Polish

There Are Two Ways To Read That Title

And the odds are that half of you are reading it the wrong way.  No, we are not talking about a goo that you rub into shoes to allow buffing to make them shine.  Perhaps I should have put "Polski" as that's what I meant - Polish.  Art!

Polish Winged Hussars in action

     Okay, we are going on a little history tour here, so get a brew on and open up that packet of digestives as we trawl a bit of forgotten Second Unpleasantness history.

     September 1939 was a bad time for Poland as it was attacked from north, west and south by the Teutons, and to make their misery complete the Sinisters attacked from the east when they saw how quickly the country was being gobbled up.  The Sinisters would rather drink a bleach-and-cyanide cocktail rather than admit they co-operated with  the Nazis, so the invasion was instead dubbed a 'liberation' of lands stolen by the Poles.  "Don't mention the Nazis!"  Art!

Busted, mate

     A significant percentage of Poles went into Siberian gulags, apart from the 20,000 that the NKVD murdered in Katyen Forest.  This crime came to light when Stalin's bezzie mate Adolf did a bit of backstabbing in June of 1941, and the Sinisters spent the next 50 years lying about it.  Funny how the past has a habit of repeating itself, hmmmmm?

     The Little Sod With The Moustache, as a lot of Russians knew Stalin, then realised he needed allies to fight for him, which meant - lightbulb moment in the Kremlin - that those Polish PoWs could be freed and made to fight for the Motherland.  The Polish government in exile, plus a lot of irate prodding from Churchill, got tens of thousands of Poles into British battledress and a move to Kazakhstan, a balmier clime than that of Siberia.  120,000 Poles then crossed into Persia, beyond the Sinister's control.  This is to shoehorn an enormous amount of suffering, tragedy and mistreatment into one paragraph.  Art!

Polish refugees in Iran

     Long before these exiles were formed into a fighting force, the Polish Carpathian Cavalry Brigade had joined the British order of battle, and partook as part of the garrison in the siege of Tobruk, after duty in Palestine.  

     We now jump ahead a couple of years and across the Mediterranean, to Italy - yes yes yes, it's a world tour, do keep up - where the Poles took part in the Fourth Battle of Cassino, and they were the ones who actually captured the grimly-defended pile of rubble that had been the Abbey.  Art!

Imagine the flag in red and white

     Yet after all that very few would return to Poland, as they had fought with the British, which, in Sinister eyes, was almost as bad as fighting for the Teutons.  During wartime the Poles hated the Teutons with the fury of a thousand suns, and afterwards that ire was directed eastwards.  Frankly, it is a lot better to have the Poles on your side than looking angrily at you.  Don't forget, they conquered Moscow in 1620, which is probably completely ignored in Ruffian history books.  "Don't mention the Poles!"

Kiss flag, take oath, proceed to kick bottom

Straight Into "The Sea Of Sand"

I'm diving in here because I've got to get this blog done and dusted before 13:30, as we're off to visit Darling Daughter and Quiet Tom as a belated birthday bash, and I've got to copy this out longhand.  So -

Dominione cast a pitying look at the obviously deranged woman, who nevertheless managed to seem nearly normal.  The private behind him sniggered unkindly.

     Quarter of an hour later, Sarah sat in the back of the command Sahariana, the vehicle used by the tall, slender Italian officer.  Her thumbs were tied together securely with wire, not tight enough to hurt, tight enough to rebuff any attempt to wriggle free.  A driver and radio-operator in the front of the car looked at her with frank appreciation, a look that Sarah was beginning to understand if not like: a woman amongst countless men.  The Tenente looked at her, too, with considerably less longing and a lot more worry, his bright blue eyes expressing concern.  A female civilian babbling about murderous black tanks that killed everyone they touched - just what he didn't need!  He wasn't going to break radio silence to report in to Camionista HQ - not yet.

     After the raid, he decided.  When he'd gotten some revenge for the humiliating retreat he'd made across Cyrenaica in January, he and his platoon.  Most of them had volunteered for the Camionista group, eager to get their own back on the British.  For too long, eight months, the British had been raiding and ambushing behind Italian lines.  Now the Camionistas would be repaying that "Jackal Force" in kind.

     "Once it begins to get dark, we remove the netting and move out," he told the radio-operator.  "Rendezvous One.  Pass the message on to the other cars."

     Well, things can't get any worse for our plucky young gel, can they?

Conrad - Ranty, Tanty And <Thinks> Likes Asti Spumante

Yes yes yes, I am reaching a bit there, sue me if you like.  Also, if Asti Sp. is champagne then Conrad would rather have an Old Speckled Hen, thanks very much.  I have no palate and fine wines are utterly wasted on me.

     ANYWAY on with the frothing.

"BOWYER": A word so obscure it's not even in my Collins Concise, I had to resort to teh Interwebz.  This is a skilled artisan who makes bows.  Right.  A profession that died off five-hundred years ago?  Why am I NOT surprised a Codeword compiler thought fit to include it?  Art!

Ye bowyer att worke

"ELAND":  Say what?  Is this a variety of ELAN except more so, perhaps?  Or is it Tagalog for Britain, where they miss out the NG because it's too difficult to pronounce?  Well, let's check out the Collins Concise again and see if it's in there.  Wait one.  "A large, spiral-horned antelope inhabiting bushland in eastern and southern Africa."

     You gotta be Kreplaching! me.  So, now I need to be a wildlife expert in addition to a toxophilist?  Art!

Eee.  Land.

"PUGILISM": Boxing.  I SEE YOUR INNER PSEUD GOT THE BETTER OF YOU, COMPILER!

Take it for the team

Another Post-Apocalyptic Telly Show

I had heard of this one - "Colony", with that bloke from "Lost".  Art!

     I know nothing about it, so I'd better go check, hadn't I?  Back shortly.

     Hmmmm so Earth has been invaded by aliens, who appoint collaborators to run their dystopian version of society, principally by surrounding cities with enormous metal walls in order to control movement and supplies.  There is an imposed police force, shoot-on-sight policies and a resistance movement.

     Interesting, if a bit redolent of Robert Silverberg's "The Alien Years" which was a boring family soap opera with some aliens thrown in.

     Conrad intrigued by the outline.  We may come back to this one.  Is it on Netflix I wonder?

Finally -

Better get this into the oven and baked, there's only 14 minutes left until we burn rubber for Northenden and a visit to the pub, except unlike last time we may well be able to sit outside at the benches, hurrah!  Beer always tastes better outside, it's a scientific fact.

Toodle pip!