There's no England now...

 ...the title of which I ruthlessly pirated from this LGM post discussing the mix of assumptions, illusions, and legal fictions required to gain and maintain sovereignty.

In this case, of Great Britain

As a person I have - no, really, I'm not kidding - absolutely no opinion one way or another on monarchy as an institution in general and the British "royal" system in particular, other than it seems slightly more nonsensical than most human social gimmicks.

You're my boss because your mom and dad were my boss?

Get the fuck out.

But as We the People seem bound and determined to prove, the "Will of the People" can produce equally ridiculous results (Empty G? That you? Siddown and shaddup, girl.) so, well, okay. You be you, Brits. You want some king? Knock yourselves out.

That the current occupant of the throne of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, and (a little bit of) Ireland seems to be a doddering old goof whose beliefs include a pottage of nonsense and crunchy granola nature-fakery (along with some genuinely sensible love of nature itself...) seems unimportant to the big picture. The job is kind of central to the idea, not the person who does it.

This picture itself says it better than words...

The goofy hat and gold cocktail frock that encases the old white guy IS the king. The old white guy is just the dressmaker's dummy that holds it up.

The Brits want that? Fine. Not my circus, not my gold-encrusted monkey.

What made me think about all this mummery was turning on the television last Sunday morning (looking for the "other" British thing I think about, football - okay, "soccer", anyway...) and the first image that emerged out of the dark was this:

First, no question; the British do this whole "gorgeous, tactically useless, military spectacle" thing better than anyone. Part of it is the outfits; they've had centuries to get the dress uniforms right, and their Class A's (Number One dress? No, the Wikipedia tells me that the formal name is "Full Dress") are fucking sharp as a razor.

(Don't take this the wrong way; there's military and morale value to that "useless military spectacle". A soldier who looks and feels badass, whose unit looks badass, might well be more badass when the military chips are down.

Modern warfare often makes your own combat power invisible. In a world of artillery and tac air to be seen is to be hit and hit to be destroyed, so we do our best to disperse and hide ourselves.

So there's a value to be had in stepping out on parade, looking good and feeling strong. Illusion? Sure! But there's a sort of "dress for the job you want" to it there, too. And the British have got that shit down cold and hard. Drill Sergeant Lawes was all swoony.)

Second, and finally, though, it drives home the ironic point that kings (and presidents and caudillos and juntas and congresses and so forth) are, at bottom, what they are because they're hedged about with those marching troops.

The "importance" of those rulers, in a national and international sense, is almost entirely dependent on all those soldiers and sailors and fliers in their pretty clothes that marched down the wide mall to the pretty palace last Sunday.

Them - and their gajillion guns and tanks and trucks and hordes of ginormous battle ships and aircraft and bullets and missiles.

But in Britain? Now? Pretty soldiers and sailors and fliers on parade?

That's all this king has left.

The massive armies and fleets they symbolize? The storms of bombers? The sort of real military power that those big blocks of marching men (and now women) once meant? The temporal power that made the "King of Great Britain, Scotland, and Ireland" someone who had to be reckoned with?

Gone.

Modern Britain is a geopolitical afterthought. Not quite Andorra...yet. But no longer any sort of real global economic and political power alongside the real Greats.

And that's fine in a human sense. You can have a good and satisfying and happy life in Andorra as easily as in a Great Power. More easily, frankly, than in some - Russia or the PRC, I'm looking at you. For many of us in this Great Power? There's a cost to all those tanks and ships that might otherwise go to our lives. 

Ask some poor sod in a leaky tent down by the Cut in North Portland how that works.

Watching the pretty marching, it occurred to me that habits of thought are as difficult to break as habits of body. 

We think of "The King (or Queen) of England" as Somebody, a person of consequence, because there's still all that Stuff; palaces and crowns and fancy golden wagons. But mostly because of all those marching soldiers and sailors and fliers.

That's how they became kings and queens back in the day, right? Because they were the bosses of armies and fleets of the baddest motherfuckers around. Because swords (and rifles and cannon and missiles) hoicked them onto the Iron Throne and, beyond all laws and rules and customs, when push came to shove, kept them there by naked force, against all enemies foreign and domestic.

The U.S. president, the Russian premier, the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party?

Those people still have that power.

King Charles III?

Does not.

What makes that interesting is that we just talked about a time when that job, and the person who did that job, did have that power. When all those marching guys really did symbolize a scary badass guy's imperial reach, the mailed fist at the end of a very long royal arm.  

Not anymore.

So if I was British I'm not sure but that Sunday morning might have felt really odd, like I was taking part in a MMORPG, a sort of Great Power cosplay. 

All those gilded coaches and gorgeous uniforms and soldiers and sailors right out of the Empire? 

In the words of Bashō:

natsukusa ya
tsuwamono domo ga
yume no ato.

夏草や兵共がゆめの跡

That is to say;

Waves of summer grass:
All that remains of soldiers’
Impossible dreams.

So as not to end this silly rumination on a serious note, here's the "Wins the Internet" comment from the linked LGM post:

"*hushed Huw Edwards voice:
"And now the Rt. Hon. Capt. Penny Mordaunt RN, PC, MP, acting today in her role as Moistened Bint Peculiar, proceeds down the aisle carrying the magnificent Imperial State Scimitar which she will then lob at His Majesty in a part of the ceremony dating back to the time of King Arthur."

Vestigia militaria

I just finished Andrew Gordon's 1997 The Rules of the Game.

It's a fun read, and does a good job of taking a deep dive into the command culture of the Royal Navy that had such a big effect on the actions of 31 MAY 1916. For what it's worth, Gordon is a "Beatty man" as opposed to Robert Massie, whose Castles of Steel made researching the Scarboro Raid (and the career of HMS Warspite) so entertaining.

Gordon's main point is that the long peace after Waterloo created a culture of rigidity within the RN that was wrapped up in the idea that the fleet actions were supposed to be centrally directed by the admiral in command through strict adherence to maneuvers effected by signals.

That knowing the minutia of the Signal Book became a substitute for understanding what a modern U.S. officer would call the "Commander's Intent". Gordon details actions at Jutland - in particular the Fifth Battle Squadron and its commander, RADM Hugh Evan-Thomas - that demonstrated that this lack of understanding resulted in a lack of initiative, and intelligent actions or reactions to German maneuvers, that cost the RN ships and lives.

I won't go further into Gordon's work except that it's definitely worth a read (as is Massie's, and his earlier volume, Dreadnought, as well).

Here's the utterly different thing, though, that generated this post.

An Army pal of mine recently sent me a link to something about the 3rd U.S. Infantry. Y'know, the guys who do the whole "guarding the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier" and put on the military shows at Arlington and elsewhere? And I'll be the first to admit that as an old NCO and drill sergeant I'm always impressed with the 3USI's showmanship at square-bashing, and how pretty their sliding manual-of-arms looks. It's a sergeant thing, sorry, and there's no real excuse or explanation for it; it's the military version of being a "furry".

But as I was watching the video

(and I have to say that the Army blue overcoat sure is purty. I got in just as the Army 86ed the khaki summer-weight Class A uniform, the last really sharp-looking formal dress we had. After that it was all the hideous AG44/344 polyester abomination and the dreaded "black sack" overcoat that made you look like a Baloney Joe's wino shuffling down to the dumpster for a snack...)

I couldn't help thinking what a beautiful utterly useless military skill all this drill and ceremony is.

Short of falling in and marching from one place to another...what's the point? It's a sort of armed tea ceremony; gorgeous, yes, but completely for show and dressup. For the working day you suck down your tea from a travel mug and move out smartly.

And that's what led me back to Gordon and Jutland.

Because in 1916 the notion of "shiphandling" - whether individual captains and their crew, or flag officers directing squadrons - was literally a matter of life and death. Gordon points out the horrific nightmare of the Fifth Battle Squadron's turn "in succession" under German gunfire that put every ship at exactly the same location as it went through a slow 180-degree roundabout, giving the fire direction officers of the Hochseeflotte the equivalent of a free header.

They knew exactly where to put their projos minutes before the British battleship arrived. It's a tribute to luck and the sturdy construction of the Queen Elizabeth-class that none of the Brits ended up as a crap-ton of their battlecruisers did, as homes for North Sea groundfish and hazards for trawl-nets.

But now?

Aircraft and missiles have made the possibility of a mass fleet daylight gun action utterly impossible.

Individual ship captains and their bridge staff still need to be good at shiphandling. And flag officers still need to know how to arrange and move their squadrons. But that sort of "line-ahead-to-line-abreast" dance? It seems to be as utterly archaic and vestigial a skill as the ability to file from the left or move from column to line does for a modern infantryman.

No higher purpose here, just the rumination that time and tide changes things that we think of as immutable.

Had you told an infantryman of 1850, or a naval officer of 1916, that the skills that were essential to their profession would be as dead as the dodo in a century they'd have thought you were nuts.

But they were, and here we are.

Worth a thousand words

This pretty much says it all.

Look at this fathead; standing on his beater-ass Dodge p-up on a road in eastern Oregon, all camo'ed up with what looks like his ballistic vest, boots and K-pot like he was going in to clean out Fallujah.

The American in me wants to take a piece of dimension lumber upside his helmet for being a dumbass seditionist supporting armed treason.

The drill sergeant in me wants to lock his friggin' heels.

"Sweetbabyjesussonofabitch what fucking dumpster did you dive in to get that outfit, precious? Did you wanna play Army like the big kids, or were they just our of warm clothes down at the Rescue Mission? And who taught you how to lace those boots, hero, your baby sister? Have you ever SEEN a can of boot-polish, slick, or was your plan always "Rub my boots in the dirt"? Or did you rub them on your ass, since you look as dark and dirty as a fuckin winter day?

Fasten that goddamn chinstrap, you sorry oxygen-thief, and what did you shave with, a cue-tip? Have you EVER shaved, or did your mommy teach you not to play with sharp objects? I've seen less hair on my dog's ass, sweetheart, and unless you feel like finding my boot in yours I suggest you get a goddamn shave, lace and polish those boots, and square that helmet away and all in about ten picoseconds or you are likely to have a fucking close encounter with a fucking cattle prod..."

Honestly. These people.

Uselessly useless

It's been a long time since I had to care about the minutia of U.S. Army uniform.

But every so often I come across something that pokes me right in my NCO gland.

As a species we tend to be the U.S. Army's official custodians of niggling bullshit and militarily useless fripperies; the details of dress uniforms, drill, and ceremonies are perhaps the most nitpicky aspect of our function. So when I see this:...a U.S. infantry company marching in the Russian WW2 V.E. Day parade, my asshole old sergeant reflex kicks in and begins to ask;

1. If you're going to send someone all the way to Moscow to march, Army, why not send someone (like a company from the 3rd U.S. Infantry) instead of a bunch of yayhoos from 2/18th Infantry (and, yes, I know that the 18th landed in Normandy on D-day. Compared to the Soviet war effort, their activities at that little tea party had about as much to do with winning WW2 as the 3rd Infantry did ambling around CONUS). The 3USI specializes in useless pagentry like this, this unit doesn't, and it shows.

2. And if you're going to have them march past in their blues (which I do understand is the Army's official Class A dress uniform now) can't you at least find them their "bus driver" caps instead of that goddamn beret?The damn thing looks silly enough with fatigues (you haven't seen a beret until you've seen it worn by an Army cook or a light wheeled vehicle mechanic - my favorite was the "jeff cap" look, where the stiffened bit with the flash is pulled down flat over the forehead) but it makes the wearer look perfectly ready to ride the short bus when worn with blues.

3. And if you're going to have them march past the Kremlin, Army, you can't march past at shoulder arms instead of sling arms, like a bunch of recruit privates? Were you afraid that the rifles would be every-which-way, like sticks in a barrel? And what does that say about the marching unit's attention to detail in preparing for this ceremony?

4. And if you're going to march past in mass formation, Army, get your D&C head out of your fourth point of contact! (Note: understanding this comment requires watching the BBC video) Either the officers in the front rank of the formation are ALL commanders-of-troops and entitled to render the hand salute for their unit (and if so, why are they together in a single rank?) or they're part of the formation and they should be executing an eyes-right. Actually this is a trick question, because I KNOW where the COT is, he's up at the head of the formation. So these guys are fucked up. Oh, yeah, and would it be too much to ask these gentlemen's sons to march with their arms? What's their plan, to slap-fight with the enemy?

The Brits and Russians look their usual dapper selves on parade, and I'm sure that the French and Poles managed to put together a couple of smart looking march units. Personally, I think that this sort of military preening is a useless throwback to the 18th Century and should be restricted to a tiny handful of ceremonial units like the 3rd Infantry. But if we're going to go to the effort to show up at one of these dog-and-pony shows, why do a half-assed job?

I feel the way about this goofy Army crap the way Lord Burleigh did about keeping a mistress; the pleasure is transient, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable. But if we're going to do it at all, why not do it to a higher standard?

(Crossposted at Milpub and a huge h/t to Jason over at Armchair Generalist, and a sheepish admission of fellow military geek-guydom in finding the pass-in-review of the operational T-34s and SU-85s pretty fucking cool.)