Conrad Courts Controversy!

Again
I'm sure we've been here before.  This will doubtless offend some but we do not care, as we live for the higher traffic figures that an outrage brings <rubs hands and cackles>.
     Oliver Cromwell!  Ol' Crommy is not a well-liked person in Ireland, for reasons we will go into shortly.  You might think this rather odd, because he is pretty much Republican Number One, and had a good deal to do with Ol' Chaz having his head separated from the rest of his body.  If you wanted to sum up the reasons for this dislike in one word, it would be "Drogheda".

How to make friends the Oliver Cromwell way!

     We have mentioned this in passing before, so this time we'll go into a bit more detail.  Drogheda was the first town Olly laid siege to in Ireland, and he had satisfied convention by demanding that the garrison surrender, a demand which was refused.
     The garrison commander was Arthur Aston, who had served in the King's army in England, so he well knew what the Parliamentary armies were like - anti-Catholic to a man; and this was the New Model Army, which was unbeatable, and even more anti-Catholic in it's Puritan-ness.  AA knew that Crommy was not a man to be trifled with, so he was chancing it when he refused the surrender demand.

An instrument of Crommy friendliness

     He would also have been able to see Crommy's siege train being drawn up, because Republican Number One had a lot of cannon, big cannons at that, and no shortage of powder.  There would still have been time for a parley before the cannon began firing, although the terms would have been pretty harsh.  Quite what AA hoped to achieve by his defiance is unclear; the Irish Confederacy's only army had been hammered apart and scattered months earlier, so there was nobody coming to raise the siege.
     Once the cannon had made large enough breaches in the town's walls, the jig was up and AA ought to have known it, but no, he still insisted that the fight go on.  It did, until the defenders were overwhelmed after a valiant resistance, at which point people begin asking for, and being given, quarter.  This is where Crommy steps in and forbids ANY quarter being given to the defenders, so they end up being massacred, all three and a half thousand of them.  

Town plan

     Conrad further notes that the town of Drogehda is divided by a river, and that the drawbridge across it was captured intact by Crommy's men, which bespokes bad planning on the behalf of AA and the defenders.     Then there is the issue of civilian massacre - which simply didn't happen.  There are all sorts of ghastly stories about the New Model Army running riot in the town, and stories are all they are; Ol' Crommy had warned his men not to mistreat civilians in no uncertain terms, and even had men hung for stealing chickens.  As others with more time to spare have researched, there is no evidence at all for the townsfolk getting hung or strung, but it makes such a good story that it persists.

Crommy, doubtless thinking dark thoughts

     Motley!  I am going to poke you with a pike*.
Cor Blimey!
To coin a phrase. Conrad is aware that James Holland, one-man publishing empire, has a television series due out on Amazon Prime, based around the research he did for his "Normandy 44" work, which concerns the whole Normandy campaign, not just D-Day.  You have to pay to view it, which is a bit low in my opinion and we already have Netflix.
     Your Humble Scribe, of course, went on Youtube to see if the series was there and - no.  It's not.
     However!  There is an hour long BBC documentary which is free FREE FREE FREE!** available, from a few years ago, which I watched last night.  And who did we spot?

     Petey!  Whose "Sand and Steel" I am currently reading, because I enjoyed his "Snow and Steel" so much.  But wait!  Who's this up next?

     Bucky!  Whose excellent and iconoclastic volumes "British Armour In The Normandy Campaign" and "Monty's Men" both grace my shelves, and jolly good they are too.
     Oho, and also aha, who's this?

     Stan the man - Stanley Christopherson, whose diaries I am cross-referencing at the moment, in order to reveal whom Keith Douglas was really writing about when using pseudonyms.  Jim interviewed his son, who rather touchingly revealed that his dad was always "very good fun" but on Normandy battlefield tours would always go quiet and reserved when visiting cemeteries.
     O!  Gosh, look who it is!

     Mister Render, who managed, against the odds, to survive all the way from D-Day to Bremen with the legendary Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, and whose "Tank Action" is the best description of British tank tactics I have ever read.  As he says, he trained his troop of Shermans to all fire at "hornets" at once, meaning that hapless Teuton panzers would suffer under a rain of HE, being hit perhaps twelve times before they could get off a shot themselves -
     Amazon Prime?  Pah!

     Enough of martial mayhem, let us wheel on matters light and frothy!
Czechoslovakia Conquers The MoonCalm down, Marketa, this is from way back when, a date when Czechoslovakia was still a going concern.  Art?

Czechs and Slovaks in happy harmony

     I remember reading this as a small person and being vaguely disappointed that there weren't any laser battles or hideous alien monsters, since it's a strictly realistic account of exploring the Moon.  I do remember they kept on having trouble with their filters and had to replace them.

Alternate cover

     Er - and that's about that.  Except to hope Marketa isn't too cross with me.
Finally - 
Schadenfreude, the unworthy yet titillating enjoyment of other people's misfortune.  O how I have missed the ballfoot commentaries on the BBC's website!  Typically, when Liverpole lost to <thinks> some other ballfoot team (not really interested in whom or what) there were 149 pages of comments, evenly split between the fans of Liverpole saying "Yeah yeah but we're still Premium Lager champions" and the gloating gleeful glorying in their being beaten.  
     I only got 20 pages in, which was sufficient to leave me feeling happy.

But then, I am eeeeeeevil

*  The fish not the spear.  But don't tell the motley that.
**  One of my favourite words.