Notes for Hosts

How to become a host

If you’d like to host the Military History Carnival, just leave a comment or e-mail me. The only requirement is that you have a blog and know how to use it. It doesn’t have to be about military history, and you don’t need any experience of hosting a carnival. This page should tell you everything you need to know. If it doesn’t just ask me.

The carnival takes place around the middle of every month, but the exact date depends on what is most convenient for you. The date needs to be fixed before the previous carnival is posted, so that the host can give full details of the next edition. You will also need to give me an e-mail address which you want submissions sent to. This doesn’t have to be the same as your normal e-mail address. It can be a good idea to set up a temporary address just for carnival submissions.

Calls for posts

After the Apache leader Geronimo's escape in April 1886, rumors of his whereabouts floated around, but soon his band of Apaches raided the Peck family ranch in the Santa Cruz Valley in modern day Arizona, killing Mrs Peck and a child. The Apaches took Mr Peck and another child captive.

A Buffalo Soldier who won the Medal of Honor in 1889 has been buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
The Missing in America Project helped get Mays moved to Arlington from the cemetery of an Arizona hospital. The Old Guard Riders provided the motorcycle escort.
My first unit was D Troop 2/9 Cavalry which was one of the great Buffalo Regiments. The other was the 10th Cavalry. I have previously written about Corporal Edward Scott of K Troop of the 10th and his action at Pinito.

The good folks at Riders Discount provided me with a pair of the Bobster Phoenix Over-the-Glasses Interchangeable Goggles that go on over your normal glasses. I sometimes like to ride without the face plate in my Arai Tour-X helmet, especially when it is hot, so I thought they might be worth a try.

They are very comfortable over my glasses and seat very well in the channel made for goggles on the Arai helmet. I assume they would fit even better over a standard open face helmet, but I cannot confirm that. They were breathable and did not fog up, which is a situation that I am very sensitive too. (i.e. I would have thrown them out, if they did).

The one downside was when I got onto busy roads. The goggles give you tunnel vision, so when there is a lot of lane changing going on, it takes a while to get used to them.

I've always made gloves stink. I guess I am just one of those guys that sweat a lot, but when I have worn leather gloves in summer riding conditions for too long, they just smell.

Of course, I'm also very cost conscious and have resisted buying another pair of gloves that are made only for summer riding. My friends over at Riders Discount took pity on me and sent me a pair of Fieldsheer Mach 6.0 Mesh gloves.

In the late 1600s, tensions rose between the native tribes of present day Maine, principally the Abnaki, and the English settlers of the area. As so often was the case, the tensions which might have arisen over local grievances took on a more Atlantic nature due to war in Europe.

In Europe, at the time, William of Orange had taken the English throne in the Glorious Revolution and had joined the League of Augsburg (Grand Alliance) to halt Louis XIV's aggression in the low countries and German palatinates. In New England, the English colonists and the Indians, goaded on by French Jesuits, fought for dominance as part of "King William's War."

As part of my research on Operation Bluecoat, I travelled along this road running from Villers Bocage to Vire.

On 5 January 1940, The Finns began an offensive on the Raate Road, near Suomussalmi and ended up destroying or capturing the Russian 44th Division. The 44th had been halted at a roadblock southeast of Suomussalmi around the present day intersection of roads 912 and 843. The Russians hunkered down along the road between Suomussalmi and Raate in what the Finns called motti formations, a logging term doubling in meaning that the 44th's sub units could be broken into smaller chunks and cut up individually like so many logs. The Finns operated in small units all along the road and and spent days conducting close range grenade attacks and terrifying the Russian officers with highly selective sniper fire.

In mid May, General William Tecumseh Sherman was picking his way down North Georgia. His counterpart, General Joseph E. Johnston had just reluctantly retreated from Cassville, Georgia to the Allatoona Gorge in the hopes of luring Sherman into a tight killing zone. Johnston's only worry was that the position at Allatoona was too good. Unbeknownst to Johnston, Sherman knew the position was too strong to attack head on. Sherman had spent a lot of time in the area as a young officer and had spent much time around the Etowah Indian burial mounds nearby. Sherman decided to swing west and go directly after the strategic crossroads around Dallas, Georgia.

In mid January 1944, the slow, hard slog up the Italian peninsula was into its fourth month already and the Allies were looking for innovative ways to break the formidable German defenses. With the plan for an amphibious operation at Anzio, US Fifth Army Commander Mark Clark feared the landing force being forced back into the sea by the German reserve forces around Rome. In an attempt to draw the Germans away from the Rome and Anzio area and further south, he ordered an attack by the 36th Infantry Division from Texas across the Rapido River to the south of Cassino. Secondarily, there was even some hope that the attack might succeed with an armored follow up by the 1st Armored Division that would storm up the Liri River valley and beyond. Clark met his first objective, but failed miserably with the secondary objective. The Battle of of the Rapido River, or "Bloody River" as its participants called it, was a disaster on the scale of Omaha Beach, but without the merit of a final success.