be suffering from poor morale. They likely have equipment only barely better than the Chinese, and lack most of the Germans' heavy support.
Electronics, optics, and engines are probably going to be the biggest bottlenecks in their logistics, and will rely heavily on German imports.
They don't have a lot of manpower, and any attrition is going to hurt them much more than the Chinese, especially as it sounds like they don't have a large reservist corps.
They may also be suffering from poor morale. They likely have equipment only barely better than the Chinese, and lack most of the Germans' heavy support.
Electronics, optics, and engines are probably going to be the biggest bottlenecks in their logistics, and will rely heavily on German imports.
Yeah, I agree that the Koreans are going to have problems and their best bet is to bottleneck the Chinese.
Equipment wise though the Chinese are in the same boat as they seem to be relying on a lot of US equipment or US variants. Yet they most likley seem to have more of it considering that it is China and they can have an "inexhaustible supply" so to speak.
But like everything this is a quality vs quantity argument. And quantity has its own quality in as much as quality has its own quantity.
I think that the Korean Army has previous generation German equipment in the beginning but are now getting more first line weapons for the units that are being held in reserve for the upcoming offensive.
Apparently most of the Korean factories are still in unoccupied Korean territory and are now on 24/7 mode and are keeping up with the needs to resupply both Korean and German demands.
Apparently most of the Korean factories are still in unoccupied Korean territory and are now on 24/7 mode and are keeping up with the needs to resupply both Korean and German demands.
FBKampfer
Banned
I suspect the Koreans don't have much in reserve, especially a strategic one, if it even exists.
They likely don't have an extensive reservist corps, which means it's at least weeks before new troops are trained in quantity.
Smaller nations like Korea tend to get pressed into less benefitial longterm choices by the necessity of immediate circumstances.
so how many generations of non-carriers are needed before there is no longer a risk of a carrier emerging?
If the females are asymptomatic carriers? As long as it takes to have a male without the disease, else there's always be a risk involved unless a generation gets lucky and everyone gets the good genes.
Right, it's essentially luck. With bad luck...never. Assuming a carrier female with a healthy male every time, with bad luck, never. If as mentioned, her granddaughters are also carriers, they can continue to pass that on.
ferdi254
Banned
It is a funny but very complicated fact that hemophilia is a perfect argument against YEC. Basically it means that even extremely harmful mutations can survive quite a long time killing the argument of the YEC people that all mutations need to be beneficial to be added to the genepool. Can elaborate longer but fear bear attack.
