Congratulations to Mr. Prewitt. It should be noted, however, that France’s highest order of merit is called the Legion of Honour (Légion d’honneur), not the Legion of Armour, and also that France doesn’t actually have knighthoods in the same sense as Britain does. “Chevalier” (knight) is indeed one of the Legion of Honour’s five levels, and the name is a holdover from the days when France still had an aristocracy, but the French nobility system went out the window with the French Revolution. I once saw a series of amusing cartoons depicting what life in France would be like today if the Bourbon monarchy hadn’t fallen, and one of them showed an irate air traveler standing at the ticket counter of “Royal Air France” and telling the ticket agent “But I’m a baron and I have a confirmed reservation!” The agent replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but the Duke of So-and-so has precedence over you, so we gave him your seat.” In fairness, the same sort of thing actually happens in real-life republican France. A few years ago, there was scandal involving one of the major D-Day anniversaries (I think it was the 50th one), when the French government contacted various hotels in Normany and appropriated some of their existing reservations so that various French officials could have rooms for the event. Some of those rooms, however, had been reserved by foreign veterans of the D-Day invasion. When the story broke on the front page of French newspapers (under such headlines as “Our Liberators Insulted!”), public opinion was outraged and the French government beat a hasty retreat. The prevailing editorial opinion over this affair was: Do this to our own citizens if you want, but don’t do this to the heroes who ended the occupation of France.
WWII–-75th ANNIVERSARY DISCUSSION--#32---MARCH 1942
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Operation Outward was the name given to the British World War II program to attack Germany by means of free-flying balloons. It made use of cheap, simple balloons filled with hydrogen. They carried either a trailing steel wire intended to damage high voltage power lines by producing a short circuit, or incendiary devices that were intended to start fires in fields, forests and heathland.
A total of 99,142 Outward balloons were launched; about half carried incendiaries and half carried trailing wires.
Compared to Japan’s better known fire balloons, Outward balloons were crude. They had to travel a much shorter distance so they flew at a lower altitude – 16,000 feet (4,900 m), compared with 38,000 feet (12,000 m) – and had only a simple mechanism to regulate altitude by means of dropping ballast or venting lifting gas. This meant the balloons were simple to mass-produce and only cost 35 shillings each (approximately equivalent to £86 in 2017).
The free flying balloon attacks were highly successful. Although difficult to assess exactly, they had an economic impact on Germany far in excess of the cost to the British government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Outward
I found this interesting little tidbit of World War II information during this time. A little different IMO.
What do you guys think? -
Thanks for this RJL. I had never heard of it. Very interesting.
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