That's The Spirit

For Yes, We Are Back In Normandy
With George Blackburn and his Canuckistanian chums of 4th Field Regiment.  One feels listening in to this lot when they were having a break would be an odd experience, since they sound like Americans but by golly! They all drink tea.  Sound chaps.
     They also drank Calvados, which is a Normandy speciality.  Art?

CAUTION! Do NOT fill that glass up

     Now, the thing is, the Normandy farmers who distil this stuff had hidden all the properly-matured bottles of Calvados, usually well buried, so that the much-loathed Teutons couldn't lay their scrofulitic hands upon it.  Thus when the Canuckistanians (is that a better appellation that "British Americans"?) found any, it was usually above ground, it was not matured and, more importantly, had not been reduced in proof.  This point is important because, unmatured, it's 70% proof and necking even a small amount of it was like drinking paint thinner and being hit on the back of the neck with a sledgehammer.

CAUTION! Do not stop to build sandcastles

     Ol' Geo also describes a couple of interesting things, the first being what he called a "murder shoot".  This was a very intense bombardment fired at considerable speed for thirty minutes, on a target village occupied by the Teutons.  Ol' Geo helpfully calculated the tonnage of shells fired, probably because he knows I like to know that kind of detail, and it came to 59 tons of HE.  The Teutons did not like this at all, and retaliated in kind.
     The second thing is new to me, despite reading oodles of books about Normandy 1944 and onwards, and concerns body armour.  Ol' Geo describes it, but we can do better and have Art illustrate it.  Art, o beloved troglodyte?

Thus

     This was made of a hard plastic substance that was designed to deform under impact, and was intended to be worn under the battledress; the chap above is wearing it outside for clarity.  If the wearer was hit by small arms fire or shrapnel then the plastic would yield, bruising the wearer but not killing them.  And it worked - Ol' Geo details the exploits of a fellow officer hit by a burst of bullets that, indeed, bruised the heck out of him yet left him very much on this mortal coil.  Art?

For more clarity

     I am now going to offer the motley one of the remaindered sandwiches, but it's only out of date by a couple of days*.

And Now To Offend Our Ruffian Friends!
Tee-hee!  O I feel the spirit of mischief moving within me!
     For we are back to the saga of the "Admiral Kuznetsov", the elderly Ruffian aircraft carrier, whose refit seems like the script out of a "Carry On" film.  To recap - it was due to be refitted from the keel upwards in an enormous floating dock at Murmansk, prefatory to which they took the propellers off. 
     The floating dock promptly ceased to float.  In fact you could say it sank, because it did, and one of the floating cranes on it fell off and damaged the AK.  The Ruffians don't have the ability to refloat the dock.  There's nowhere else able to fit the AK except a port in the Ruffian's far east, and it can't get there because - no propellers.  Remember?

Even with propellers, it's barely mobile

     I checked up on the AK, and she's still sitting in Murmansk, or whatever the nautical term is for loitering at the dockside looking rusty.  A Ruffian admiral declared, with an air of gloom, that the ship will be refitted in Maintenance Dock 35 in Murmansk, if they have the facilities and if they increase their capabilities, which sounds a lot like "It's not going to get done but we don't dare tell Tsar Putin that" because TSAR PUTIN WANTS HIS AIRCRAFT CARRIER!
     Lest this be too offensive to our Ruffian chums, I have to say they were rockingly ruthless when dealing with Somali pirates, who found that being dead is bad for business.

A Ruffian ship
(Just so we're clear)

     Make that "exceedingly dead."

"Bernie Gunther"
This is a central narrating character invented by Philip Kerr in a series of 14 novels, which are all of the noir detective school, set in Weimar and Nazi Germany.  There aren't going to be any more, as the author died last year <sad face>.  As I have already said, if you made up a tick-list of things that put a grimace close to a smile on Your Humble Scribe's hideous visage, you'd probably come up with the Bernie Gunther novels <happy face>.
     The thing is - I'm using this rather too often, aren't I?  I know you're shaking your heads but you're nodding on the inside, I can tell.  Anyway, Conrad can't remember which ones he's read, and didn't realise before checking that there were so many novels in the series.  Thanks here to the chap who runs the Books In Series website, Graham, is it?  Whatever, thanks a lot.


Possibly Bernie

     So, last night I sat with pen and notebook and wrote down the publication date of each novel, and the year they were set in, and ticked those I remembered reading, which would count as cruel and unusual punishment for some, and a jolly good time for me.
     Interestingly, the first three volumes came out in 1989, 1990 and 1991, and constitute what's called the "Berlin Trilogy", with a long pause of fifteen years until the next one.  Ol' Phil took care to mix in real people amongst the fictional ones, which makes for an interesting game of trying to decide if minor characters are real or created by Phil.

Heinrich Chicken-farmer - he was real enough
(Unfortunately)

Finally -
I am rather cross with my own mind.  This is a regular occurrence and shouldn't bother me too much, but I have forgotten only just enough of an idea to remember that there is a hole in my memory, and it niggles.  NIGGLES, I TELL YOU!
     You see, I had realised there was a major plot hole in a film we'd been discussing in the office, and consequently felt quite smug about it.
     However, I didn't write it down and cannot now remember the film.
     Bah!

Conrad, busy being furiously angry

*  So it's just - er - matured a bit.