The film, The Water Diviner (2014), opens with the end of the battle. The turks charge the allied trench to find that they have retreated under cover of darkness and rigged it to appear active. The trap pictured is an unmanned rifle with a bucket tied to the trigger that is slowly filling with water. When there is enough water in the bucket, the trigger will pull and the gun will go off.

Were the turks really surprised to discover that they had left? Did the allies slip away unnoticed? Were such traps actually in use? The whole thing seems like artistic license.

I'm actually asking this question for a fairly selfish reason, as I'm doing a bit of family history and seems as though I've found a naval record for an ancestor.

However, at the same time as he was supposedly serving a long career across multiple ships (from 1816 to 1835) other records show (a person with the same name?) having children and a wife on shore in Devonport. I can't track whether they lived together at the time though. Specifically, he wasnt married when he started his career at age 20 - but appears to then get married later on. Is this kind of thing possible or common for enlisted men?

Recently I started studying history at a university in Belgium (I myself am not from there) and part of the study program is the translation of French and old French written sources. While I briefly followed French during high school I'm having trouble with this class in French historic texts. The professor gave the advice of following a language course but I neither have the financial resources nor the time to do this. Now I was wondering if someone in this sub might have tips on how to deal with this course. Thanks in advance for helping me out.

Were there special customs, rites? What special superstitions were there? How would a commoner be buried as opposed to a soldier or a king? Is there any other trivia about how death and burial was treated in this time?

From a footnote of Engles' to the Second Edition of the Communist Manifesto. Is it true that "primitive" societies (I'm guessing this isn't a historiographical term) were mostly communistic? Can communism as an economic category even be applied to the societies of prehistory?

I would think that because of the shared Christian background they would have been more inclined to support Serbia/Republika Srpska in Bosnia and Kosovo

Why?

Could someone tell me which soldiers of each major combatant (British Empire, Germany, Japan, Russia, USA, Italy, Turkey, France) Were given Scoped Rifles ether as use as marksmen or snipers? As I can find no clear information if standard soldiers revived scopes for their weapons , or if it was restricted to specialized formations.

Thanks.

How was time each customer spent on the phone calculated/recorded in the time before there were computers to handle calls (and therefore, I assume, billing)? I assume that the actual bills were sent through the mail.

When the Allied officers rung the bell to go over the trenches, did they shoot the soldiers who disobeyed? I've always heard of Russians doing this, but I've never heard about any allied officers doing the same.

I see a lot of military what ifs in this thread and it occurred to me that the poor transport capacity of M2 bradleys which can only carry 6 troops, as opposed to the earlier m113 which could carry 10 could pose a very significant problem in a reforger (return of forces to germany) scenario. In this scenario there would be a ground war between the soviet union and NATO, and the US military would have to basically fedex all it's armor to europe.

This was, as I understand it, the main scenario the US military was planning for.

How could the US military accept a 5:3 increase in the number of APCs it would have to transport to europe in such a situation?

Just in desert storm they used 2,200 bradleys, which could carry 13,200 troops. It would only require 1,320 m113s. That's not even counting the fuel and spare parts, not to mention maintainers, plus it would require almost 4,000 extra crew. Then there's the cost. In desert storm that would have required 176 more C-5 flights just for the unsupported bradleys. The US military only bought 131 C-5s. Using all of the US military's airlift capacity, 279 C-17s (many would not have been available in the 80s, the c-17 being introduced in 1991) and 131 C-5s could only carry 1,492 per trip from the US to europe.

Why did the US military take such a large logistical burden when logistics was such an important factor in reforger?

We know a lot about the war on the Western Front, but the Italians were also involved in the war and shared a border with Austria. What was the war like there?

I'm curious as to if a timeline exists for ancient Hebrew language like exists with Latin, where is shows beginning, to the golden age, then decline, followed by death as a first-language. I'm not as interested in the revival of Hebrew as much as I am it's decline and death, but I will welcome all answers. Also I would like to know, what languages did the people who spoke Hebrew began speaking as Hebrew was dying out as a native tongue. Was there a similarity with Latin, where the Classical language was different than the common language and many languages were formed from that?

Also, are these two colors used relatively universally or is it just a western civilization phenomena? Throughout history and the world have other cultures used different colors for the same purpose?

A bit of a long shot, but the thought crossed through my mind today. ~4,500 years is a big leap backwards in the domestication of cats.

This may be the wrong subreddit to ask.

I ask this because I am from a muslim descent and my family/muslims members all say Muhammad got his views by talking to an angel inside a cave (With no exposure to Christian or Judaic teachings in a land riddled with paganism). Is there any evidence to the contrary?

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While the battle ended in a defeat for the natives, it was a battle that took place on (post-1959) American soil and involved Russians. Did any engagement between the Russians and the indigenous people of Alaska ever make it into the popular memory of the United States during the Cold War? Was Alaska simply too recently admitted into the Union to be considered American?

Was his decoding of the enigma essential to the war effort?

Was it the main factor behind the victory of the allies and how significant was it?

I am not a Stalinist by any means, but wanted to know what specific evidence is there that makes Grover Furr's work wrong or inaccurate. I know he doesn't have a degree in history at all, but let's stick to the points he made and why they specifically are wrong.

Thanks alot. :)

I'm currently reading Christopher Clark's 'The Sleepwalkers', a most notable book among WWI historians, I'm sure, yet he makes three things apparent about Germany's predicament in pre-WWI years; The first that Russia's economy was bustling (and, according to some Europeans, even greater than the US's), and their military reforms after the Russo-Japanese War had made their troops 'better trained' than Germans. Next, that France had a more sophisticated railway system and was better prepared financially for war than Germany, and finally, that even von Moltke's prospects of War against Russia and France alone were very grim for Germany. So how did the Germans end up, by 1915, making it such a great struggle in the West while destroying the Russians in the field, especially at Tannenberg. My guess against the Russians is that Russian officers were just incompetent, and as for France, that they wasted too much time and resources on trying to take Alsace-Lorraine back in 1914 that it had outstandingly negative impacts in the years to come.

I understand the Hessian soldiers were mercenaries brought over by the British, but what caliber of soldier were they? I remember something stating they were just like conscripted peasants, but I wasn't sure if that was true.