On The Murder Mile!
No, really! I've only used a single exclamation mark at a time, haven't I? That's proof of how sincere I am <smiles winningly, which frightens small children and pregnant women>.
This is a follow-up to that post of yesteryon about the dreadful Valiant tank - you know, the one that risked serious injury to the driver if it went over a bump and whose trial was abandoned after only nine miles. David Fletcher, the Mighty Moustache himself, really gave it both barrels. As he tells it, a single prototype was retained at the Army School so prospective engineers could find all it's flaws.
ANYWAY because I am Conrad, and I was reading about the Valiant in my book - Art! <cattle prods the slouching Neanderthal awake>
Inevitably I turned the page, and there it was, the A39 Tortoise, with an entry all of it's own. What a beast! Art!
With puny humans for scale
This thing was intended to go toe-to-toe with the Teuton's King Tiger and Jadgtiger, so it was essentially a mobile metal fort. It was called a 'tank' but it would be more accurate to describe it as an assault gun since it has no turret*. The frontal armour was up to nine inches thick and it was 11 yards long, consequently it was verrrry slow both on and off-road: 12 miles per hour on the road, 4 m.p.h. off. Hmmmm yes, that's the trade-off you get when your assault gun weighs in at 80 tons. No that's not a typo: eighty tons. Art!
This whopper of an assault vehicle carried an equally whopping great gun: the 3.7" anti-aircraft gun (94 mm for the perverts out there who like metric), which we have mentioned occasionally in the past as being used by the RA in North Africa against Axis tanks. The projectile weighed 32 pounds and the shell and charges were loaded separately by two loaders, because one man would have collapsed from exhaustion. When they carried out gun trials, the round went through the frontal armour of a Panther as if it wasn't there. Ooo-err Matron! Imagine being in a small and dainty Panzer III at Sidi Rezegh when a 3.7 targets you ...
ANYWAY the A39 was not very mobile, being rather a petrol-pig, with a range of only 90 miles. This is fair enough as it was intended to assault Teuton fortifications like the Seigfried Line, not dash to Berlin. However, it did earn a reputation for reliability - this is quite a surprise for such a monster - and made an extremely stable gun platform. Art!
Motley! We'll put this dustbin atop you, and these bricks can be anti-tank shells. Don't argue, we cleaned it out specially.
Quick, Nurse, The Screams!
More more more of 'Tormentor', which I confess is an easy way to up the word count. Conrad still had to write the thing in the first place (AND against the clock), though, so give me a little bit of credit.
At four o’clock, Louis moved through seething
corridors full of students seeking to get off-campus and home. The vice-principal’s office lay slightly off
the beaten track, meaning the cacophony of students en masse diminished enough
for his knock to be heard.
‘Come in!’ called Rowell. ‘Louis!
Is it yes or no?’
‘It’s “yes”, and yes in addition to my English
classes,’ said Louis, only leaning into the room instead of entering properly.
‘Thank you!’
Rowell sounded genuinely grateful.
‘I’ll get Admin to send you the timetable, and the Bursar will see about
your hours.’
The implications of going back to full-time work began to sink in on the bus home, as Louis realised there wouldn’t be any opportunity for staying in bed of a morning, dealing with a hangover thanks to the night before. No staying up until the small hours of the morning cruising porn or conspiracy sites either. Plus, he’d have to have enough clean shirts and trousers and polished shoes for a whole week – the college had a dress policy for male staff. And lunches for three more days in the week. And the bus fares.
When he got home, he had to check the freezer for
food, then the dirty laundry for work shirts, and whether he had enough shoe
polish.
‘Need more shirt.
Shortage of shirt,’ he muttered to himself whilst sorting piles of
soiled socks. ‘Bread, cheese, tomatoes,
ham, new lifestyle of forty hours per week.’
The minutiae were a welcome distraction, enabling him
to get to ten o’clock having been gainfully employed all evening, getting to
bed at eleven with a book and mercifully sleeping without dreams.
Well, that's us at an easy 800 words. Ah - and a bit of quality literature, too. That goes without saying. Even though I've had to say it.
Jumping The Field Artillery Howitzer A Tad
Yes, you see the next issue of "The War Illustrated" is dated 27/11/1942, and here we are only on 23/11/2021. I hope you can forgive an old man his anachronism. Art!
I'm not going to type out the caption for you because it's all lies. Supposedly displaying an advance into the teeth of enemy resistance, it's actually a few Australian troops who were lying around well behind the front lines, storming a British Army cookhouse. This was the practice of Sergeant Len Chetwyn, who staged various events and took photographs of them, pretending that they were the real thing. This got him into very hot water with the genuine film units in the front line; he was allowed to get away with it because 1) His photos looked good and 2) It annoyed the bally Hun, which was reason enough. We shall doubtless come across his photographs again.
<short pause to assemble food>
"From The City, From The Plough" By Alexander Baron
This is one of the haul I got from IWM North, and if Art can stop spreading balm on his electrical burns -
Your Humble Scribe is about 100 pages in, at which point the 5th Battalion the Wessex Regiment (a fictional unit) are bound for the Normandy beaches and the D-Day invasion. We get a picture of the battalion from the officers to the privates, a mix of different trades and occupations and origins, though still very much in the mould of a county shire regiment. By the time they go into action you have a very real investment in these characters, and since Alex took as his inspiration the very real battles for Hill 112 and Mont Pincon, Your Humble Scribe knows a great many of these people are not coming back.
Finally -
Conrad has been watching "Deadpool 2", which he found still in it's wrapping plastic, so obviously untouched for three years. Very amusing, and violent, and with a lot of swearing. Not sure if they could repeat the same formula again and still be successful. Is there a sequel in the works?
Apparently so. Watch this space as of 2023, I suppose.
* Conrad: your loveable hair-splitting pedant
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