Re: [SG] (ish) Non-lethal anti-riot gel

John Atkinson Wrote:

>Hrm. . .
>
>The Italian Army got more of a bad rap than it
>deserved--the Alpini, Bersaglieri, and Paras fought
>well.

Note that these are Italian Soldiers, NOT the Italian Army.  Sometimes
the 
whole is LESS than the sum of it's parts.  Sometimes the negative parts 
outnumber the positive parts.  The comment can be taken as referring to
the 
Army as an institution, not about specific units within it.

Their armored and artillery units fought
>valiantly but without weaponry worth a half a tinker's
>damn.	In some cases Italian artillery batteries fired
>at British tanks until the tanks physically ran over
>the pieces (the Brits lacked a decent HE round. . . ).

An artillery piece incapable of killing a tank could be, when facing
tanks, 
considered non-lethal force.

>On the other hand, the regular Italian line infantry
>was indeed very, very bad, and it's hard to fight well
>without line infantry.

It's also hard to overcome a perception caused by a low-quality
majority, no 
matter how good the exceptions are.  Remember, the comment was just
that, a 
quick comment, not an indepth analysis of the Italian Fighting man. 
While 
it's true one shouldn't paint all of ANY country's military or people 
(*ahem) with such a wide brush, it was an amusing and not ENTIRELY
unmerited 
comment.

Good to see you're still paying attention, though.  :-)

2B^2

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