Thanks for the comments/insights/analogies, jimmy!
Brave military valor of the highest order...Doolittle’s Raiders.
Watched the last 3 survivors drink the tontine to the squad, per their pact.
We should form an AVXL Last Man Pact and all the longs who held drink a tontine together when we see this come to fruition (approval - end of CNS tragic suffering) and we hit 3 digit pps.
I’ll buy the case of champagne when the consensus feels we have hit the pps bottom - our darkest hour.
Good summary of the Vicksburg/Gettysburg/Chancellorsville campaign. I live 2 hours away and have toured the battlefield many times. Played “Taps” there once at sundown - high honor. Question: in your opinion, was the Pickett’s Charge catastrophe a strategic blunder on Lee’s part or poorly executed by Longstreet? Or was it brilliant defense by the Yankees - actually, possibly a combination as the North held the high ground of the hill but there was a low spot which might have been breached as Lee surmised, although it wasn’t obtainable even after days of bombardment to soften it. Still, charging up a hill in battle has disaster written all over it - that one falls on Lee’s overall strategy. But, Longstreet who commanded the 3 generals, including Pickett, predicted its futility in advance. An infantry advance up a hill...
That was the fatal flaw in the war.
Perhaps, the way BP has stuck to the Beta Amyloid theory and failed to get better strategic positioning at an earlier stage in this game could be analogous to Lee’s desire to take Cemetery Hill at Gettysburg, partly strategic (control the network of roads) but mostly a moral victory. Had they walked away sooner without the hill and admitted defeat they would not have suffered the casualties (money, SP), and the greatest loss/gain to come of it was: total shift in momentum and morale at that inability to achieve the goal facing a smaller contingent of forces.
Perhaps, Lee (who was a brilliant General who wanted to fight for the North but was so devoted to his beloved Virginia that he would fight for whatever side that state chose...) is the BP’s sticking to a plan too long rather than abandoning it.
Perhaps, the hill represents the position of advantage occupied by the North...precision medicine and S1r agonist MoA instead of plaque attack approach.
Perhaps, AVXL is the Meade/Hancock division, smaller but better positioned and with more fire power at the time of the advance - they kept their powder dry and mowed down the advancing confederate infantry...anyone think they had trouble sitting on their hands waiting for the charge? They defended the position of the hill - precision medicine - successfully, repelled the larger army of the South, changed the momentum and morale in rapid order, and forever changed the outcome of that battle, those 3 days, the Civil War outcome, and the history of the country.
