Talk:Forlorn hope

message: Apparently the British Army issued a laurel wreath patch to survivors of forlorn hopes.
Editors might consider adding a segment on the American Civil War, especially the action of the "volunteer storming party" in the Union attack on Vicksburg in 1863.  It sounds much like a forlorn hope type of action.
B Tillman April 2007
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaah... has no one looked into the Saxon shield walls of early England? The forlorn hope were one of the three more effective ways of smashing a shield wall. They were the troops that formed into the Boar's Snout, right at the front who'd surely die, but who would create a gap large enough for the rest of the wedge to push though.
Dictionaries give different derivations but so far I have not seen original documentary evidence. 'Forlorn Hope' is often said to come from the Dutch in the C16 as a military expression from the mistranslation already discussed here but at same time the word forlorn by itself is often said to be older and to come from Old English forloren (lost); related to Saxon farliosan.
Would it not be logical if the word 'foloren' or forlorn existed in English by C16 that it was not a mistranslation at all?
I realise the talk of punishment was in some way relevant where a misdeed might cause you to find yourself in the equivalent of the forlorn hope but why is decimation mentioned? 
Uocg 02:57, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: American Civil War

message: Forlorn hope is the second of three demon items stolen from Koenma Sr.'s palace in the Spirit World in the anime/manga YuYu Hakusho along with The Orb of Beast, stolen by the characters Yoko Kurama, Goki, and Hiei. The Forlorn hope has the ability to sacrifice one life in exchange for saving another.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.123.141.158 (talk) 01:19, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forlorn hope in anime 

message: I am very skeptical of this entire paragraph.  I am skeptical that only Gulag prisoners who had been soldiers were empressed into the penal battalions.  And I am skeptical that those who were heroic were rewarded:
I welcome references to these claims.
Cheers!  Geo Swan (talk) 01:12, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|cn}} -- see talk 

message: A subset of the Donner Party tried to cross the mountains on snowshoes.  They called themselves "The Forlorn Hope".  I added a link in the "See Also" section.  I'll see if I can research enough for a section in this article, if appropriate.  Here is the section in the Donner Party article. Authalic (talk) 20:05, 19 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Donner Party 

message: Thanks to User:Invmog, who has drawn attention to Wiktionary:hoop in Dutch: "Etymology 2 cognate with heap" . The source of the confusion is, as always, the separate Etymology 1: "cognate with hope".--Old Moonraker (talk) 16:45, 11 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiktionary 

message: Does "Les Enfants Perdus" always have to be capitalized? Because, if not, then it should be uncapitalized just like the other phrases.--71.189.159.51 (talk) 10:47, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: L'Académie française uses lower case. The phrase was used for name of a Union battalion in the American Civil War who affected  French-style zouave uniforms, so there it would take caps, but this isn't the usage here. You are probably right so go for it! --Old Moonraker (talk) 12:22, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  French phrase 

message: The first paragraph says there weren't enough volunteers, but the last couple of paragraphs says there was serious competition to lead such an assault. Although it's not strictly contradictory (maybe there are sufficient volunteers to lead the attack, but not otherwise) but it's close enough that I'm skeptical. Tagging. Banedon (talk) 07:49, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Self-contradictory tag 

message: Don't shoot the messenger (pun intended) but isn't there room for all of the (mis)understandings and apparant contradictions detailed in previous posts? 
For instance the answer to the 'Were they volunteers or pressed men?' question is surely 'They were probably both' and be neither a fudge nor an over simplification:
Sampling bias doesn't just affect who gets to write about their personal experiences, it also affects what works survive. If someone (forget who would be so entirely daft for a moment) decided to run a consumer questionaire on the Eastern Front in WW2 and got results like 'Every ambitious junior officer who led a penal battalion responded "It was an honour for the men - who all volunteered - to die bravely for the Motherland/Fatherland" would anyone be surprised? I doubt it, just as I'd doubt the veracity of expressions of enthusiasm by men obliged to go into battle in pairs so the one wihtout a rifle could pick it up when the one with the rifle was killed. (Unless the entire thing was expletives.) 
Call me cynical but I strongly suspect 'I just wished they didn't catch me doing what got me into the mess' would have been the general answer to any such question from since armies were invented. For the same reason I suspect if the guys in charge - nobles, officers, revolutionary leaders, whoever - thought a frontal assault against overwhelming odds was worth a punt so long as no one very important led it really has been a factor since recorded history began, I strongly suspect the Dutch/German version was confined to the officers' club while the linguistically sloppy versions were commonplace even where people did know about the polite/correct Dutch root... because troops who understand their chances of personal survival are at best slender tend to be cynical and irreverent (and IMHO have a taste for truly appalling puns).
Until someone produces a definitive work (or more likely compiles a wealth of evidence culled from a mega-study of first-hand accounts (in themselves probably not entirely representative, what with the whole literacy, leisure to write and getting published versus being used as cannon-fodder issue) giving a complete but messy version then allowing the reader to decide gets my vote. 
PS 
The article covers some five centuries of warfare so until someone finds a way to chart trends that concisely and coherently reflect changes over that period: in the ways wars have been fought for that many centuriesl; prevailing social and economic canges; and latterly, politics... I think we're stuck with messy but interesting.
~~Ebookomane~~  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ebookomane (talk • contribs) 17:47, 23 March 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: There's no contradiction: it first says that there routinely weren't enough volunteers in German mercenary units, but at the end there's a general statement meaning that in many armies throughout Western history, there have been enough volunteers.  Nyttend (talk) 15:40, 3 July 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Contradiction or Complication? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I also saw a mention of this brigade in a documentary. If anyone can find a reliable source, it would be a good addition. Spicemix (talk) 11:00, 6 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Crazy Helmets" 

message: I find the following phrase horribly anachronistic:
"such as a suicidal assault through the kill zone of a defended position"
I can live with "suicidal assault" but I believe "kill zone" is a modern military term which seems out of place with forlorn hope. I don't have any sources except Shakespeare: "once more unto the breach" (Henry V). He certainly didn't write "once more unto the kill zone".  But does anyone agree with me? Humpster (talk) 09:04, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, certainly jarringly anachronistic and the WP:TONE seems a bit questionable.--AntientNestor (talk) 09:26, 24 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Kill zone