Mons

No!  Nothing To Do With "Mons Badonicus"
Although if you have dredged this reference up from the bottom of your memory, as has your humble scribe - thank you Steve! - then you get one hundred brownie points.
     I shouldn't go off at a tangent, yet I will.  I'm fickle that way.
     Anyway, to cement my impeccably British credentials, allow me to expand a little on what this post's not about.  "Mons Badonicus" is Latin for "Mount Badon", in memoriam of the battle fought there, which is important in British history as it prevented the Anglo-Saxons from encroaching for a long time.  It's also the first time King Arthur gets mentioned, making it even more British-ish.  Where it was fought, despite the mountain getting a namecheck, when it was fought, who commanded and the casualties are all unknowns, so we can pretend it was a home win for the Brits, 5-0 vs. their opponents.

The battlefield.  Perhaps.

     Neither is this post about Olympus Mons, the largest known volcano in the solar system, and I feel obligated to mention this as that wretched Facebook default bangs on about stuff from the blogs very earliest days.
     Olympus Mons is freakin' huge.  Check out this comparative graphic:

In French, but the concept comes through

    Not only is it immensely high, it's immense full-stop*.  Have another comparative graphic:

Yes, France again.  There is a reason

     Right!  We have now explained fully what this isn't about.
     "Are you going to get to the point?"  I hear you ask.  " 'Strictly' is on in five minutes."
     Leaving aside the fact that Conrad is not sure this programme is real, I shall explain.
     
The Battle Of Mons
This was an encounter battle, early in the First Unpleasantness in the summer of 1914, which means both sides kind of ran into each other unexpectedly.  Our Teuton cousins - descendants of them pesky Anglo-Saxons - encountered the British Expeditionary Force for the first time, and also encountered the C20 equivalent of the longbow at Crecy, the .303 Lee Enfield rifle in the hands of men very handy at using them.

From the business end

     The average BEF soldier could fire 12 aimed shots per minute, which might not sound much but back in the day of bolt-action rifles this was many times faster than their opponents.  Pause to consider, also, that there were 1,000 men in a BEF infantry battalion, and 12 battalions in a division.
     A death-ray of lead, if you will (144,000 rounds per minute!).  The Teuton commanders were very slow to catch on and realise that marching great masses of men into a Crecy-with-bullets was a very bad idea.

Insouciant Germans advance.
(Not under fire, one feels)

     There is a telling, if bloody, little anecdote in Barbara Tuchman's "1914", about a British CSM shouting out firing instructions to his men, getting them to adjust their sights.
     "At 500 yards, FIRE!"
     "At 400 yards, FIRE!"
     "At 300 yards, FIRE!"
     "At 2150 yards INDIVIDUAL RAPID FIRE!"
     Which is where the 12 aimed rounds a minute come in, although some experts could manage 30 at a large enough target.  I leave it to your imagination as to the end result of this firestorm.

These are re-enactors, as there are precious few relevant photographs

     The unfortunate Teuton infantry advancing into this musketry probably felt much the same as the French at Crecy - unhappy, and dead.
     Here an aside.  If any of my audience have any experience of the British Army, it probably amounts to watching the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.  This is great, spectacular and free - what's not to like?  However, do not mistake the Guards for fashion models, for, were you to meet them on the field of battle and expect men in red jackets wearing huge hairy headpieces, you would be very unpleasantly surprised.
     As above.

Sorry, I really cannot explain those hats away

Now, I was going to bang on about APDS under the title "The Shoes of Death", which sounds like one of the more naff 'Doctor Who' dramamentary re-enactments from the early Seventies.  Yet which is not.  I think we've had enough of humans being horrid to each other for a while.  So!

The Pub Quiz
Alas, I could no longer describe myself as the youngest person in the room, bar the bar staff.  Maybe fourth.

     

Do you see what I did there?

It was a good night for your humble scribe, as he won Game 4, a feat which merits 4 pints of bitter.  Plus, I also won £40 on Play Your Cards right.
     There were ramifications.  Karma, it seems, will not be denied.  Our table, uniquely in the room, had a shelf at knee-height that Phil unerringly hit every time he sat down, rattling the glasses and threatening to bathe Conrad in beer.  This will not do - it's one thing to go home tasting of brewery, and another to smell like one.

A Very Elongated Screw
I did promise a better photograph of that enormous drilling machine that turned up on the building site opposite The Electric Goldfish Bowl, and I keep some of my promises.  Art?

No sniggering at the back!

*  Because the blog is in English English we do not use the horrid term "period".