The BBC brings to light a study of the last soldiers to die in World War I:

…hundreds of these soldiers would lose their lives thrown into action by generals who knew that the Armistice had already been signed.

The recklessness of General Wright, of the 89th American Division, is a case in point.

Seeing his troops were exhausted and dirty, and hearing there were bathing facilities available in the nearby town of Stenay, he decided to take the town so his men could refresh themselves.

“That lunatic decision cost something like 300 casualties, many of them battle deaths, for an inconceivable reason,” says Mr Persico.

This is a completely different picture than the one told by the General himself in his diary, as explained by a retired soldier in Military Review:

Major General William M. Wright was a tireless commander who cared for the welfare of his troops, enforced discipline, and had an eye for detail. His diary refutes the myth that World War I generals were out of touch with the front line.

Apparently Wright took over and drove the division into combat for the first time, even though the troops had been “in theater for several months”:

Wright’s diary begins when he received command of the 89th and continues through the Meuse-Argonne offensive–one of the largest and bloodiest battles in American history. Wright describes how the 89th held the line through the St. Mihiel offensive then suddenly changed direction and advanced toward the Meuse-Argonne.

The timing of the Armistice definitely changes the picture, as does the revelation that a General would sacrifice soldiers just for control of the bathing facilities.

Speaking of the accuracy of records and history, here is another interesting tidbit from the BBC:

Augustin Trebuchon’s grave – along with all those French soldiers killed on 11 November 1918 – is marked 10/11/18. It is said that after the war France was so ashamed that men would die on the final day that they had all the graves backdated.

I guess it still has the wrong date, even after someone figured out what really happened. An opinion piece in the Washington Post for memorial day says Americans should pay more attention to the end of WWI and the details of US soldiers there, even if the story is not a good one:

The war’s last and greatest battle involving U.S. soldiers, fought in the Meuse-Argonne region of eastern France during the autumn of 1918, sucked in more than 1 million U.S. troops and hundreds of airplanes and tanks. Artillery batteries commanded by men such as the young Harry S. Truman fired more than 4 million shells — more than the Union Army fired during the entire Civil War. More than 26,000 doughboys were killed and almost 100,000 wounded, making the clash probably the bloodiest single battle in U.S. history. But as far as the American public was concerned, it might as well never have taken place. “Veterans said to me in their speeches and in private that the American people did not know anything about the Meuse-Argonne battle,” Brig. Gen. Dennis Nolan wrote years later. “I have never understood why.”

Hopefully lessons will be discussed and heard again as people discuss the BBC’s view on death after armistice. Will those people be American? Hard to say how many in the US pay attention to the BBC.

Although I think the Washington Post opinion piece has some excellent points, I find it strange that the author bemoans the lack of an American memorial and yet completely omits mention of the Liberty Memorial in Kansas City.

The Liberty Memorial is not only an official WWI museum in America, but it also had a groundbreaking ceremony in 1921 with the presence of the military leaders from Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, France and the US! I suppose the fact that Kansas City was once considered on par with New York and Los Angeles for nightlife and international fame is as lost to Americans as the significance of the Liberty Memorial to WWI.

The dispute over the ownership of Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos Archipelago is really a huge legal, human rights, security and geopolitical debate hiding in plain sight.

The United Kingdom claims it will retain control of islands that it prefers to calls its British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), while taking payments for “.io” domain registrations.

Do you have a stolen .io domain? Do you know the significance of that domain’s theft? What are you even doing on it?

BIOT appropriated the .io and the UK government ceded control to the private sector to manage and profit from what amounts to be gross human rights violations.

This domain in other words isn’t owned by the Chagos people it represents, and instead shifted into the hands of a private company called Internet Computer Bureau Ltd (ICB) formed specifically to take advantage over places like Chagos.

Mauritius aims in some sense to settle the domain issues by expanding its area over the islands as a more natural geographic power play, deprecating .io entirely.

Meanwhile the United States (directly implicated in the expulsion of Chagos islanders) has sights on keeping control of its military base (established after loss of control in Ethiopia, and the shift to satellites that made surveillance of the Middle-East easier than from the Horn of Africa highlands).

On top of all that, the simple fact remains many Chagossian diaspora who were forcibly removed decades ago sincerely want to return to their home and have sovereignty.

If you own an .io domain are you helping or hurting the Chagossian cause?

In that context, Reuters has very sad news:

Britain’s highest court ruled in favour of the British government Wednesday, blocking the return of hundreds of Chagos Island people to their homes in the south Indian Ocean after nearly 40 years of exile.

The decision by the House of Lords ends a years-long battle to secure the Chagos Islanders the right to return to their archipelago, from where they were forcibly removed in the 1960s and ’70s to make way for an American airbase on Diego Garcia.

By a ruling of 3-2, the lords backed a government appeal that argued that allowing the islanders to return could have a detrimental effect on defence and international security.

I wrote about this case in more detail back in March of 2007.

Update 2018 (ten years!): ICB sells itself for $70m to a giant US domain registrar Afilias, with no evidence any of that money or future money will go to the Chagossians.

Update 2015 (can’t believe it’s been seven years of this already!): the Chagos people have launched “The Dark Side of .io“