What was the worst was to be a soldier in?
My nomination: the First Crusade
>Several years with no R&R or time off. Walk from wherever you live, say northern France, to Jerusalem, through marshes and mountains in the winter.
>Starve at multiple points, especially when trapped in the winter besieging Antioch.
>Army gets lost and has no idea what the fuck it is doing. Food supplies can't be found. There is no leader until Boehmond slowly consolidated control later in the war.
>Have to fight in several large multithousand man battles while significantly out numbered.
>70-80% fatality rate as a Crusader by the end, absolutely dwarfing your chances of dying in the Red Army on the Eastern Front.
>Army hit with plague at one point.
>Reduced to eating starving horses as multiple points. Ended up having to use pigs as pack animals to cross the mountains into Syria and knights stuck riding oxen. Go into battle with starving half lame nags or on foot.
>Fight undefeated Steppe horse archers who have gone through most of Asia without significant losses.
>Get peppered with arrows at range and then the horse archers run away when you try to close with them.
>Be victorious but only after most of the army is dead.
>Immediately after winning against the Turks fight war with the Arabs and have another large battle outnumbered 2:1.
>Constant raids throughout the campaign because you can't cover your flanks because you don't know the terrain.
30 years war for europe or one of china's civil wars
At least 30 Years War was in the era where soldiers were allowed to loot. So the conditions were horrid, but you could steal and pillage. Some of the worse 18/19th century wars didn't even have that perk.
>>Be victorious
This makes it worth it. Worst war to be a soldier in would be all that above + YOU LOSE.
>all for a country that was arbitrarily created by western politicians in the 1990s
It was the Ukranian SSR under the USSR
I listened to that YouTube vid too anon
Spotted the assblasted Serbian. Daily reminder that you are a filthy Turkish/Mongol rape baby, and will never be white/European.
I read a books you fucking Zoomer, you know... from a library. They had a few histories, a cool art book on knights of the period, and an atlas showing all the battles and routes in detail. YouTube is not how adults should get their information.
ESL THIRD-WORLD SERBIAN CONFIRMED:
>ENJOY STICKING GLASS BOTTLES UP YOUR ASS, gay?
>https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%90or%C4%91e_Martinovi%C4%87_incident
>I read a books
Don't you mean I suck a cock?
Should have just allowed Germany to pass to smash France. Belgian independence is and was a joke.
>all for a country that was arbitrarily created by western politicians in the 1990s
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisbon_Protocol
stfu, orc. Your meatcube is waiting.
Getting back to thread topic, I'd go with being a Japanese soldier on Okinawa.
probably a bridge builder during napoleon's retreat from russia, you were literally expected to work yourself to death in freezing water for the greater good
>the current war surely is the worst
Redeem a book you fucking street shitter.
Honestly any European war before the Geneva convention in the age of firearm probably qualifies.
>get graced by a musket ball
>die a slow and horribly painful death because the asshole shooting you coated his ammo with literal shit or rotting meat
But they got to look on fleek fr fr no cap dawg. Knights had swag straight bussin.
Probably israeli during antoquity wars
>Your priests literally tell you God has signed your defeat, slavery and death because you werent monoteistic enough and gave clay to Ishtar/Ereshkigal/Rin whatever.
It's not just that war was awful as ever, is that your worldview is shattered and you and your little tribe are going to get cosmologically wrecked, you can't even hope there is a future for your people.
you must be a garden gnome. if you actually read the old testament youll find a ton of stories of isrealites who actually had it great in captivity because God protects and rewards those who are faithful to him. this would of course be a foreign concept to you.
True, both brutal and hopeless. But garden gnomes were OP as fuck when the priests told them God was on their side.
Not the worst by a long shot, but read up on the belgian army during ww1 and how shit their living conditions where
>country is lost
>only keep a small corner of the nation under control
>no relief, so no troop rotation with R&R, the men slept and lived in the same trenches for the entire war unlike the french, british, germans,...
>4 years of constant shelling
>no news from your family for years
>french and english generals constantly bitch to belgium command to send the belgium army over no mans land in another pointless zerg rush.
>get called cowards, etc.... by the other nations for losing your nation and refusing to run blindly in to machinefire like the french and british did.
4 years of constant shelling, little rest, no roof over your head in all those years, no news of your family, recieving insults from your allies,....
Suicide in the belgian army was a big problem back then, a lot of those men where mentaly broken by the end.
Yeah how dare England and France ask for more Belgian help in liberating and defending Belgium.
As if the french and british have a flying fuck about Belgium.
They just wanted their buffer zone back.
Also if you were from Flanders the officers who commanded you were ppl french speaking and thought of you as worthless and expandable just like a muskovite would think of a tuvan today.
It is easy to understand the mindset of a medieval soldier. Get paid to fight. Get paid to loot.
It is honestly harder to understand the mindset of someone who pointlessly died charging machine gun nests in WW1 because they actually believed the propaganda about defending their country.
Some medieval soldiers bought into propaganda pretty hard too and fought hopeless battles, or charged into fortifications where boiling water would be poured on them from murder holes whole javelins and arrows rained down on them.
Plus, a whole bunch were real jazzed about "fighting for Christ" in Iberia, the Levant, the Baltics, and in various wars against heretics.
They put up a W against bonkers odds and the streets of Jerusalem ran ankle deep in blood, so I think it's hard to say it was the worst. They were ISIS level fanatics in chainmail afterall
They managed to kill more people during the Sack of Jerusalem then actually lived in the city at the time because a garrison had been sent into it and a bunch of refugees.
Pretty crazy to have more deaths than most of the war in Ukraine packed into a few hours of stabbing and bashing, but there are a number of battles in antiquity and the middle ages like that. England killed off 2% of its male population, as many as the massive first day of the Somme offensive, over several hours during the War of the Roses.
russian/soviet solider eastern front 1942-1943
no wonder they are glorifying to this day, shit was absolutely brutal, pure horror
Being a grunt tier guy in Stalingrad would be pretty fucking bad.
Seminole wars or Vietnam