A Collection Of Contrasts

If You've Been Reading BOOJUM! For A While -

Then you know that we regularly feature photographs from a Second Unpleasantness fortnightly magazine called "The War Illustrated", which have been compiled in 10 bound volumes and which Conrad got his hot sweaty hands upon a while back.  Art!

     As I have pontificated before, these photographs are always a few weeks out of date, and in this case show a tank in the town of Cassibile, which was captured on July 10th.  The magazine's publication date is August 20, so it's almost and month and a half out of date.  This was done to prevent the Axis from gleaning anything remotely useful from the picture.  There are no visible divisional or regimental markings visible and if there had been the censor would have scraped them off the negative.

     Yes, then too the photographs are all in black and white, with a bit of fake 'colour' added to the cover picture.  This was wartime, without the resources to print in colour on expensive high-quality paper.

     These chaps doing hard physical labour are Royal Engineers and Pioneers, working to get the invasion beaches in fit order to land supplies, men and equipment.  Visible is a human chain getting supplies from landing craft to shore, and in the centre is one of the ubiquitous British Bren Carriers coming off the landing craft, hopefully waterproofed.  A little further back another vehicle seems to have become swamped; somebody shirked on the rubber sealant. 

     Allied air power at work.  Don't forget, these images were taken with cameras using celluloid film, and then sent back home by mail, or, in rare instances, via radio transmission.  Going by air-mail could still take all day, whilst by sea meant a voyage of days, with possible delays due to enemy activity.  Bear that in mind!

     Okay, first photo shows an Operations Group plotting how to repair and get Comiso airfield back into action.  This had been Teuton territory, and they ploughed everything up before leaving, the dirty curs, which is why you see a steam-roller in action at upper starboard.  In the middle is one that didn't get away, and at bottom port a bunch of South Canadians are servicing a Spitfire.  Notice the DUKW, universally known as a 'Duck', parked in front of the plane; this remarkable amphibious truck was unglamourous yet vital in the supply chain.

     And bottom starboard shows a crashed JU87, which was simply dog food if there were any Allied fighters around and had been since late 1940.  

     Let us now jump forward to July 2022.  Art!

     This is information from Deep State, who have been providing daily access to maps of what's going on in Ukraine.  If you care to know, it's Russian artillery fire in early July at top, and then later in July after a thing called "HIMARS" appeared.  The war is no longer prime broadcast material but earlier you'd get personal reports from correspondent in Kiev, on what had happened that day.  There are seemingly dozens of Youtube channels as well as Twitter feeds that are updated daily.  As Rob from "Speak The Truth" put it, this is one of the best-documented wars in history, broadcast in real time.  No two-week delays in publication, in full colour, although grisly stuff does get censored.  Nor are you sacrificing whole forests to reach your audience.  Art!

It made me laugh

     Truly we are living in the future.

Another Small Earth Tremor In Wigan

Dog Buns!  Completed a Codeword earlier and - once again nothing I could complain about, which is great for my ego and a speedy solution, yet which generates no content for the blog.  My dry spell has to end some time soon, right?

Wigan.  Tremble, Wigan, tremble!

"In The Dark"

Conrad usually boasts that he's got no idea what comes next, because he's so spontaneous, except I did peek last night, purely in order to find out how many pictures were left.  This is the last in this exhibition of photographs on the BBC's site.  Art!

Courtesy Lynsey Hewitson

     Blimey!  That's a bit close, frankly, Conrad hopes there was a windshield or similar between Lynsey and the King Of The Beasts.  One imagines that there was, since she could compose a caption for the photograph, and it's hard to do that if you're gracing the inside of a plains predator.

"The Sea Of Sand"

Yes, and as you should surely remember, the British army stores depot at Mersah Martuba was uneasily awaiting the arrival of three sinister, un-earthly looking machines.  O dear.

Between Sarah and the Australian soldier, they shooe’d the Italian PoW’s back into the truck, none of them wanting to hang around and all looking anxious.

          The croupy siren wailed once again over the depot, bringing Captain’s Dobie and Jolyon out of the former’s mud hut, where he had been arguing over exactly how many supplies J Force could depart with.

          ‘What the devil’s going on!’ called Dobie to Roger, who had mustered a dozen men of the garrison and was warning them to get ready to take cover.

          Roger ran over to his superior, dogged by the Doctor.

          ‘Looks like Italian – well, infernal devices, sir.  Like an oil drum on tracks, three of them.’

          Dobie spun round to glare at Jolyon, who in turn was looking at the Italian prisoners.

          ‘Have you brought an enemy force out here, Jolyon!’  Another thought struck him.  ‘They’re going to try and free the prisoners!’

          The Doctor shook his head, which got both officer’s attention.

          ‘They aren’t Italian, but they may very well be infernal.’

Captain Dobie could see the middle vehicle of the three, as the other two split off and began to skirt the depot.  This single middle vehicle drove straight into the depot, slowing down to walking pace and splaying out several “arms” to either side.

          ‘ “Aren’t Italian!”  Don’t talk rot – they can’t be German, they’re still on the docks at Tripoli,’ blustered Dobie.  Captain Jolyon, paying closer attention to the Doctor, began to edge backwards to his own convoy.

          ‘Stay away from the arms!’ shouted the Doctor.  

     Sound advice, Doctor.

CONRAD DOES NOT CARE

AND he is angry.  O so angry!  "About what, O Aged Scribe?" I hear you enquire, and pausing to point out the 247 is only middle-aged, I shall explicate.

     Women's Kreplach! Ballfoot, thats what.  I believe that This Sceptred Isle's team won whatever they were playing or playing for, which is the worst of all possible worlds, because the media subsequently won't stop crowing about it.

     Go very far away very quickly!  Art!

No you do not get a picture of female ballfooters

     
     Get used to a ballfootless world when I take over.  Any protests and my army of lethal weaselnanas go on the attack.

Finally -

I did think of coming up with an anagram of Putin that describes his unlovable self, and we don't need a long article to hit the Adjusted Compositional Ton.  Hmmmm <totally winging it at this point>P.U.T.I.N.

Puffy (you can't deny it, his face looks as if it was inflated with a bicycle pump)

Usurious (he owns everything and you owe him everything)

Tiny (Classic Little Man Syndrome)

Irritating (like a rash in an embarrassing place)

Nostalgic ("The Sinister Union was wonderful")

      Not deathless prose, hopefully it amuses some of you.