Yellow Journalism - part 05
Apr. 21st, 2020 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sailorkittyToday we will talk about two brave soldiers. One was far more attractive in 18th century getup than many other of his time, which is a feat in terms of universal beauty. The other was not as handsome in a procreational sense, but still very cuddly and adorable.
Private Woytek of the Polish Artillery. Southeastern Europe, WWII
Woytek was born in Iran, 1942, somewhere around the Hamadan area. When he was a baby, his mother was shot. A young Kurdish boy found him, and eventually passed him on to a civillian refugee who thought he was ’teh cuutest thing evah’. She was the the 18-year-old great-neice of general Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski, and so had the power to hang onto a Lt’s arm and smile very sweetly until he purchased Woytek. It was discovered that Woytek was malnourished, and so a successful bottle-feeding campaign began.
Woytek spent the next three months growing and growing, until he was no longer as small and cute as he had been. Still adorable, just no longer a baby. So he was sent to live with the 2d Polish transport Company, who happily took him in. Soldiers far away from siblings and children fell over their trousers to be able to care for something small that wanted love, and so Woytek was taught to smoke, drink, and enjoy coffee in the mornings. His comrades taught him to salute the officer, like a good soldier must do, and in return, he would sleep with anyone who needed the extra warmth. Since he grew up around soldiers, play-fighting naturally followed. He was eventually named ’Woytek’ from the name ’Wojciech' meaning ’Happy Soldier’. He marched alongside his companions and sat in a jeep while they were being convoyed, being a tad too big for the usual troop transport.
While in Palestine, he learnt how to use a shower, and came to enjoy using the bath house. At one point while taking his daily bath, he discovered a strange guy who did not smell familiar. Woytek growled and took a swing at him. The man surrendered right then and there, and turned out to be an enemy spy with vital intelligence on enemy positions. Woytek was applauded for his heroism, despite not even being an official part of the unit on paper.
This was soon to change. The Battle of Monte Cassino had his unit link up with the British army, upon which Woytek had to enlist. You see, the British army didn’t allow ’mascot animals’ or ’pets’. (I mentioned that Woytek was a bear, right? No? Well, he was a six feet tall Brown Bear. Yes, really.) Woytek’s comrades were not going to leave their furry comrade behind. Woytek was officially enlisted as Pvt. Woytek, assigned a number, and included in the roster. This was enough for the Brits (Having lived on an island nation without much in the way of large predators, it’s debatable wether they were able to differentiate between the bear and a European mainlander).
The Battle of Monte Cassino was extremely violent. The Polish unit was brought in to complete the final breakthrough, and were always under enemy fire and an unholy rain of shells. Woytek wanted to help, but what could he do? His hands were always a bit too big to use a gun, and his sight wasn’t that good. Everyone were shouting and screaming a lot, surely there was something he could do? Finally, he noticed that a line of comrades were somewhat calmly carrying crates. Woytek got in line, he got a crate. He followed his friends to a point where they dropped off the crates. Get back in line, repeat. Everyone was really happy with him for some reason. Someone started giving him bigger crates. This was a little strange since the other guys had help from three more people to carry this one crate, but Woytek was strong. He could take crates normally carried by four men. He settled into a routine and ended up carrying over 100 pounds of ammo to fight Nazi Germany. Despite his large hands, he never dropped a shell. Despite the chaos, he kept his head cold and did what he thought was best for the situation.
For his coolheadedness, ability to adapt, and loyalty to his unit, Woytek was promoted to Corporal. The insignia of his unit changed to that of a bear carrying an artillery shell. Woytek stayed with his comrades throughout the war, all the way through chasing the Germans out of Italy. After the war, large parts of his unit made their way to Scotland, not wanting to live in Soviet Poland/Russian rule. They brought Woytek with them and found him a nice place to retire in the Edinburgh zoo, made him a member of the Scottish-Polish association, and supplied him with cigarettes and vodka for the rest of his days.
(The ex-soldiers would also frighten onlookers by jumping into the pen for a play-fight or scritches behind bear ears. As you do when you’ve seen someone grow into a man, or in this case Winnie-The-Best-Pooh.
Chevalier St-George, 18th century France
Today we will take a look at Mozart's hot buddy.
In 1745, a 16-year-old girl known as ’Anne ”Nannon”’ gave birth to a healthy baby boy after being raped by the guy who owned her, George Bologne de Saint-Georges.
This would mean either ’another slave for the master’ or ’Sell/kill it.’ (And regardless, a very traumatised Nannon). Even more so since George was a commoner who had nothing to win on keeping such a child, and everything to lose in social standing, since France was one of the more brutal nations when it came to the slave-trade and not seeing black people as people. We are talking ’iron masks that press down the tongue to keep slaves from speaking while doing forced labour, often worn during extremely hot weather’ kind of evil, so only slightly less evil than Hitler knocking up Darth Vader. As such, there were many laws in place to keep a black or part-black person from getting ahead in French society. A black or part-black person could not hold titles, nor marry a person of higher standing.
George was too busy celebrating the fact that he now had a son to care about stupid things like that. He told everyone that the kid was his and eventually punted him off to boarding school to have romantically homoerotic adventures like the rest of the boys, until he turned 13 and his father could send him to a ’real’ school. Understanding that his boy would have to be a knight or something to succeed under French bullcrap race laws, Joseph was enrolled in ”Académie royale polytechnique des armes et de ’l’équitation”, Aka ’Fencing and Horsemanship school’, which is obviously just an inferior way of spelling ’Musketeer Academy’. It was also a way to make sure that Joseph would be able to duel the F out of anyone who dared insult his family
Joseph was evidently born for the occupation of ’French upper-class toff’, for he excelled at beating the snot out of his opponents. At 15, he was one of the best students at the school, regularly beating experienced duellists. At 17, he had ”Developed the greatest speed imaginable”.
Unfortunately, stupid people say dumb stuff all the time, and Joseph had to suffer a lot more of it than his peers. A fencing master named ’Alexandre Picard’ decided to call him the school master’s ’Mulatto’ in public (Mulatto is not a chocolate coffee drink, it’s an antiquated term for a part-black person.). Since this was very obviously meant in a manner insulting of both Joseph and his teacher, honour bade him do no less than to walk up to Picard, pout prettily, tug his gloves off and slap Picard in the face, thus challenging him to a duel.
it was on. Predictably, Joseph walked away as the winner. His father was at that point in time was serving as Toilet Attendent of King Louis(a titled occupation, yes, for real.). You’d think he’d be furious at his kid for rocking the boat or jeopardising the family name, but nah. Joseph was rewarded with a new horse and buggy for having paid attention to his studies and not letting anyone stomp on the family name. He also managed to bag himself a job upon graduation as a Gendarme du roi (officer of the king’s bodyguard), AKA a Chevalier, aka one of the coolest things possible during the period. He may not have been able to inherit Dad’s title as ’Toilet Keeper’, but he was now fully entitled to call himself ’Chevalier de Saint-Georges’, because all 18th century rakes need an awesome name (And honestly. Who wants the title of ’Royal Toilet Keeper’?).
But you know what he really loved? Music. He played the violin like a champ, and was said to have been a hit with the ladies (Duh. Look at that portrait). In 1773, he directed Concert des Amateurs, which under his rule was described as ”the best orchestra for symphonies in Paris, and perhaps in all of Europe.”.
In 1776, he was considered as director for the Paris Opera. The Paris Opera was struggling, and could use his talent. Unfortunately, three of the opera singers wrote to the queen and complained that they didn’t want to take orders from someone with a better tan than they would ever aspire to. Saint-Georges didn’t feel like causing waves, so he made a tactical retreat by withdrawing his offer to direct. Marie-Antoinette was miffed at this, because Saint-Georges was an amazing musician and clearly the best man for the job. So she settled things by having him around for jam sessions with her small house band in her private quarters. If the Paris Opera didn’t want him, well, their loss. The Marquise de Montesson gave him an extremely fancy apartment and a job directing her own private theatre, which eventually led to him having Mozart around for parties and possibly more if you feel like writing RPF. The Marquise was married to the Duke D’Orleans, who also recognised Saint-Georges’ talents to the point where he appointed him a position at his hunting grounds in Raicy, bringing in extra luxury cash.
In 1781, Saint-Georges’ amateur orchestra ran out of funding. So he vented to the Duke. Being a master Mason and rich as hell, the Duke made the orchestra part of his official super special decadent freemason lodge. Unfortunately, the Duke died in 1785, and his wife was so distraught that she closed her private opera. Luckily, the new bearer of the title thought it very meh to lose Saint-Georges’ music and fencing skills, and so set him up with an apartment and the occasional gig. The new Duke was pen-pals with the Prince of Wales, who really, really, really wanted to see the famous violin-playing fencing master in action. Also, Saint-Georges was kind of the perfect guy to try and secretly make contact with abolitionists in Britain. So he was sent off to London to do spywork and also duel Chevalier D’eon. Madame D’eon managed to score a hit, which the audience took as Saint-Georges allowing it ”out of gallantry for a lady”.
When he got back home and started touring with his violin, some pissy slave owners sent five assassins to kill him. Saint-Georges shrugged and took them all down, not caring about the fact that one of them had a gun.
In 1790, he joined the Revolution as an officer in the Garde Nationale. While rising in the ranks and displaying extreme compentency as a butt-kicker, Saint-Georges refused to stop playing music, building an orchestra while at war and holding a concert each week for a period of time.
In 1792, France declared war on the Holy Roman Empire. A group of black and part-black Frenchmen put together an army and called it the ’Légion Saint-Georges’, because guess who was Colonel? Under him was Thomas Alexandre Dumas (Another hot guy who was the father of Alexandre Dumas, author of the Musketeer novels and the Lady of Camille, on which the opera La Traviata is based.) and a lot of other people with black heritage who just wanted a chance to be a hero/wear a cool uniform/Step on underlings/Defend the homeland/Had death wishes.
Unfortunately, that kind of went to shit because people are idiots and also racist. But the legacy lives on in the fact that France now has the perfect excuse for a black(figuratively) comedy about this regiment and the opportunity to put a lot of good looking actors into pretty flashy uniforms of the fabulous kind(Why has this not been done yet!?).
Private Woytek of the Polish Artillery. Southeastern Europe, WWII
Woytek was born in Iran, 1942, somewhere around the Hamadan area. When he was a baby, his mother was shot. A young Kurdish boy found him, and eventually passed him on to a civillian refugee who thought he was ’teh cuutest thing evah’. She was the the 18-year-old great-neice of general Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski, and so had the power to hang onto a Lt’s arm and smile very sweetly until he purchased Woytek. It was discovered that Woytek was malnourished, and so a successful bottle-feeding campaign began.
Woytek spent the next three months growing and growing, until he was no longer as small and cute as he had been. Still adorable, just no longer a baby. So he was sent to live with the 2d Polish transport Company, who happily took him in. Soldiers far away from siblings and children fell over their trousers to be able to care for something small that wanted love, and so Woytek was taught to smoke, drink, and enjoy coffee in the mornings. His comrades taught him to salute the officer, like a good soldier must do, and in return, he would sleep with anyone who needed the extra warmth. Since he grew up around soldiers, play-fighting naturally followed. He was eventually named ’Woytek’ from the name ’Wojciech' meaning ’Happy Soldier’. He marched alongside his companions and sat in a jeep while they were being convoyed, being a tad too big for the usual troop transport.
While in Palestine, he learnt how to use a shower, and came to enjoy using the bath house. At one point while taking his daily bath, he discovered a strange guy who did not smell familiar. Woytek growled and took a swing at him. The man surrendered right then and there, and turned out to be an enemy spy with vital intelligence on enemy positions. Woytek was applauded for his heroism, despite not even being an official part of the unit on paper.
This was soon to change. The Battle of Monte Cassino had his unit link up with the British army, upon which Woytek had to enlist. You see, the British army didn’t allow ’mascot animals’ or ’pets’. (I mentioned that Woytek was a bear, right? No? Well, he was a six feet tall Brown Bear. Yes, really.) Woytek’s comrades were not going to leave their furry comrade behind. Woytek was officially enlisted as Pvt. Woytek, assigned a number, and included in the roster. This was enough for the Brits (Having lived on an island nation without much in the way of large predators, it’s debatable wether they were able to differentiate between the bear and a European mainlander).
The Battle of Monte Cassino was extremely violent. The Polish unit was brought in to complete the final breakthrough, and were always under enemy fire and an unholy rain of shells. Woytek wanted to help, but what could he do? His hands were always a bit too big to use a gun, and his sight wasn’t that good. Everyone were shouting and screaming a lot, surely there was something he could do? Finally, he noticed that a line of comrades were somewhat calmly carrying crates. Woytek got in line, he got a crate. He followed his friends to a point where they dropped off the crates. Get back in line, repeat. Everyone was really happy with him for some reason. Someone started giving him bigger crates. This was a little strange since the other guys had help from three more people to carry this one crate, but Woytek was strong. He could take crates normally carried by four men. He settled into a routine and ended up carrying over 100 pounds of ammo to fight Nazi Germany. Despite his large hands, he never dropped a shell. Despite the chaos, he kept his head cold and did what he thought was best for the situation.
For his coolheadedness, ability to adapt, and loyalty to his unit, Woytek was promoted to Corporal. The insignia of his unit changed to that of a bear carrying an artillery shell. Woytek stayed with his comrades throughout the war, all the way through chasing the Germans out of Italy. After the war, large parts of his unit made their way to Scotland, not wanting to live in Soviet Poland/Russian rule. They brought Woytek with them and found him a nice place to retire in the Edinburgh zoo, made him a member of the Scottish-Polish association, and supplied him with cigarettes and vodka for the rest of his days.
(The ex-soldiers would also frighten onlookers by jumping into the pen for a play-fight or scritches behind bear ears. As you do when you’ve seen someone grow into a man, or in this case Winnie-The-Best-Pooh.
Chevalier St-George, 18th century France
Today we will take a look at Mozart's hot buddy.
In 1745, a 16-year-old girl known as ’Anne ”Nannon”’ gave birth to a healthy baby boy after being raped by the guy who owned her, George Bologne de Saint-Georges.
This would mean either ’another slave for the master’ or ’Sell/kill it.’ (And regardless, a very traumatised Nannon). Even more so since George was a commoner who had nothing to win on keeping such a child, and everything to lose in social standing, since France was one of the more brutal nations when it came to the slave-trade and not seeing black people as people. We are talking ’iron masks that press down the tongue to keep slaves from speaking while doing forced labour, often worn during extremely hot weather’ kind of evil, so only slightly less evil than Hitler knocking up Darth Vader. As such, there were many laws in place to keep a black or part-black person from getting ahead in French society. A black or part-black person could not hold titles, nor marry a person of higher standing.
George was too busy celebrating the fact that he now had a son to care about stupid things like that. He told everyone that the kid was his and eventually punted him off to boarding school to have romantically homoerotic adventures like the rest of the boys, until he turned 13 and his father could send him to a ’real’ school. Understanding that his boy would have to be a knight or something to succeed under French bullcrap race laws, Joseph was enrolled in ”Académie royale polytechnique des armes et de ’l’équitation”, Aka ’Fencing and Horsemanship school’, which is obviously just an inferior way of spelling ’Musketeer Academy’. It was also a way to make sure that Joseph would be able to duel the F out of anyone who dared insult his family
Joseph was evidently born for the occupation of ’French upper-class toff’, for he excelled at beating the snot out of his opponents. At 15, he was one of the best students at the school, regularly beating experienced duellists. At 17, he had ”Developed the greatest speed imaginable”.
Unfortunately, stupid people say dumb stuff all the time, and Joseph had to suffer a lot more of it than his peers. A fencing master named ’Alexandre Picard’ decided to call him the school master’s ’Mulatto’ in public (Mulatto is not a chocolate coffee drink, it’s an antiquated term for a part-black person.). Since this was very obviously meant in a manner insulting of both Joseph and his teacher, honour bade him do no less than to walk up to Picard, pout prettily, tug his gloves off and slap Picard in the face, thus challenging him to a duel.
it was on. Predictably, Joseph walked away as the winner. His father was at that point in time was serving as Toilet Attendent of King Louis(a titled occupation, yes, for real.). You’d think he’d be furious at his kid for rocking the boat or jeopardising the family name, but nah. Joseph was rewarded with a new horse and buggy for having paid attention to his studies and not letting anyone stomp on the family name. He also managed to bag himself a job upon graduation as a Gendarme du roi (officer of the king’s bodyguard), AKA a Chevalier, aka one of the coolest things possible during the period. He may not have been able to inherit Dad’s title as ’Toilet Keeper’, but he was now fully entitled to call himself ’Chevalier de Saint-Georges’, because all 18th century rakes need an awesome name (And honestly. Who wants the title of ’Royal Toilet Keeper’?).
But you know what he really loved? Music. He played the violin like a champ, and was said to have been a hit with the ladies (Duh. Look at that portrait). In 1773, he directed Concert des Amateurs, which under his rule was described as ”the best orchestra for symphonies in Paris, and perhaps in all of Europe.”.
In 1776, he was considered as director for the Paris Opera. The Paris Opera was struggling, and could use his talent. Unfortunately, three of the opera singers wrote to the queen and complained that they didn’t want to take orders from someone with a better tan than they would ever aspire to. Saint-Georges didn’t feel like causing waves, so he made a tactical retreat by withdrawing his offer to direct. Marie-Antoinette was miffed at this, because Saint-Georges was an amazing musician and clearly the best man for the job. So she settled things by having him around for jam sessions with her small house band in her private quarters. If the Paris Opera didn’t want him, well, their loss. The Marquise de Montesson gave him an extremely fancy apartment and a job directing her own private theatre, which eventually led to him having Mozart around for parties and possibly more if you feel like writing RPF. The Marquise was married to the Duke D’Orleans, who also recognised Saint-Georges’ talents to the point where he appointed him a position at his hunting grounds in Raicy, bringing in extra luxury cash.
In 1781, Saint-Georges’ amateur orchestra ran out of funding. So he vented to the Duke. Being a master Mason and rich as hell, the Duke made the orchestra part of his official super special decadent freemason lodge. Unfortunately, the Duke died in 1785, and his wife was so distraught that she closed her private opera. Luckily, the new bearer of the title thought it very meh to lose Saint-Georges’ music and fencing skills, and so set him up with an apartment and the occasional gig. The new Duke was pen-pals with the Prince of Wales, who really, really, really wanted to see the famous violin-playing fencing master in action. Also, Saint-Georges was kind of the perfect guy to try and secretly make contact with abolitionists in Britain. So he was sent off to London to do spywork and also duel Chevalier D’eon. Madame D’eon managed to score a hit, which the audience took as Saint-Georges allowing it ”out of gallantry for a lady”.
When he got back home and started touring with his violin, some pissy slave owners sent five assassins to kill him. Saint-Georges shrugged and took them all down, not caring about the fact that one of them had a gun.
In 1790, he joined the Revolution as an officer in the Garde Nationale. While rising in the ranks and displaying extreme compentency as a butt-kicker, Saint-Georges refused to stop playing music, building an orchestra while at war and holding a concert each week for a period of time.
In 1792, France declared war on the Holy Roman Empire. A group of black and part-black Frenchmen put together an army and called it the ’Légion Saint-Georges’, because guess who was Colonel? Under him was Thomas Alexandre Dumas (Another hot guy who was the father of Alexandre Dumas, author of the Musketeer novels and the Lady of Camille, on which the opera La Traviata is based.) and a lot of other people with black heritage who just wanted a chance to be a hero/wear a cool uniform/Step on underlings/Defend the homeland/Had death wishes.
Unfortunately, that kind of went to shit because people are idiots and also racist. But the legacy lives on in the fact that France now has the perfect excuse for a black(figuratively) comedy about this regiment and the opportunity to put a lot of good looking actors into pretty flashy uniforms of the fabulous kind(Why has this not been done yet!?).
