It seems that Blogger's latest iteration won't allow you to change fonts to Trebuchet, though it will allow changes to <what are we on?> Verdana, which is pretty close.
None of which has anything to do with Doctor Peter Caddick-Adams "Sand And Steel", which I am currently reading. O! how I have been reading. The paperback edition runs to 1,000 pages with the Notes. This is a long read. in fact, it alone forms a significant proportion of my Book Mountain.
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| Heaven or Hell? Conrad unsure |
Anyway, what Ol' Pete and I wanted to mention were what he deemed one of the great unsung successes of D-Day: the fake "Rupert" paratroopers. You may be familiar with these thanks to that Sixties epic "The Longest Day", well well what the heck HOLLYWOOD LIED!
<short pause to allow you to recover from your fainting fit>
The film, you see, has the Ruperts as slightly-enlarged Action Men, perfect in every detail. Which, if Art will get up off his waffle-patterened bottom -
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| Rupert as Hollywood would have it, with puny humans for scale |
In reality (that unpleasant state of mind) the Ruperts were essentially baggy jute sacks trimmed to shape, which - Art, this electric pitchfork is itching to be
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| There we go |
One thing the film got correct was the explosive charges built into the Ruperts, which blew them apart when detonated. This both frightened the Teutons and removed the evidence of tomfoolery, and because this was all done at night and there's nothing to scale against in the sky, these horrid hessians** were extremely effective. As Ol' Pete remarks, two large Teuton formations of battalion size were absent the battlefield looking for non-existent paratroopers (more like ratapoopers, Ha! our citric wit impresses even ourselves). So that scene where an baffled Teuton general is shown a Rupert? Never happened.
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| <gasps> Hollywood - how - how could you? How! |
As Ol' Pete remarks, "Rupert" is British Army slang for an unpopular officer, although of course any Ruperts will be blissfully unaware that they are such.
Of course, any mention of Rupert will immediately call to mind Rupert the Bear, that international anthropomorphic superstar. Art?
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| Rupert was startled by a talking cat. Tell me, dear reader, what's wrong with that? |
Rupert wears clothes, as you can clearly see, including trousers, unlike that PERVERT POOH BEAR whose seedy lifestyle we shall not go into here.
Conrad was always confused about Rupert's world, which not only features anthropomorphic animals such as he, but also - humans! Art?
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| Humans. From China! |
Perhaps it's all taking place in an alternate reality, where the menace of landmobile sharks able to use tools has been eradicated.
What Can Possibly Go Wrong?
Yes, Vulnavia, this yoghurt is dated "Best before 09/07/2020". However, it's not been opened and was sat in the fridge all this time, so it's fine**.
One For The Future
Your Humble Scribe was intrigued by Ol' Pete's mention of how the Teuton intelligence agencies of the Second Unpleasantness spent more time infighting each other than they did the enemy. The SD, for example, the SS's intelligence arm, hated the Abwehr, the army's intelligence service, with a passion. We are not talking about the usual rivalry between intelligence organisations, we are talking about almost open warfare.
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| The very, very sinister head of the SD, Herr Heydrich (Until he got killed) |
So, I wondered about said intelligence organisations. What were they called? Wikipedia is not a lot of help in this case as you'd have to know the exact title of what you were looking up. I do have an encyclopedia of the Third Reich, except it's in the Book Cave behind at least three layers of other books.
I think I will come back to this, and shall let you know what I find out. I bet you can hardly wait, can you***?
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| How to karate the Schickelgruber way! |
Back To Mars
For Lo! the saga of the Perseverace mission is not yet over. If you have a memory better than that of a goldfish, then you recall the Perseverance rover will be collecting Martian soil samples and storing them in containers. These will then be collected by the Fetch rover, which will bring them to another lander, which will send them into orbit around Mars on the Mars Ascent Vehicle. Art?
Once the MAV gets into orbit, it will be collected by the return orbiter, as seen above doing an impression of a basketball hoop. The orbiter then travels back to Earth and send the MAV down the gravity well, where it will land and the Martian soil samples finally get to be analysed.
Phew! Of course Hom. Sap. actually getting their greedy grabbers on the exotic dirt from Mars relies on all the individual stages going perfectly along the way. If any single part fails then the whole mission's off <sad face> and it has a lot of parts. Conrad supposes that wiser heads than his, on much bigger salaries, have pondered loud and long over this.
Finally -
This weather seems to be made up of wild contrasts! Yesterday I walked into Royton wearing a coat, and as a result came back a sweaty blob, then changed into shorts and took my socks off. It was perfectly balmy when walking Edna later on.
Today I am wearing my Father's Day scarf and am back in jeans and closed the windows because it's too cold.
Conrad has long posited that the reason the English went and conquered various lands abroad was to get away from their wretched home climate. If global warming destabilises things much more, you're going to get some pasty white foreigners wearing tanks and fighter bombers on your doorstep.
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| Lucky you |
* Double punnery for you there
** If it's not you won't be reading this tomorrow.
*** Any answer not a loud and approving "YES!" will be ignored.
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