Chapter seven hundred and ninety-two thinking problems
Not only are the two armies very different in terms of clothing and housing, but the treatment of the two armies in terms of food is also very different.
British General Simpson said in a letter to Lord Panmure: "Comparing the British army in the camp with the French army makes me very sad. The equipment of our allies is really wonderful. I saw a continuous stream of well-equipped carts and
Caravans are transporting materials and supplies... In the French army, everything the army needs is running well. They even bake bread every day. Everything is carried out in a disciplined manner under the control of the army. But we lack everything and have everything.
It’s a mess!”
Each regiment of the French army has its own bakers and cooks, as well as female auxiliaries and kitchen workers. They wear improved military uniforms and are responsible for selling food and drinks to the troops from the mobile kitchen.
The French army concentrated on preparing food and served meals collectively. The British army's rations were distributed directly to individuals, and each soldier had to cook for himself. Therefore, even if the French army's rations were only half of the British army's, the meat was only one-third of the British army's.
One, but the health status can defeat the British army, which is theoretically more abundant.
It wasn't until December that the British army began to learn from the French army's centralized food preparation, but their cooking skills were really poor, and the food they cooked was often dark cuisine.
Not only is the food rationing system more scientific, the French army's logistics system is also far better than the British army. After the siege of Sevastopol began, the French army first began to build roads and repair the Kashmi that was destroyed by Kornilov.
port.
Soon a steady stream of supplies arrived from Kashmi, and various warehouses, slaughterhouses and private shops sprung up like mushrooms after a rain. Even in just one month, Kashmi was completely new and even better than before the war.
The pier is full of bars, hotels and restaurants, and there is even a women's hospital. One of the restaurants even provides one-stop services from eating, sleeping to playing with girls as long as you pay a fee.
Balaklava, controlled by the British army, looked different. There were ruins everywhere and sewage flowing everywhere. The British themselves said:
"Balaclava is the most disgusting and filthy village in the world. Once it rains, the whole place turns into ankle-deep mud. Find more than a thousand Turks infected with the plague and throw them into the village.
They serve as laborers, and then a hundred of them die every day... When burying the corpses, just cover them with a little soil and let them rot slowly - note that there will be fresh corpses filled in every day."
"Then all the exhausted ponies, dying cattle, and nearly exhausted camels are driven to a corner of the beach, and they are left to starve to death. Usually this takes up to three days, and then the bodies quickly decompose and emit...
The strong smell filled the water surface of the port with the entrails of various animals, some from nearby ships, and some from animals eaten by people in the town. From time to time, a few corpses were added, including those with missing arms and legs.
It’s normal, and finally there are shipwreck fragments that can be seen everywhere – these together make up the whole of Balaclava.”
The problem that the British army has to face is not only poor infrastructure and environment, but the most important problem is terrible bureaucracy. All materials must be approved by the Department of Logistics before leaving Balaclava Port.
This is an extremely complex procedure, including a variety of forms and authorizations, and all documents must be in triplicate.
Boxes of food may sit on the shore for weeks and may have rotted by the time they are officially transported to the front lines.
Moreover, the British army never thought about repairing the road between Balaclava and Sevastopol, so every box of bullets, every blanket, and every biscuit had to be pulled by horses or mules along a cart.
A steep dirt road leads to the camp more than ten kilometers away.
Moreover, in the first two or three months, most of the supplies had to be transported by manpower, because all the British army's livestock starved to death because there was no grass to eat.
Moreover, the British army not only has poor logistics organization, but the soldiers themselves also lack the most basic survival ability. Most of the British soldiers come from the landless class, or simply criminals and poor people. Unlike soldiers from the French countryside who have various hunting skills,
Not even able to do the most basic thing of boiling water.
Canrobert said: "The British soldiers have developed a habit. They just fight and eat every meal before they eat it. What's worse is that they would rather starve to death than change!"
Because they do not have the most basic living abilities, the British troops must rely on a large team of family members accompanying them to cook for them, wash clothes, or perform other chores that French soldiers can easily handle.
For example, Marianne Young of the 28th Infantry Regiment complained that British soldiers "will starve to death even if they hold the allocated rations in their hands. They have three stones and a tin can, but they have no ability to turn the rations into something edible."
But the French are different. As long as it is edible, there is nothing that the French don't like. They catch frogs and turtles, cook them according to their own taste, and eat them. They also dig up turtle eggs.
You can even turn mice into delicious food!”
Of course, although it is a good thing to be able to eat well, eating indiscriminately will not have good results. Cholera soon broke out among the coalition forces. Thousands of soldiers fell ill and died in pain. However, the British army was
To make matters worse, let alone cure diseases and save lives, we can't even count deaths.
Most of the dead soldiers seemed to have disappeared out of thin air, one by one. Many family members had to wait for a year or two to receive death news from their surviving comrades. At this time, what else could the relevant British authorities do?
Do not know at all.
As a result, the morale of the British army visibly collapsed, and even the officers began to criticize the military authorities for their extreme incompetence.
It was through The Times that the British public learned about the poor treatment of British soldiers, and it was only through this indirect contact that progress was made in the medical security work. Even Nightingale later went to Croton after seeing those shocking facts.
rimea.
It can be said that the organizational level displayed by Britain during the Crimean War is really unworthy of its status as the world's number one industrial power.
Of course, the most important problem is not the lack of industrial capacity, but the fact that the British simply do not pay attention to this problem and have not thought about it. Naturally, it is a mess.
Not to mention compared with France, even compared with the even more backward Russia, their level of attention cannot be compared.
In short, this is not a question of ability, but a question of thinking. Probably the British elites do not regard the army, which is mainly composed of poor people, as human beings in their hearts. They treat it completely as cattle. For them, they consume these cattle.
In other words, social garbage is a kind of purification. After all, social instability factors are directly removed physically!