Eisenhower assaulted Normandy with the most awesome military force ever assembled, but no one was certain the invasion would succeed. Weather could easily have wrecked the plan, but it did not. The inability to get many of the glider and paratrooper forces to their intended destinations followed by their inability coordinate into effective fighting units in the darkness could have wrecked the plan, but instead their own chaos caused so much confusion among the Germans that they did not know how to capitalize on the chaos. The Germans could have wrecked the plan by bringing their Panzers up immediately, but they did not. The miscalculations at Omaha that cost so many lives could have wrecked the plan by exposing a weak flank that those at Utah might not have been able to hold, but it did not. Montgomery's left bogging down could have wrecked the plan, but the Germans did not amass enough force soon enough to exploit the situation. So: inspite of all the SNAFUs, the Allies, the greatest single amphibious invasion force in human history established a successful foothold and primed to begin to grind down their enemy with overwhelming ground and air force, plus staggering logistical advantage.
But then things ground to a halt in hedge row country in the American sector.
The invasion planners forgot that the hedge rows in Normandy, where the American army was to advance and then make a great wheeling flanking maneuver were ancient and dense and grew upon 6-12 feet high berms of ancient, Osage Orange roots densely entangled in packed soil.
The invasion planners had anticipated that Jerry would put his machine guns nests in the hedge rows and be virtually impossible to destroy without tanks leading the charge. The invasion planners supplied way more tanks than would be needed, because invasion planners tried leaving nothing to chance that did not have to be left to chance.
But when the Sherman Tanks went confidently to attack the machine gun nests in the hedge rows, they had to crawl up the berms, expose their unarmored undersides of the tanks, and at that moment German machine gunners would pick up their anti-tank weapons and fire into the exposed underside of the Shermans and the Shermans, prone to catching fire anyway, would burst into flames and explode.
Suddenly, the most awesomely large and successful amphibious invasion force in human history was stopped by biological fences grown for centuries to keep cattle in.
It was a humbling moment for the great military minds that had planned and commanded the allies.
They were helpless.
Bulldozers could partially solve the problem by bulldozing through the hedge rows, but the bulldozers were not there at that moment. And the longer the Americans stayed bogged down in hedge row country, the more time the Germans had to reposition for a counter attack that might crush the Allied right flank, which would in turn leave Montgomery's slowly moving left caught hopelessly in a pincer. Thus did the greatest amphibious invasion in history suddenly hang precariously in a balance of unforeseen consequences of invasion.
What happened next is among the most famous stories of World War II and so I shall recount it only briefly. With the greatest strategic and tactical minds in the Western Alliances stumped, and able to think of nothing else but waiting for bulldozers to be shipped over and moved into position, an American enlisted man, a farm boy the story goes, said that he thought that if they just went back to the beach and got some of the steel girder obstacles the Germans had set up in the surf to tear the bottoms out of landing crafts, that he reckoned he could weld them on to the front of Sherman tanks and those tanks could then drive into the hedge rows with these long prongs of jagged steel in front of the tank piercing and plowing through the hedge row rather than rolling up and over it.
Mercifully for the history of freedom, there were no naysayers, or at least none with the authority to say no, standing around at that moment saying that it was a cock eyed idea that probably would not work. No one said, "wait, let's build a model of this on my lap top first with my CAD CAM software to see if it will work." No one said, "you know, all strategies have counter strategies and so we have to stop here and evaluate the possible unintended outcomes and consequences." Instead, the idea was tried as soon as elbows and assholes could get trucks moving to the beach and back to scrounge up steel and an arc welder. And the farm boy went to work without blue prints it is said and welded a gerry-rigged looking gob of jagged steel on the front of a Sherman and lo and behold the thing worked like a charm. And in minutes the expected life span of a German machine gunner in hedge row country shortened to less time than it took to drive a Sherman across a small field and blast him to the nether regions.
All of the above comes to my mind when I think about this KU team and its current predicament. It began the season with just about the greatest assemblage of young talent in the history of KU basketball talent. The team invaded D1 and despite many and ongoing SNAFUs in execution and performance this KU team succeeded in establishing an ideal beach head from which to pursue KU's tenth straight conference title with the intention of using that title to gain a Number 1 seed, which itself could be used to flank much of the competition in March Madness and so make a run at that basketball equivalent of the Axis Powers--Syracuse and its Field Marshall James von Boeheim aka The Zone Fox.
And here the greatest Kansas University expeditionary force in the history of the Self Supreme Allied Commander Era sits bogged down in the Big 12 basketball equivalent of hedge row country with two of its Shermans--Embiid and Black--out, or nearly out, with blown tracks, and everyone including Self, and me for awhile, were sitting there saying, well, we just have to sit here in hedge row country and wait for someone to bring in some bulldozers to clear us a path, when...
THERE AREN'T ANY GODDAMNED BULLDOZERS COMING IN TILL NEXT YEAR'S RECRUITING CLASS!
It looks to me like its time for a farm boy to get this team of Self's up off its butt and going through Big 12 opponents again like crap through a goose.
Well, General Self, I got me a pair of Big Smiths and ah done kept a lot of Fergusons and Gleaners goin' at harvest time with bailing wire and plug tobacco.
First thing you do, sir, is you gerry rig your starting five, no matter who you pick to replace Embiid, into a 2-2-1 zone press and you play that sucker evergoddamntime down the floor and fall back into your favorite m2m, just like John R. Wooden, the Indiana Rubber Man did once upon a time.
Next, you continue to play your hi-lo offense with a four man rotation of Black, Ellis for starters and Lucas and Justin for back ups.
And you stand pat with your perimeter rotation, only go long and stay long at the 2 with Selden and Greene alternating about 20 minutes a piece.
And you keep startin' Tharpe and then bringing' Mason, until he makes his first mistake and then bring Frankamp, until he makes his first mistake and then bring Tharpe until his first mistake and so on until none of them three is makin' no more mistakes.
And now here this: that Wiggins kid--ever danged time KU gets down by so much as one stinkin' point, clear out the side for Wiggins and let him go one on one for the money.
Whenever KU is ahead, run the usual stuff.
But whenever KU is behind, just keep clearin' out and givin' the ball to Andrew.
its about damned time we put ourselves on that Canadian's back and saw what he could do in the carryin' department.
And don't be afraid of Justin Wesley. He has been waitin' for such a time for his whole life. He will not let you down now. Improbable players must be asked to do improbably great things sooner or later in a championship season.
And I meant championship season.
We ain't sitting in these here hedge rows waiting for to get our clocks cleaned in round one.
We are here to grab the enemy by the nose and kick him in the ass.
We are join' to Berlin and there ain't no goddamned hedge rows that are gonna stand our way.
Unnnerstand?
Rock Chalk!
