You Know That Clint Eastwood Look?
Where he delivers a laconic punchline whilst giving whichever miscreant a dead-eyed, steely stare? That's me, looking at you in warning about SPELLING. If I say "Vee Bend" then rest assured Conrad means Vee Bend.
For Lo! we are back to "Pillboxes On The Western Front" and the charm of concrete. Art!
Vee Bend Bunker
This is the only presence Vee Bend Bunker has on the internet, so, despite it being a particularly massy construction, it may no longer be around. Let me bring up Peter Oldham's picture of said bunker. Art!
This crumbling pile has a literary connection; you can't quite see the quote thanks to my ham-fisted photography skills, so allow me to inform you that Teuton author Ernst Junger, of "Storm Of Steel" fame, took shelter from the Royal Artillery near here. Once the tide of war had lapped up around it during the Third Ypres campaign, it became a target for the Coldstream Guards of 1st Guards Brigade. Art!
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| Pen tip points to Vee Bend (Map courtesy the very useful "Passchendaele The Day-By-Day Account" by Chris McCarthy0 |
You can see why it acquired the name "Vee Bend Bunker" as the nearby road makes a vee bend not far away. That long line of inverted vees is the centre line for 1st Guards Brigade's route of attack. Ol' Pete mentions that their first attack on the bunker was repelled; a second one succeeded and captured thirty-five Teutons and three machine guns. Conrad not sure about the first attack; it doesn't get mentioned in either PTDTDA nor in the "History of the Guards Division In The Great War 1915 - 1918". It's possible Ol' Pete has the regimental history of the Coldstreams (I only have those of the Irish and Grenadiers O noes another book purchase looms!) and that has the extra detail.
ANYWAY once the armies of Perfidious Albion had acquired the bunker, they used it as a Forward Observation Post, i.e. artillery spotters would gaze longingly at the Teuton lines from it, wishing and hoping for targets to appear. P.J. Campbell, jejune author of "In The Cannon's Mouth" (which I already have, wallet, no need to squeak) used it as an FOP. Art!
Artillery and telephone wire: an essential pairing in the First Unpleasantness
In fact, this might be the location where PJ shared an FOP all day with an artillery major from the Guards division. Their total conversation went thus:
Guards Major: Did you go to Eton or Harrow*?
PJ: No, sir
Guards Major: Are you a regular**?
PJ: No, sir.
Consequently, PJ very obviously not being from the Guards division, the major completely ignored him for the rest of the day. Ah, snobbery and elitism personified! And before you ask, it's "1915 - 1918" because the Guards division was only a brigade from 1914 to 1915, that is, one-third of a division.
Coldstreamers with captured Teuton swag
Motley! I've dug a trench and you are going to relive a bit of First Unpleasantness experience. All we need now is rain.
Conrad, Mad Lad
Yes yes yes, I know I'm too long in the tooth to be called a 'lad'. "Conrad, Mad Middle-aged Man Bordering On Pensioner Status" doesn't have the same ring, does it now? There you go, now I'm even angrier than I was before. Your contumely has exacerbated my wrath - not a phrase you expected to hear today. Is this about Codewords, I hear you querulously quibble? It certainly is!
"FLUXED": ARE WE EXPERTS ON METALWORK NOW! 'Flux' is the stuff that plumbers used to help weld piping together, I know this because I looked it up in the dictionary. Although <muses with a distant look> it is also mentioned in "Forbidden Planet" when the United Planets cruiser C57D approaches the great main sequence star Altair.
That's Jerry in rear, fluxing it
"IVIES": Of course, the plural of "Ivy" because - because that would be too easy, wouldn't it? The ivy, as you ought to know, is a parasitic plant that strangles trees, and by this stage Your Humble Strangler was feeling the urge to - oops, sorry, thinking aloud!
<clenches hands crushingly>
"HAIKU": I shouldn't have to say this because I've already yarked on at a previous Codeword that CHEATED by using this word. Even so, may I remind you that THIS IS JAPANESE! JAPANESE!! Conrad will admit to having encountered it a good forty years ago on "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." but that was fiction and from a Ruffian to boot.
That's enough about Codewords. I have my blood pressure to think of.
Currently watching Episode 10 of "Locke And Key", which has deviated significantly from the comics, so it's very much telling it's own story. Ergo I don't know what's going to happen***!
Perhaps A Darwin
Conrad came across a curious story on the BBC's News website, which rather tickled my ghoulish sense of humour. Art!
Hmmm. One would initially think about the stink; after all, a rotting corpse is not the sweetest smell in the world, and the neighbours ought to notice.
Except hold on a minute; this is Norway we're talking about here, where in winter the snow lies a mile furlong pretty deep, and -100C is positively balmy, so that may have slowed down any decomposition, which had reached the point of not a lot being left by the time warmer weather arrives.
There's no way to tell how the chap died, but we do know that nobody missed him, and since he was retired there were no work colleagues to puzzle about him. Being old, he didn't have an online media profile. All his bills were paid by direct debit, so he could have remained undiscovered for another nine years, were it not for a maintenance technician needing access to his apartment. A symptom of the future, it seems.
Okay, okay, neither a mile nor a furlong deep. There. Happy now?
Finally -
I was going to go on about the Northrop Flying Wing. However, we're already at the Compositional Ton and it would add another couple of hundred words, so you're going to have to wait. Be patient.
And with that we are so very done!
* Two of the most upper-crust English public schools evah.
** In other words, did you join up before war began?
*** Not a bad thing as being omniscient can be a teensy bit galling
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