Thursday, April 3, 2008
Hedgerows
I'm sure there is an obvious answer that is not coming to me, but why didn't allied troops just burn the hedgerows down. Surely in the time it took to weld attachments to tanks, plant explosives, etc. they could have just set fire to the area, waited a day or two for everything to burn and gotten rid of the obstacle. While this would have been devastating to the landscape I'm sure blasting holes and driving tanks through them wasn't a great help either. Also based on their lack of accuracy with bombing I doubt too much care was put into protecting landscape.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I don't want to pretend like I have a defenitive answer to your question. It's a good one. The best I can come up with is that, since the Americans were in the hedgerows themselves, setting fire to them could have resulted in them being surrounded by an inferno. That could be wrong, obviously. It's also worth noting that, as I recall, that summer was very rainy. Perhaps the hedgerows were often too wet to set fire to.
I think that setting the hedgerows on fire would have been a great plan, but someone must have thought about that at the time. I would guess there were too many risks to try it. Getting water to the site to prevent them getting out of control could have been difficult.
Post a Comment