标题: In WW II, American and British Officers Made Uneasy Allies [打印本页] 作者: choi 时间: 12-20-2015 19:44 标题: In WW II, American and British Officers Made Uneasy Allies 本帖最后由 choi 于 12-20-2015 19:47 编辑
Jonathan W Jordan, Arms Across the Atlantic. American and British officers made uneasy allies. Eisenhower compared their early encounters to those of a bulldog and tomcat. Wall Street Journal, Dec 17, 2015 http://www.wsj.com/articles/arms-across-the-atlantic-1450307552
(book review on Niall Barr, Eisenhower's Armies. The American-British alliance during World War II. Pegasus, 2015)
Note:
(a) Winston Churchill's "ancestor the Duke of Marlborough had led a polyglot coalition against France two centuries earlier."
(i) Duke of Marlborough (title) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Marlborough_(title)
(The name of the dukedom refers to Marlborough [a market town] in Wiltshire)
(ii) John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Churchill,_1st_Duke_of_Marlborough
("His leadership of the allied armies consolidated Britain's emergence as a front-rank power * * * allow[ing] Britain to rise from a minor to a major power")
John led two wars:
(A) Nine Years' War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Years%27_War
(1688–97; William III and James II struggled for control of the British Isles)
* William and Mary (Protestant) dethroned James II (Mary's father; Catholic) in the 1688 Glorious Revolution. James II went to France, with the support of his cousin Louis XIV.
* one result of Nine Years' War: Louis XIV recognized William III of Orange as King of England, Scotland
(B) War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714)
(c) "Charles Bonesteel, a US combat commander who adopted British innovations like the ubiquitous pre-fabricated 'Bailey bridge'; and George B Jarrett, a[n American] weapons fetishist who learned how to adapt US shells to British tank guns, relieving a desperate ammunition shortage in the Middle East."
Bailey bridge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bailey_bridge
(Donald Bailey)
(d) "Maj Bonner Fellers, a US military attaché to Cairo * * * Allies didn’t know that Italian cryptographers had broken America’s military attaché codes and were reading the reports—handing Rommel vital intelligence that led to the defeats that Fellers complained of. (A smiling Rommel referred to Fellers, code-named 'Good Source' by the Germans, as 'my bonnie fellow.')"
(i) The German surname Rommel: "nickname for an obstreperous person, from Middle Low German, Middle Dutch rummeln, rumpeln to make a noise, create a disturbance (of imitative origin)"
Dictionary of American Family Names, by Oxford University Press
(ii) bonny (adj; etymology): "(also bonnie)" www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/bonny
* The "bonnie" is a wordplay on the first name Bonner.
(e) After D-Day: "Elation gave way to recrimination and backbiting amid slow British progress against panzers in Calais, slow American progress in the hedgerows of the Cotentin Peninsula, and frosty personal relations between senior commanders. From Normandy to the Elbe River, Mr Barr chronicles a successful campaign marred slightly by sniping among the American and British high commands."
(i) Calais https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calais
(overlooks the Strait of Dover, the narrowest point in the English Channel, which is only 34 km (21 mi) wide here, and is the closest French town to England)
(ii) Elbe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbe
(flowing into the North Sea at Cuxhaven, 110 km (68 mi) northwest of Hamburg; section 6 Etymology; In 1945, as World War II was drawing to a close, Nazi Germany was caught between the armies of the western Allies advancing from the west and the Soviet Union advancing from the east. On 25 April 1945, these two forces linked up near Torgau, on the Elbe)