A War In Crimea

We Return To The Mid-Nineteenth Century 

Back then, there was no question about whom Crimea belonged to; it was Ruffian, under the aegis of the Tsar, make no mistake about it.  It was attacked and invaded by Britain and France in 1854, as part of the alliance against Ruffia - the Ottoman empire was the other main contributor.  I did warn you we might come back to this topic and today we have, lucky you!  Art?

     I know, I know, nothing whatsoever to do with Crimea.  Sue me.  I got a good few hits yesteryon featuring Dredd so he's back again.

     ANYWAY mention of the Crimean War usually brings up how incompetent the generals were, lions led by donkeys, John has a long moustache, all that guff.  People seem to think it was simply the Napoleonic War, just smaller.

     Not so!  In the forty years since Nappy got his bottom handed to him on a silver platter, science and technology had advanced considerably.  Take the invention of the telegraph, for example.  Art!

State of the art for it's time

     This appeared on the scene in 1844.  It's first use on the modern battlefield was at Khutor, Lord Raglan's headquarters, which connected him to the front lines at Balaklava in 1855.  Later, a submarine telegraph cable would connect Balaklava and Varna, on the other side of the Black Sea.  This, found the general, was a double-edged sword as it allowed politicians of the day to interfere at the drop of a hat.  Effectively it removed the need to have messengers and couriers galloping back and forth carrying orders or reports.

     Then there was battlefield photography.  Given the nature of the medium, photographs of actual battle weren't possible, although the aftermath usually was.  Art!

     This is the Ruffian fortification 'The Redan' and no, that's not Ruffian soldiers being dirty layabouts, it got quite a bit of knocking about during a siege.  Roger Fenton is the chap responsible for taking a metric ton of photographs during the war, being commissioned by a publishers to travel from Rochdale (local lad!) and document the war.

     And of course that most British of inventions, the railway, eventually came to Crimea.  During the first winter logistics were barely adequate at best, with the Commissariat bungling delivery of supplies to the front lines.  By the second winter a railway had been laid, Art!

     This is the 'Grand Central Crimean Railway' which, once completed, instantly made logistics vastly more efficient.  To begin with the wagons were horse-drawn, until they were substituted by actual locomotives.  Art?

     Conrad wonders if any Ruffian PoWs were ever transported by this means.  They would probably faint with terror at being told they were going to be eaten by the great iron-and-wooden beast, and that at the end of their journey Roger Fenton would steal their souls with his box of deviltry.

     Another military innovation was the use of a rifle-musket by the British army, superceding the previous smoothbore musket.  The rationale for this was that a rifled weapon possessed far superior accuracy than a smoothbore, and indeed the Enfield was sighted up to 1,200 yards, far beyond the range of a smoothbore.  Art!

     Even though it was still muzzle-loaded, the actual 'ball' was shaped more like the bullets we know today, giving a superior ballistic performance.  One quirk was that the ramrod needed a recess to avoid deforming the bullet.  Art!

     Getting hit by one of these was no fun at all, as they were 0.55" calibre, made of lead and arriving at 767 miles per hour.  They tended to go right through the victim, shattering any bone encountered, and were thus a lot more lethal than the old-fashioned ball round.
     Another innovation that the army and politicians generally disliked was that of 'The Times' correspondent William Howard Russell, who had been sent out to report on the war.  His accounts of incompetence, inability and outright fat-headedness in the British command hit home like a thunderbolt - in fact he helped to bring down the government.  Art!

MISTER Russell to you

     I haven't even touched on the medical side of things, and shan't today or this Intro would be the whole of today's blog.     

Pancakes!

Not your normal pancakes, because Your Humble Scribe is rubbish at cooking those.  No, I am talking about Korean 'Pajeon', which are a savoury pancake made with veg.  Quite a messy faff to make, as you need a separate dipping sauce cooked up in a pan, and the veg have to be julienned, which is pseud for sliced into very small bits, before mixing them in with the batter.  Art!

     There's the dipping sauce, which has a real briny tang to it, and the first pancake.  Very tasty and also pretty filling.  I shall be having what's left of the second one for lunch later.  Art!

     That's an official recipe image, so Conrad didn't do too badly on my first try.

Back To The Theme Of 'Empty Spaces'

This is the last on on the BBC's page for a photographic competition, and is amusing and also horrifying at the same time.  Art!

     I don't think I need explain any further, do I?  Also, this is one reason Conrad ALWAYS has a piece of kitchen towel roll in his back pocket.

"The Sea Of Sand"

The Doctor is planning and plotting whilst stuck in his underground prison cell.

"A self-sustaining slave state," muttered the Doctor, not happy or impressed.  To take his mind off that problem, he started talking aloud to Sorbusa.

     "Not feeling too hot, are you?  No, I didn't think so.  Neither of us are gasping for breath, are we?"

     The big alien looked around, paying close attention to the cell for the first time.

     "Correct.  A cell this small would have it's air consumed very quickly."

     Then the air was being exchanged by trans-mat.  Nice, cool, static air.  Non-desert air.  Air from a controlled environment.

     An idea began to form in the Doctor's mind, beginning small.  Small, yet with prospects.

 A hundred and fourteen trillion miles away, Assault Leader Ihouda took careful stock of the situation in the Infiltration Complex.  

     Of the thirty-nine person garrison of heretics:  prisoners, six; fatalaties thirty-three.

     Of the four-hundred strong Assault Detachment: fatalities, fourteen; injured, five.

     Not a bad result, he considered.  They had come storming out of the trans-mat in two waves each two hundred strong.  Most of the heretic garrison were overwhelmed straight away, taken by surprise initially and then bewildered that their fellow bio-vores were attacking them.

     Dog eat dog, eh?  

Speaking Of Dogs ...

What a miserable morning it was earlier.  Cold, windy and damp.  None of which bothered Edna, who of course - obviously! - simply had to sniff at every patch of grass on our route.  Art!

IMMOBILISED BY DOG!

     Here the little scamp has deigned to grace her Human-Shaped Cushion with her presence.  Thank you O Your Majesty.

Dr. S And His Spacehips Quest

Back to Mike Siegel - how modest is he? - and his assessment in technical terms of spaceships his Twitter fans asked him to rate.  Next on his list is "Space Battleship Yamato", which Conrad has heard of yet never seen.  Art!

     You know you've arrived when they make a model kit of you.  

     Dr. S. points out an obvious flaw in the design, which is inherent in what seems to be a re-purposed battleship - no weapons beneath the hull, leaving a huge vulnerable area.  It pains him to only give it Enjoy The Ride, because it's one of his very favourite series and he reckons it still holds up today.  Conrad may have to check this one out.

     And with that we are done indeed.  Chin chin!