I have just purchased this postcard from MAR Historical:
I'm trying to get a meaningful translation of the caption, "Unser Heer, Schwere Maschinengewehre auf Tragtieren verlastet überqueren einen Gebirgsbach". Google Translate returns this English translation:
"Our Army, Heavy machine guns verlastet on pack animals to cross a mountain stream"
One word — verlastet — is proving a bit tricky. Other web sites translate it as lorried, which is past tense of the infinitive form of lorry (not a word that North American English speakers commonly use). How about this as an accurate/meaningful translation:
"Our army uses pack animals to carry heavy machine guns across a mountain stream."
I've learned recently that during the Second World War, the German army, contrary to common perceptions, was dependent on horses and mules for transport to a far greater extent than any of the Allied armies, and in fact probably could not have begun or carried on the war without them. I'm think that a new web page is in the offing, assuming that I should live so long to get that far in my long list of other web pages that are in the offing! The postcard shown above is the second German one I've found that pictures pack animals.
i picked up a museum copy of the Battle of Waterloo. It's in French, which limits me and my very poor high school French. But there's a phrase I was able to loosely translate that discussed the battlefield after the combatants, or those that could, had left the field. It said there were 40,000 dead and dying soldiers and 10,000 dead and dying horses. The number is staggering.
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"Save the USPS, buy stamps; save the hobby, use commemoratives"
Thank you for the translations. Google may be my friend, but not a great friend when it comes to the nuances of language.
@ Philatelia (but not only Philatelia): Poor animals indeed! I remember reading about a German officer who brought his own horse along with him to Stalingrad, and ended up having to, well, let's just say that hunger overcame scruples. Susan and I saw Warhorse a couple of years ago at the QE Theatre here in Vancouver. It wasn't hard to feel compassion even for horses made of wood and wire. I sort of grew up with horses. They were actually my sister's horses, butI appreciated them. Once she even let me sit on Chubby!
@ David (but not only David): The numbers of casualties in 19th Century wars is indeed staggering. I'm reading an interesting book about medicine in the Civil War, Surgeon in Blue — Jonathan Letterman, the Civil War Doctor Who Pioneered Battlefield Care, by Scott McGaugh. One of Letterman's innovations was the improvement in evacuation from the battlefield by horse-drawn ambulance. By the end of the war, wounded soldiers were being evacuated within a day, whereas at the beginning of the war they might be evacuated only after days had passed, if they were evacuated at all. As a result, the percentage of combat deaths dropped precipitously as the war neared its end, at least when the generals commanding armies agreed to allow the use of ambulances; some of them didn't seem to understand that if wounded soldiers were cared for, they might live to fight another battle.