The photo above shows two pieces of shrapnel. The top piece hit my grandfather in the leg outside his headquarters on the beachhead at Anzio in the winter of 1944 after the Allied landing there. The leather of his cavalry riding boot caused it to glance off his leg, tearing the leather and leaving only a flesh wound, thankfully.
In the Great War, millions of rounds of artillery shells fell into the soil of northwestern France, and by estimates, some 30-40% of those shells were duds that never exploded. Even today, hundreds of shells are exposed by erosion or other means and god knows how much toxic chemicals leach out of those other buried shells contaminating the soil and groundwater? Ukraine will be scarred by those artillery rounds for generations, thanks to that homicidal psychopath in the Kremlin…
I've still, and will until the end of my days, got what I believe to be Russian shrapnel in my leg, my pack was peppered with it, enough to set off the smoke grenades inside, but I was 6" from having the lot of it in my chest which was covered in M-79 grenades, 40 of them I think, 1/2 of a step less and I would have come home in a box and not a med-evec, the concussion was enough to throw me back 15' and break my back. Every single day for over 50 years now I am reminded of the cost of serving our country, no complaints here, I was able to keep a friend alive who the Dr's told him would have surely died without me, that by itself was enough reason for me to have been there. I look at those images and think the people firing those rounds can't have any idea what they are doing. You can look at those dots that are craters, there are thousands of them, and figure that each one represents a hundred dollars or more, I really have no idea what they cost but I know that they aren't free, and that Russia has an economy smaller than Texas, so this is going to bankrupt them eventually, have at it boys. It's like trying to put out a fire with hundred dollar bills, if you have enough maybe you can, that has been a tried and true technique in the movie industry for decades, but maybe you just burn up a shit load of money, my guess is that the Russians are doing the latter, like I said, have at it boys. The Ukrainians will eventually dig it up, melt it again, and maybe use it to build bridges but they won't be to Russia. They are still mining that stuff out of the ground in Belgium where the armies had at each other in WWI and will for another hundred years or more. The breadbasket of the world indeed, imbecilic putin is sowing it with iron and steel, with any luck he'll be eating some of it himself soon.
Thanks for the insightful photo recon analysis. One has to wonder how much vodka plays into the scatter of those artillery rounds. Prayers 🙏 for the Ukrainians enduring this.
As a former artillery officer, let me tall a story. I came of military age between two wars and have never been in combat, but I did spend time at summer tra9ining in Fort Drum, in upstate New York. In one unit they were training reservess to fire artillery from behind the hill I was sitting on toward targets in a valley in front of us, so we could hear the shells whistling over hour heads. Then suddenly, a very loud ex0losion behind us. In those days hou controlled the range of artillery shells by the number of powder bags you put into the shell before you fired it. That bang behind us was a short round. We all five of us got up and looked behind us. On the ground behind me, a still smoking fragment of very sharp metal looking exactly like those you pictured here. About a foot and a half behind me. A little more oomph in that shell, and I would not be here today.
All firing that day stopped, and the regular Army troops who were supporting us began an investigation. I never found out what they came up with, but it was a lesson in the dangers of what actual warfare must be like. I was glad to have been born too young for Korea, too old for Viet Nam. Luck is strange. I used to wonder when I was in training whether I could actually do what was needed, and kill large nos. of human beings. I finally concluded that yes, I could, I would enjoy it, because you always enjoy what you can do better than anyone else. And I was really good at directing fire at targets, and at Fort Sill, when I was a college junior, I fired seven perfect missions, an d then fired another one in front of 700 fellow cadets. But my luck held. I was too old when Viet Nam heated up Older, I would not have survived the famous reservoir in Korea.
Google reports I misfired posting a replying comment to the blog.
Hard to misidentify the "trenches" because the shadows of the trees are visible right of the top-to bottom "trench". Faint, but visible. BTW, the treelines between fields are common this way here in Michigan, as windbreaks and a bit of shelter for venison on the hoof. (Those lovely whitetail deer are known as "giant rats" to local farmers. Hence the big hunt each fall.
Hard to assess the random "pattern" (oxymoronic). I"m thinking that these rounds were shot way out at the extreme limit of the weapons' range. And maybe they had to move between volleys, to avoid risking counterbattery fire..
Most likely there were no FOs, of course. So some major or colonel decided from Google Earth fotos that the tractors were a threat to the Motherland, stuck a pin in the "trench intersection", and told the cannoneers to fire at will. Then it slipped his mind completely until they ran out of rounds..
Thanks for explaining so well to us folks. I say "us folks" because my knowledge is narrow. I went from semester break of Plebe Year to civilian ROTC at MSU, then to the local AR artillery batallion. So even those of us with some relevant knowledge value your analyses.
Late sixties.? The only one I remember is "Captain Moshe ChristmasTree". Energetic, cared for his work and the cadets. So popular I only remember the nickname.
Short rounds were so common in 1970-75 reserve training duty that I only recall one investigation in 4 years when we had maybe 1 or 2 short rounds a live fire training day by my 8" battalion. You're spot on about miscounted propellant bags. The forward observers would shrug their shoulders, put their helmets back on, and duck a bit deeper in their holes before calling the next fire mission. Amazing we never had any FOs dusted off. (means " forward observers helocoptered to the hospital")
Jan 14, 2023·edited Jan 14, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
I just finished reading Lucian Trescotts "Shrapnel".
My two old horses, rescued from the butcher's, keep my pastures clean from weeds so I won't be fined for abandoning the land and letting it go wild. My property isn't big enough for them to find enough eat, so I buy 30 kilo bags of feed. It's a composite of mainly dried beets, with small additions of corn, wheat, carob and minerals like salt, dried and pressed into pellets. I give Romeu and Boneca two liters of dried beet pellets , soaked in water for 12 hours three times a day. The price of a bag of beets rose from nine euros to eleven euros after Putin attacked the Ukrane February 24, 2021, because now it must be sent from Canada. It's about the same price as dog food.
At 7 a.m. this morning after giving my old "pasture ornaments " their breakfast, I walked two blocks down the hill to catch the school bus 15 km to town, in order to meet a friend for lunch later. A couple of teenage neighbors chatted as we waited at the corner. That's the only bus until 2:30 in the afternoon. So I had a lot of time to spend until she arrived from the next village. I decided walk across the old Romanesque bridge to the other side of the river Lima and look at the village, the oldest one in Portugal. Usually I don't take time to view this perspective. My cats kept me awake most of the night. I am 74, and I was tired and decided to amble along as slowly as possible ostensibly to save energy for my meeting later, but also to really observe the details of this peaceful morning. The temperature was rising from 9* to what would become 13* at four p.m. and the river was flat calm, reflecting the soft greys and blues of the sky, as I strolled across the old stone bridge. I passed along the edge of a park until I reached the canoeing club and walked out on the dock to get the feel of being surrounded by the passing waters, the passing of time. On the way to the dock, I was pleased to see a heron on the river bank standing so still I had to stare to see if she was real, and suddenly she lifted off and flew away down river along with several swift's. They soared over a wooden boat docked on there, a replica if the flat bottomed river boats once used to haul trade you and down the river.

The village and surroundings have been renovated over the last 30 years, first with funds from the European Union, then with local and national money's. In my first years here, I walked like everyone else here with my head down, so as not to trip on the uneven, centuries old cobblestones. Today my slow steps let me study the sand and gravel on the edge of the road, every type of green weed, the moss on old granite stone walls. I thought about all the people who have lived and worked along this river, going way back even to the Phoenecians exploring and trading here.
This village, like nearly every city, town and village in Europe, has renewed it's old facades, modifying, modernizing, beautifying and breathing new life into the people's of Europe. Tourism boomed, and this village was crowded with visitors from all over the world, as travelers came to see revitalized traditions, to see live history, some to imagine their ancestors places, to imagine how they might have lived, to get a sense of how they came to be here today.
Putin's war, I've heard, may come here by 2030, but that could change in an instant. This could all be flattened, like the Ukraine.
You really do excellent commentary on this war, so much better than like CNN or other MSM. Hopefully the Russians will depose Putin and give it up soon. OT, I was born in 1958, anyone born then or in 1959 did not have to register for the draft because people were so disgusted by the Vietnam war. So I guess that makes me a pacifist? No one I knew had any interest in the military at all. Granted we were white middle class kids from the suburbs.
Before l respond after perusing your posts, l read the comments to get a sense of where the discussion is going .
Today l a totally out of my depth, despite having grown up in a Veterans Community in which everyone’s Dad had fought in
WW II.
Fact is, 98% of the kids l knew were Jewish. I asked my mother why and her reply was difficult to understand: once it was evident that most of the families were Jewish, the nonJews fled and so the neighborhood tipped.
Of the two who remained one was a black family, the other was
atheist. So that’s how l grew up in a Jewish ghetto in 1949.
What religions becomes self-righteous you end up with warring factions and the whole shebang starts all over.
Reminds me of the rather cynical quote to the effect that "You can get people do commit some horrible acts in the name of politics, but for really wide-scale atrocities and mass murder, it takes religion."
A sad thought given religions also encourage charities and so on, but worth pondering.
wow, Babette...your childhood sounds very close to mine. except that I grew up in postwar housing (a row home, to be precise) which had ALWAYS been 98% Jewish. I was a "rebel" who would do provocative things like go to movies on Yom Kippur and get "beaten up" for it (my family was pretty much atheist, but never talked about it). that neighborhood is now heavily Hasidic and everybody hates each other. it's not uncommon to find blocks with three or four basement synagogues because of tiny doctrinal disagreements. insanity.
Thank you for such a clear explanation of what we're seeing in the two photos. In the June 2022 photo, the vertical and horizontal lines clearly are trees, not trenches (whether or not there may be trenches within the tree lines). In the second photo, from Jan. 2023, the vertical line clearly is a tree line - you can see the shadows from leafless trees to the left of the tree line. The trees don't appear to have been much impacted by Russian bombardments.
Jan 14, 2023·edited Jan 16, 2023Liked by Lucian K. Truscott IV
As I was finishing up writing a more personal post about the King of Battle from the perspective of an old Airborne grunt, something occurred to me.
As Mr. Truscott cited, "CNN reported on Tuesday that Russian artillery fire is down as much as 75 percent in some areas in recent days. "Russia may be rationing artillery rounds due to low supplies, or it could be part of a broader reassessment of tactics in the face of successful Ukrainian offenses.” I figure that either way they're stockpiling for the upcoming campaign season. And that reminded me of Belarus and Putin's new red line.
There are around 500 Belarusians, mostly trained in Poland with more in the pipeline, fighting for Ukraine and deployed primarily north of Kyiv who are itching to turn any Belarusian saldat who comes in to overthrowing Lukashenka. Prolly not too much to worry about on that front.
So that leaves the question, where is Putin stockpiling his arty? Not just munitions, but equipment.
With his recent "invasion of Russia or Belarus by Ukraine" rhetoric, I think we can surmise where. Ukraine's arty fires are more accurate, increasingly longer ranged, better supplied and logistically supported by NATO stockpiles than Putin can match and that scares the shit out of him.
So, even though I'm terrified by the thought of the King of Battle dropping it's wrath on me, make sure Ukraine can drop it on them. The grunts always get tasked with taking care of the rest.
So the Russians are still fighting with WWII technology and tactics. Why not use a reconnaissance drone to get up close to the enemy and find out what's really there? I don't know if Putin has spy satellites but the US military and three letter agencies have more than enough capability.
Only some hours ago I heard apparently informed speculation on the BBC World Service on NPR, that there may be some serious squabbling going on in Moscow. Worries by Putin that the private mercenary army The Wagner Group is getting too powerful. We can always hope for a palace coup that will use getting rid of Putin as a justification to pull troops out of Ukraine. Of course there's always the possibility the new head honchos just keep throwing good money after bad, and it takes a while to finally get Russia out of Ukraine even with Putin ousted.
Cf. Lenin's definition: "The state is a body of armed men."
Of course the interpretation and science relative to artillery and craters went right over my head, but I did enjoy knowing that our crowd was probably reading the only Substack writer who's actually fought in a war. (Actually, many of you probably understood the technical parts, but I was an American History and English major.)
As for the family shrapnel, that can't be too common. Please don't groan, but I thought both pieces of Truscott shrapnel could be placed on a wall as art pieces.
I believe Lucian's weapon of choice is the pen (mightier than the sword) and while not having fought in any wars, he has trained for such. He has also written before about being imbedded as a correspondent during the the invasion of Iraq.
Hi Margo, welcome to this group who are privileged to receive. There's a trove of treasures available and waiting for you among Mr. Truscot's archive of previous substack issues.
If you haven't read these yet, I recommend the following...
"Route 17 North" Nov 6 2022
"Big Chicken and us" Sep 15 2022
"One night in New York City" Aug 23 2022
"What kind of war is this, sir?" July 16 2022 (re: Baghdad 2003)
Thank you for the suggestions. Might you work for Substack? Mr. Truscott? Or are you an admirer of his work, as I am, only you have kept records of certain pieces you've liked?
As usual, Lucian (with his Army background) provides excellent insight into another aspect of Putin's inhumane attack on Ukraine. But who knew he also has satellite imagery interpretation skills?! Very well done, sir!! Although we come from different Service backgrounds we share the ability to look at satellite imagery and see things that are invisible to the untrained eye. I can say with confidence that Lucian's photo interp skills are spot-on!! I cannot take issue with anything he said in his descriptions of the two battlefield photos. The wasted ammunition the Russians are throwing around willy-nilly (as well as their overall performance in this war) makes me wonder why we were so worried about fighting them in a conventional conflict during the Cold War.
Remember when we found out their ICBMs wouldn't hit specific targets?
And, the planners for the great tank war fought on the plains of Europe never realized their goals...poor Ft. Knox. Thank the Iraqis for training a generation of US officers and NCOs.
my understanding at that time was that if we were going to fight them, it wouldn't be with conventional weapons ( at least from the mid-fifties on). whether or not that was the truth is another issue.
I think the plan was to at least start out fighting with conventional weapons if the Russians tried to move into western Europe. Depending on how that went, tactical nuclear weapons might have been brought to bear if that was the only way to stop them from overrunning our NATO allies. I would defer to Lucian to provide his thoughts on this.
So, my arty units in South Vietnam must have shot thousands of 155 rounds. Our battery was only one out of dozens? Hundred? Now those poor farmers have all those metal pieces plus Agent Orange in the soil. However, it was well worth it? We beat those Commies and now force them to sell us all their manufactured junk. Who to invade next? How about Iceland so we get their reindeer for our Christmas time.
In the Great War, millions of rounds of artillery shells fell into the soil of northwestern France, and by estimates, some 30-40% of those shells were duds that never exploded. Even today, hundreds of shells are exposed by erosion or other means and god knows how much toxic chemicals leach out of those other buried shells contaminating the soil and groundwater? Ukraine will be scarred by those artillery rounds for generations, thanks to that homicidal psychopath in the Kremlin…
I've still, and will until the end of my days, got what I believe to be Russian shrapnel in my leg, my pack was peppered with it, enough to set off the smoke grenades inside, but I was 6" from having the lot of it in my chest which was covered in M-79 grenades, 40 of them I think, 1/2 of a step less and I would have come home in a box and not a med-evec, the concussion was enough to throw me back 15' and break my back. Every single day for over 50 years now I am reminded of the cost of serving our country, no complaints here, I was able to keep a friend alive who the Dr's told him would have surely died without me, that by itself was enough reason for me to have been there. I look at those images and think the people firing those rounds can't have any idea what they are doing. You can look at those dots that are craters, there are thousands of them, and figure that each one represents a hundred dollars or more, I really have no idea what they cost but I know that they aren't free, and that Russia has an economy smaller than Texas, so this is going to bankrupt them eventually, have at it boys. It's like trying to put out a fire with hundred dollar bills, if you have enough maybe you can, that has been a tried and true technique in the movie industry for decades, but maybe you just burn up a shit load of money, my guess is that the Russians are doing the latter, like I said, have at it boys. The Ukrainians will eventually dig it up, melt it again, and maybe use it to build bridges but they won't be to Russia. They are still mining that stuff out of the ground in Belgium where the armies had at each other in WWI and will for another hundred years or more. The breadbasket of the world indeed, imbecilic putin is sowing it with iron and steel, with any luck he'll be eating some of it himself soon.
I got grenade fragments from an RPG in Nam. One piece has moved to my neck from my shoulder. And, you are right, Putin is a Jerk/ Scumbag.
for what it's worth, in homeopathy, the direction of cure is downwards. so I guess you're healing.
It is not killing me, but I got more in arm and lower back. Am gonna ask the VA for some X-rays .
Has the fragment in your neck moved to spit where it might be safely removed ?
It has been stagnant for 35 years.
Thanks for the insightful photo recon analysis. One has to wonder how much vodka plays into the scatter of those artillery rounds. Prayers 🙏 for the Ukrainians enduring this.
As a former artillery officer, let me tall a story. I came of military age between two wars and have never been in combat, but I did spend time at summer tra9ining in Fort Drum, in upstate New York. In one unit they were training reservess to fire artillery from behind the hill I was sitting on toward targets in a valley in front of us, so we could hear the shells whistling over hour heads. Then suddenly, a very loud ex0losion behind us. In those days hou controlled the range of artillery shells by the number of powder bags you put into the shell before you fired it. That bang behind us was a short round. We all five of us got up and looked behind us. On the ground behind me, a still smoking fragment of very sharp metal looking exactly like those you pictured here. About a foot and a half behind me. A little more oomph in that shell, and I would not be here today.
All firing that day stopped, and the regular Army troops who were supporting us began an investigation. I never found out what they came up with, but it was a lesson in the dangers of what actual warfare must be like. I was glad to have been born too young for Korea, too old for Viet Nam. Luck is strange. I used to wonder when I was in training whether I could actually do what was needed, and kill large nos. of human beings. I finally concluded that yes, I could, I would enjoy it, because you always enjoy what you can do better than anyone else. And I was really good at directing fire at targets, and at Fort Sill, when I was a college junior, I fired seven perfect missions, an d then fired another one in front of 700 fellow cadets. But my luck held. I was too old when Viet Nam heated up Older, I would not have survived the famous reservoir in Korea.
As an old redleg, I figured you'd like this one. Could you believe those 155 strikes all over those fields? I forgot to write in there that if the Russians thought those tree lines were Ukrainian trenches, they barely hit them. By far the majority of the hits were out in the fields. There also was no debris that would have been visible if even one of those craters was a hit on something that had been human or a vehicle. They hit nothing. Zero. The link for the old artillery field manual, by the way, is here: https://books.google.com/books?id=ODpRAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA50&lpg=RA1-PA50&dq=what+size+is+the+crater+from+a+155+artillery+round&source=bl&ots=sRqG91uRF1&sig=ACfU3U0ForjW8RQxXR770cIYjxICAxFz5Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwidtvLSzMX8AhUWELcAHbILDao4FBDoAXoECAIQAw#v=onepage&q=what%20size%20is%20the%20crater%20from%20a%20155%20artillery%20round&f=false
Google reports I misfired posting a replying comment to the blog.
Hard to misidentify the "trenches" because the shadows of the trees are visible right of the top-to bottom "trench". Faint, but visible. BTW, the treelines between fields are common this way here in Michigan, as windbreaks and a bit of shelter for venison on the hoof. (Those lovely whitetail deer are known as "giant rats" to local farmers. Hence the big hunt each fall.
Hard to assess the random "pattern" (oxymoronic). I"m thinking that these rounds were shot way out at the extreme limit of the weapons' range. And maybe they had to move between volleys, to avoid risking counterbattery fire..
Most likely there were no FOs, of course. So some major or colonel decided from Google Earth fotos that the tractors were a threat to the Motherland, stuck a pin in the "trench intersection", and told the cannoneers to fire at will. Then it slipped his mind completely until they ran out of rounds..
Thanks for explaining so well to us folks. I say "us folks" because my knowledge is narrow. I went from semester break of Plebe Year to civilian ROTC at MSU, then to the local AR artillery batallion. So even those of us with some relevant knowledge value your analyses.
Also in ROTC in East Lansing. Ran into an instructor in a NATO Army Group HQ near Heidelberg.
Late sixties.? The only one I remember is "Captain Moshe ChristmasTree". Energetic, cared for his work and the cadets. So popular I only remember the nickname.
Major Nowak, never had him, he was on our FTX.
Ran into him in 1973 or 1974 in the FRG.
Short rounds were so common in 1970-75 reserve training duty that I only recall one investigation in 4 years when we had maybe 1 or 2 short rounds a live fire training day by my 8" battalion. You're spot on about miscounted propellant bags. The forward observers would shrug their shoulders, put their helmets back on, and duck a bit deeper in their holes before calling the next fire mission. Amazing we never had any FOs dusted off. (means " forward observers helocoptered to the hospital")
I just finished reading Lucian Trescotts "Shrapnel".
My two old horses, rescued from the butcher's, keep my pastures clean from weeds so I won't be fined for abandoning the land and letting it go wild. My property isn't big enough for them to find enough eat, so I buy 30 kilo bags of feed. It's a composite of mainly dried beets, with small additions of corn, wheat, carob and minerals like salt, dried and pressed into pellets. I give Romeu and Boneca two liters of dried beet pellets , soaked in water for 12 hours three times a day. The price of a bag of beets rose from nine euros to eleven euros after Putin attacked the Ukrane February 24, 2021, because now it must be sent from Canada. It's about the same price as dog food.
At 7 a.m. this morning after giving my old "pasture ornaments " their breakfast, I walked two blocks down the hill to catch the school bus 15 km to town, in order to meet a friend for lunch later. A couple of teenage neighbors chatted as we waited at the corner. That's the only bus until 2:30 in the afternoon. So I had a lot of time to spend until she arrived from the next village. I decided walk across the old Romanesque bridge to the other side of the river Lima and look at the village, the oldest one in Portugal. Usually I don't take time to view this perspective. My cats kept me awake most of the night. I am 74, and I was tired and decided to amble along as slowly as possible ostensibly to save energy for my meeting later, but also to really observe the details of this peaceful morning. The temperature was rising from 9* to what would become 13* at four p.m. and the river was flat calm, reflecting the soft greys and blues of the sky, as I strolled across the old stone bridge. I passed along the edge of a park until I reached the canoeing club and walked out on the dock to get the feel of being surrounded by the passing waters, the passing of time. On the way to the dock, I was pleased to see a heron on the river bank standing so still I had to stare to see if she was real, and suddenly she lifted off and flew away down river along with several swift's. They soared over a wooden boat docked on there, a replica if the flat bottomed river boats once used to haul trade you and down the river.

The village and surroundings have been renovated over the last 30 years, first with funds from the European Union, then with local and national money's. In my first years here, I walked like everyone else here with my head down, so as not to trip on the uneven, centuries old cobblestones. Today my slow steps let me study the sand and gravel on the edge of the road, every type of green weed, the moss on old granite stone walls. I thought about all the people who have lived and worked along this river, going way back even to the Phoenecians exploring and trading here.
This village, like nearly every city, town and village in Europe, has renewed it's old facades, modifying, modernizing, beautifying and breathing new life into the people's of Europe. Tourism boomed, and this village was crowded with visitors from all over the world, as travelers came to see revitalized traditions, to see live history, some to imagine their ancestors places, to imagine how they might have lived, to get a sense of how they came to be here today.
Putin's war, I've heard, may come here by 2030, but that could change in an instant. This could all be flattened, like the Ukraine.
And what will happen to the Kremlin?
You really do excellent commentary on this war, so much better than like CNN or other MSM. Hopefully the Russians will depose Putin and give it up soon. OT, I was born in 1958, anyone born then or in 1959 did not have to register for the draft because people were so disgusted by the Vietnam war. So I guess that makes me a pacifist? No one I knew had any interest in the military at all. Granted we were white middle class kids from the suburbs.
Glory to Ukraine.
Before l respond after perusing your posts, l read the comments to get a sense of where the discussion is going .
Today l a totally out of my depth, despite having grown up in a Veterans Community in which everyone’s Dad had fought in
WW II.
Fact is, 98% of the kids l knew were Jewish. I asked my mother why and her reply was difficult to understand: once it was evident that most of the families were Jewish, the nonJews fled and so the neighborhood tipped.
Of the two who remained one was a black family, the other was
atheist. So that’s how l grew up in a Jewish ghetto in 1949.
What religions becomes self-righteous you end up with warring factions and the whole shebang starts all over.
Reminds me of the rather cynical quote to the effect that "You can get people do commit some horrible acts in the name of politics, but for really wide-scale atrocities and mass murder, it takes religion."
A sad thought given religions also encourage charities and so on, but worth pondering.
I remember reading about crusaders heading to the Holy Land, and, on the way, stopping in villages with ghettos to slaughter Jews.
-Yes I think that was the Second Crusade? In any case the Pope was inciting this kind of thing.
wow, Babette...your childhood sounds very close to mine. except that I grew up in postwar housing (a row home, to be precise) which had ALWAYS been 98% Jewish. I was a "rebel" who would do provocative things like go to movies on Yom Kippur and get "beaten up" for it (my family was pretty much atheist, but never talked about it). that neighborhood is now heavily Hasidic and everybody hates each other. it's not uncommon to find blocks with three or four basement synagogues because of tiny doctrinal disagreements. insanity.
so yes, you're absolutely right.
Thank you for such a clear explanation of what we're seeing in the two photos. In the June 2022 photo, the vertical and horizontal lines clearly are trees, not trenches (whether or not there may be trenches within the tree lines). In the second photo, from Jan. 2023, the vertical line clearly is a tree line - you can see the shadows from leafless trees to the left of the tree line. The trees don't appear to have been much impacted by Russian bombardments.
As I was finishing up writing a more personal post about the King of Battle from the perspective of an old Airborne grunt, something occurred to me.
As Mr. Truscott cited, "CNN reported on Tuesday that Russian artillery fire is down as much as 75 percent in some areas in recent days. "Russia may be rationing artillery rounds due to low supplies, or it could be part of a broader reassessment of tactics in the face of successful Ukrainian offenses.” I figure that either way they're stockpiling for the upcoming campaign season. And that reminded me of Belarus and Putin's new red line.
There are around 500 Belarusians, mostly trained in Poland with more in the pipeline, fighting for Ukraine and deployed primarily north of Kyiv who are itching to turn any Belarusian saldat who comes in to overthrowing Lukashenka. Prolly not too much to worry about on that front.
So that leaves the question, where is Putin stockpiling his arty? Not just munitions, but equipment.
With his recent "invasion of Russia or Belarus by Ukraine" rhetoric, I think we can surmise where. Ukraine's arty fires are more accurate, increasingly longer ranged, better supplied and logistically supported by NATO stockpiles than Putin can match and that scares the shit out of him.
So, even though I'm terrified by the thought of the King of Battle dropping it's wrath on me, make sure Ukraine can drop it on them. The grunts always get tasked with taking care of the rest.
So the Russians are still fighting with WWII technology and tactics. Why not use a reconnaissance drone to get up close to the enemy and find out what's really there? I don't know if Putin has spy satellites but the US military and three letter agencies have more than enough capability.
Odds are the NSA ("No Such Agency"!) is already sharing quite a bit of their intel with Kyiv. Also the UK intel agencies and others.
Madness reigns Putin must go
Only some hours ago I heard apparently informed speculation on the BBC World Service on NPR, that there may be some serious squabbling going on in Moscow. Worries by Putin that the private mercenary army The Wagner Group is getting too powerful. We can always hope for a palace coup that will use getting rid of Putin as a justification to pull troops out of Ukraine. Of course there's always the possibility the new head honchos just keep throwing good money after bad, and it takes a while to finally get Russia out of Ukraine even with Putin ousted.
Cf. Lenin's definition: "The state is a body of armed men."
Of course the interpretation and science relative to artillery and craters went right over my head, but I did enjoy knowing that our crowd was probably reading the only Substack writer who's actually fought in a war. (Actually, many of you probably understood the technical parts, but I was an American History and English major.)
As for the family shrapnel, that can't be too common. Please don't groan, but I thought both pieces of Truscott shrapnel could be placed on a wall as art pieces.
I didn't fight in a war. But I was born into the army and spent 23 years of my life learning what I know.
Apologies. I clearly misread something, leading me to think one piece was Grampa's, and the other was yours. I will reread.
I believe Lucian's weapon of choice is the pen (mightier than the sword) and while not having fought in any wars, he has trained for such. He has also written before about being imbedded as a correspondent during the the invasion of Iraq.
I think I did not get here early enough to know that.
Well, we're glad you're here now, Margo!
Hi Margo, welcome to this group who are privileged to receive. There's a trove of treasures available and waiting for you among Mr. Truscot's archive of previous substack issues.
If you haven't read these yet, I recommend the following...
"Route 17 North" Nov 6 2022
"Big Chicken and us" Sep 15 2022
"One night in New York City" Aug 23 2022
"What kind of war is this, sir?" July 16 2022 (re: Baghdad 2003)
"Words and me" Aug 20 2021
Thank you for the suggestions. Might you work for Substack? Mr. Truscott? Or are you an admirer of his work, as I am, only you have kept records of certain pieces you've liked?
Why many of us who are military brats despise The Former Guy for a number of reasons.
As usual, Lucian (with his Army background) provides excellent insight into another aspect of Putin's inhumane attack on Ukraine. But who knew he also has satellite imagery interpretation skills?! Very well done, sir!! Although we come from different Service backgrounds we share the ability to look at satellite imagery and see things that are invisible to the untrained eye. I can say with confidence that Lucian's photo interp skills are spot-on!! I cannot take issue with anything he said in his descriptions of the two battlefield photos. The wasted ammunition the Russians are throwing around willy-nilly (as well as their overall performance in this war) makes me wonder why we were so worried about fighting them in a conventional conflict during the Cold War.
Remember when we found out their ICBMs wouldn't hit specific targets?
And, the planners for the great tank war fought on the plains of Europe never realized their goals...poor Ft. Knox. Thank the Iraqis for training a generation of US officers and NCOs.
my understanding at that time was that if we were going to fight them, it wouldn't be with conventional weapons ( at least from the mid-fifties on). whether or not that was the truth is another issue.
Great tank battles in Central Europe.
I think the plan was to at least start out fighting with conventional weapons if the Russians tried to move into western Europe. Depending on how that went, tactical nuclear weapons might have been brought to bear if that was the only way to stop them from overrunning our NATO allies. I would defer to Lucian to provide his thoughts on this.
We were positioned to protect the Fulda Gap, an expected entry point for Russian armor.
So, my arty units in South Vietnam must have shot thousands of 155 rounds. Our battery was only one out of dozens? Hundred? Now those poor farmers have all those metal pieces plus Agent Orange in the soil. However, it was well worth it? We beat those Commies and now force them to sell us all their manufactured junk. Who to invade next? How about Iceland so we get their reindeer for our Christmas time.
Hope not, one of the most beautiful countries on earth.
Very interesting analysis. Consistent with everything we know about the Russian army.