August 1914: Surprise or Countdown? February 14, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
***Dedicated to Zach*** In western memory, particularly in European memory the guns of August 1914 were a long awaited horror: and while the First World War was so much worse than anyone could have possibly imagined – Beach thinks of an earlier Churchill post on the nineteenth century comparing itself with the twentieth – everyone [...]
Image: Princip’s Conscience February 2, 2012
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beach has several things on his conscience. Aged eight he clumsily trod on a frog breaking its back bone; last summer he accidentally killed a baby adder while trying to get it out of the garden; and then there was a very painful split with a girl who deserved better a decade ago, sorry E. [...]
Those nice Austro-Hungarian machine gunners October 2, 2010
Posted by Beachcombing in : Contemporary
Beachcombing recently found himself marveling over a passage in Mark Thompson’s The White War on Italy’s dreadful First World War campaigns. Italy it must be remembered was fighting, for the most part, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Peacock Imperial Throne of central Europe. Another kind of collusion was so rare that very few instances were recorded [...]
