Combat Pragmatist/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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* Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes. |
* Perhaps surprisingly, Tai Chi, that meditative martial art like exercise that old people and hippies do in the park? That's based on a Chinese martial art. Recall that big, flowing, windmill motion you make with your arms where you sink into a crouch as you sweep your hands across and out from you? What you're actually doing is grabbing dirt... and throwing it in your enemy's eyes. |
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* The specialty of the Sardinian military and its Royal Italian successor was more fighting dirty than fighting fair. The Sardinian Army had little money or space for actual cavalry, so they trained the Bersaglieri, fast running light infantry trained to quickly form an infantry square, repeal cavalry charges and then ''charge the cavalry as it pulled back to regroup, [[Up to Eleven|possibly on the flank]]'' (they actually charged Russian cavalry busy attacking French infantry at the Battle of the Chernaya, routing the Russians). During [[World War II]], the Italian Alpini (mountain troops) ski troops got a scary fame in Soviet Union due their habit of popping out of nowhere in the middle of the night, gunning or bombing down everyone and everything they saw and run away. During [[World War II]] the Italians infiltrated the American embassy at Rome as soon as they heard of Pearl Harbor to steal the American diplomatic codes before the local copies were destroyed, with a radio interception unit giving Rommel an edge due a very talkative American military aide at Alexandria (part of the reason Rommel lost at El Alamein was that the British found out, kicked the military aide out of Egypt and had the Americans change all their codes at once). The Italian Navy during both World Wars had a nasty habit of torpedoing or mining enemy ships in harbour (the Austrians during [[World War I]] didn't suffer damage as they knew about Italians loving to fight dirty and were prepared. The Royal Navy didn't expect that, and lost two battleships, a tanker and a destroyer, the latter as collateral damage, in a single raid before wising up) and arming patrol motorboats with torpedoes ([[Crowning Moment of Awesome|they sank the Austrian flagship after stumbling on it, with another Austrian ship filming what had happened]]). Oh, and that part about dropping bombs from air being originally a war crime? The Italians pionereed the art of bombing enemy troops while knowing that. |
* The specialty of the Sardinian military and its Royal Italian successor was more fighting dirty than fighting fair. The Sardinian Army had little money or space for actual cavalry, so they trained the Bersaglieri, fast running light infantry trained to quickly form an infantry square, repeal cavalry charges and then ''charge the cavalry as it pulled back to regroup, [[Up to Eleven|possibly on the flank]]'' (they actually charged Russian cavalry busy attacking French infantry at the Battle of the Chernaya, routing the Russians). During [[World War II]], the Italian Alpini (mountain troops) ski troops got a scary fame in Soviet Union due their habit of popping out of nowhere in the middle of the night, gunning or bombing down everyone and everything they saw and run away. During [[World War II]] the Italians infiltrated the American embassy at Rome as soon as they heard of Pearl Harbor to steal the American diplomatic codes before the local copies were destroyed, with a radio interception unit giving Rommel an edge due a very talkative American military aide at Alexandria (part of the reason Rommel lost at El Alamein was that the British found out, kicked the military aide out of Egypt and had the Americans change all their codes at once). The Italian Navy during both World Wars had a nasty habit of torpedoing or mining enemy ships in harbour (the Austrians during [[World War I]] didn't suffer damage as they knew about Italians loving to fight dirty and were prepared. The Royal Navy didn't expect that, and lost two battleships, a tanker and a destroyer, the latter as collateral damage, in a single raid before wising up) and arming patrol motorboats with torpedoes ([[Crowning Moment of Awesome|they sank the Austrian flagship after stumbling on it, with another Austrian ship filming what had happened]]). Oh, and that part about dropping bombs from air being originally a war crime? The Italians pionereed the art of bombing enemy troops while knowing that. |
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*One weird subversion was in the great Truk raid preceding the [[World War II|Marianas Campaign]]. After the striking power of Japan's Truk base had been eliminated and a pitiful convoy was fleeing, [[The Spock|Admiral Spruance]] [[Out of Character|of all people]] took off after them personally in a battleship like a [[New Meat|wet-behind-the-ears]] Ensign [[Glory Hound|starving for glory]] even ordering bombers away so he could have his kill. No logical explanation seems to have been given other then that Spruance thought he had achieved enough dominance in the battle area to indulge a little sentiment. |
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