and something for Alek, Alex - and Borges lovers in general

[wytchcroft]

A good friend sent me a fake newspaper made up from amusing clippings out of various journals and broadsheets - I would guess by the style that this is from the Guardian, but I don't actually know the source. This may seem unbelievable but it's true. (apparently)

ITALY'S STRUGGLE TO DISBAND THE ARMY THAT NEVER WAS

"It is a plot of which Jorge Luis Borges would have been proud: some of the best military and judicial minds in Italy are wrestling with the problem of how to dispose of the unwelcome legacy of tens - perhaps hundreds - of thousands of soldiers who never existed.

Though commanded by a real Lieutenant General, headquartered in Padua, Italy's so called Terzo corpo designato d'Armata was a fiction - a giant cold war bluff. It was dreamed up in the 50s to convince Moscow that NATO's frontline was altogether more solid than was the case.

300,000 army troops -most of them imaginary - were recruited and promoted, fuel was notionally stored, and ammunition supposedly distributed in perhaps the most elaborate exercise ever in Italian fantasia.

The army was disbanded in 1972 but archives and barracks the length of Italy have remained clogged with what La Stampa has said is "tonnes" of paper, And none of it can be destroyed. Under Italian law, officially secret documents can only be pulped once they have been declassified. And they can only be declassified by the office or unit that created them. And, of course, this doesn't exist....

As the former president Francesco Cossiga remarked, "At times, real life is more like novels than you might think." 
John Hooper.


HA HA HA!!:)))

Comments

from Borges and Eco to Lieutenant_Kije

[alek-morse.livejournal.com]

ha-ha-ha :))

Really, very Borges. I think that Umberto Eco can be satisfied ;)

It's funny and, obviously, it's quite plausible. I'm sure something like it was in USSR and other socialist armies in that times.

By the way, I can remember so-called famous "Potemkin village" in the times of Ekaterina the Great (18th century). The term "Potemkin village" is wide-spread as Russian saying.

here is link on Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village

Plus a plot from early 19th century, about Lieutenant Kijé (writer Yury Tynyanov)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lieutenant_Kije

Re: from Borges and Eco to Lieutenant_Kije

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

ah those links are very interesting!

'Potemkin village' reminds a little of both the fake village from 'The Prisoner' ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner

which was based to some degree on real places used by British Intelligence (and fairly recently too if Le Carre is to be believed) - and also reminded me of the fake soldiers used to bolster the Fort in the novel Beau Geste.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beau_Geste

Does the film of Lieutenant Kije ever surface, i'd be curious to watch it, certainly i have heard the music which is very familiar from uses elsewhere.

I hope you have a good Sunday, always a pleasure to hear from you:)

Re: from Borges and Eco to Lieutenant_Kije

[alek-morse.livejournal.com]

musial fragment from 'Lieutenant_Kije'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf5w-PP6UQo

Re: from Borges and Eco to Lieutenant_Kije

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

спасибо Alek:)

[katsmeat.livejournal.com]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fortitude

Inflatable rubber tanks are the best kind.

[betsycontent.livejournal.com]

my father wrote a screenplay about this entitled "instant army." i remember bringing it for show-and-tell at school in the late 60's, along with photos of the actual installation with its rubber tanks, barracks, planes, and fake soldiers. the army intervened and said that they'd decided that universal studios couldn't make the film, because the military might want to use the idea again one day.

unfortunately, i've moved many times since then and it's all been lost. :(

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

that story is worth making into a film by itself!
i can imagine it running parallel with the story of the operation itself. and i'll cast Donald Suttherland as your pa, if you don't mind:))

whoops

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

'Donald Suttherland' being cheaper than his near namesake Donald Sutherland, naturally!

[betsycontent.livejournal.com]

lol! thanks very much. it might make an interesting screenplay at that. :) actually, he looked more like hemingway, but would love to see donald sutherland give it a try -- such a fine actor. (my father's best friend wrote most of the m*a*s*h episdes.)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

i always loved M*A*S*H:) and thanks for the link:)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

i'm gonna get me some!:))

[alex-kraine.livejournal.com]

I somehow recall Yuri Tynyanov's novelette "Poruchik Kizhe" (it's hard to translate but loose translation would be "Lieutenant Tetc". The idea is that in the payroll after the rank Lieutenant in the end of the list there was typical "etc". But there was a typo adding one more last letter "t" before etc. So, one more virtual person appeared in the list. And the accountants accurately started allocate the pay and upkeep for the person that never existed, include him in the stats etc... :)

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

LOL!!:D

[betsycontent.livejournal.com]

found this link to the story in the guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/04/italy-cold-war-army