The Man With The Olden Gun

Before You Start, NO!

This is not an attempt to buff Sir Roger Moore's halo at the expense of that worn by Sir Sean Connery, because 1) Conrad was never that impressed with the Moore-era Bond and 2) It's not about either of them.

     Although, now you come to mention it, Conrad does rather appreciate the cold-blooded ruthlessness of Ol' Sean's character.  Remember that scene in "Dr. No"? Art!

"That's a Smith and Wesson, and you've had your chips."

     At which point James calmly shoots his hapless opponent, and then again, to make quite certain that he's dead.  Which he definitely is by that point.  You could quite believe that of Sean; the Beeb's obituary mentioned a time in his youth when six thieves stalked and tackled him after he shooed them away from nicking his coat.  They lost.  With Roger?  Not really.

"Roger prepared to make a salad."

     Anyway, stop trying to change the subject, I've already told you it wasn't about either of them.

    What today's Intro is about is that cynical professional with the ghoulish sense of humour, Major Fraser-Tytler, he of the Royal Artillery during the First Unpleasantness, where he commanded a battery of 4.5 inch howitzers*.  These guns were state-of-the-art at the time, but the time was a century ago, making them now rather obsolete.  Olden times, you see, which is where we get today's title from.  I knew you'd appreciate that.  Art!

     It's surprisingly difficult to get pictures of these weapons, all there seems to be are endless ones of the 18 pounder gun, and monster Royal Garrison Artillery siege weapons.  Which is me digressing again.  

     When TF's battery got a suitable target, they would think nothing of giving it a proper pasting with a couple of hundred shells, which works out at three tons of high explosive.  The other batteries in his regiment, equipped with the 18 pounder, would fire even more shells at a target.  So they regularly got through hundreds of shells at a go, and as you already know, an artillery round comes in two parts, the projectile and the shell casing.  The projectile they didn't need to worry about, that was the Teuton's business; the shell casings were simply dumped in a couple of immense craters nearby to be out of the way.

Shock news! British tourists make horrendous mess!

     Consequently, TF was rather worried when a new artillery Brigadier arrived, whom had the reputation of being an absolute stickler about cleaning up and salvaging everything, most especially empty artillery cartridge cases, and woe betide the battery or brigade that didn't behave as he wanted.  This new and pawky arrival simply wouldn't tolerate thousands (at least 10,000!) of shell cases being dumped on the doorstep; yet it would take days to carry all of them back to salvage dumps in the rear, if they had the men, if they had the horses, if they had the time and if the all-consuming mud wasn't too bad.

     So, he had one of his men paint up two signs, which were nailed to a post and stuck prominently in front of each craterful of shells.  They read :

"C.28 C. 53 dump

All 18 pdr. and 4.5 cases to be dumped here"

     Net result a very happy visiting brigadier, and a very relieved Colonel in charge of FT's battery.  And hence today's title.

     Motley!  You'll fit into this cannon that we found lying around, you're slimmer than I am, in you get, feet-first, no, no, ignore anything hard and round you can feel with your feet, that's - er - just - the barrel.  No, no, any scraping sounds you hear is just, ah, the wind.  

Plastic Armour

First, let me check - nope, Listy's not doing a book on this.  Secondly, it's jolly hard to get pictures of Perfidious Albion's Poverty Range of vehicles adorned with this stuff, because you inevitably end up with a collection of Airfix kits instead when you Google for "Plastic Armour".

     I did mention it previously, how it was a mixture of tar, granite chippings, cork and limestone with quite spectacular protective qualities, far lighter than armour plate and a fraction of the cost, whilst being about 0.7 times as effective.  Art?

The mighty Armadillo

     I can't find any relevant pictures on the internet and don't want to annoy Listy by stealing the ones he dug out, so you'll have to use your imagination.  The Armadillo was a rush-job, brought in at the time of Dunkirk and the armoured "Cab" was made by having an inner and outer layer of wooden planking, the space being filled with stones.  However!  Guess what came along in September?  That's right, Plastic Armour.  By then the invasion threat had receded somewhat, though later the Armadillos were indeed given PA, which would have rendered them from Laughable to Quite Serious.

Or even up to No Laughing Matter

   Enough of grim military matters!  On to light and frothy stuff about people being stupid**!


Bad Drills

Conrad has been watching an eye-watering sequence of heavy construction plant being used in ways it was never intended to be used, with frequently disastrous results, both for the plant operator and the (ridiculously close) spectators.  Let us begin with one where there is a happy ending.  Art?

     Excavator standing right next to the structure to be demolished.  What can possibly go wrong***?

    The chimney falls - but not the way it was expected to.  I suppose asking what could go wrong was tempting Fate.

     The chimney, gouting dust and soot in disgusting quantities, falls right on the excavator. They couldn't have hit it more accurately than if they'd been aiming to do that all along.

     The cab in the aftermath.  Clearly, they build these things to absorb a lot of punishment but having a couple of hundred tons of rubble fall upon it from height is probably stretching their safety parameters a bit.

     The driver, being carried off in the middle of two other people, has somehow not been turned into a remains.  "He's fine," says some cock-eyed optimist on the soundtrack.  No, sir, he is not "fine"!  He is "alive".  There is a difference.
     And as I said, this is one of the happy endings.

Finally -

Dog Buns!  I'm still reading my zombie magnum opus "Revelations" and there's still a fair few pages to go.  I could cheat and drop a big block of text into BOOJUM! though my high principles, and the Copy function not working on Word, rather militate against doing so.  I can tell you that "Operation Howell", the British Army's biggest operational deployment since the Second Unpleasantness, is well under way, creating a safe haven around the port of Cherbourg in France and across the Cotentin peninsula.  They're on a deadline before the mysterious South Canadian "Mother Hen" convoy arrives with a selection of -

     But that would be telling.

Still, a man can dream ...

*  BOOJUM! still proudly Imperial

**  And winning the Darwin Award

***  Lots.