Coming Up With A Picture For This Is A Bit Tricky
After all, what can you show - an empty chair? "Look, look, look at what's not there" might be accurate and truthful, if rather dull. I could have put Wire's "Chairs Missing" up as a picture, except we've already used it and I hate to recycle previous artwork. Art!
This claims to be "The" instead of "A", a conceit we will ignore in the interests of brevity. In case you're unfamiliar, it's about the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from Eilean Mor lighthouse, a desolate post on a bleak Scottish island. Art!
Obviously - of course! - all three were swept away thanks to wave action with none of the bodies being recovered. This is what happened, which hasn't stopped film companies with dollar signs in their eyes making up extensive lies about it. So, three vanishings for the price of one.
Then there is another film called "The Vanishing", which is a remake of a Dutch original. Art!
I have seen it and remember nothing but Keefer's character buying an army jacket at a thrift store to embellish a lie that he's living. I can't remember who vanished or if they came back again.
Then we get to Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce. I've mentioned him many a time in the blog, because his intensely citric and dark wit chimes well with Conrad. He came from a large family and lacked much formal schooling, not really becoming anyone important until the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness broke out, when he joined the Union army. Art!
He joined as a private, got commissioned in 1863 and ended up a brevet-major, so quite a successful career. Also a career that led to him experiencing quite enough of the horrors of war, lending a distinct cast to the way he saw the world.
As an author of short stories, he wrote three that dealt with Mysterious Disappearances, which you might also call Vanishings. We've mentioned one already, "Charles Ashmore's Trail", about a boy who vanishes mid-trail when going to get a pail of water. There is also "An Unfinished Race", set in Britain, where a tailor, running a race to win a bet, stumbles on the road and - vanishes. I seem to recall this story being flounced about as being a real-life Mystery Disappearance.
I cannot lay my hands on that elusive third story, which might be present in the collection "Can Such Things Be?" - Art!
No, I don't have time to read them all and track it down.
"Why trot out all this stuff about 'Bitter' Bierce?" I hear you quibble.
Good point.
Because, gentle reader, Bierce himself was the subject of a mysterious disappearance. In late 1913 he expressed his intent to 'see a bit of a fight' before he kicked the bucket, and allegedly planned to travel to Mexico, then in the grip of a bloody civil unpleasantness. Since countries wracked by revolutions are not known for the efficiency of their postal service, it was long into 1914 before people suspected that Bierce had died. Art!
That's the film of a novel that had him dying in Mexico. He had supposedly written a letter to friends from Chihuahua, saying that he was in the saddle - except there is no proof such a letter ever existed. This has not stopped various Mexican towns claiming to be where he died.
Other, smarter people than I (a few exist) have surmised that Bierce's plan was a complete misdirection, that he never even crossed the border into Mexico and instead committed suicide at a remote and desolate location in the Grand Canyon.
The fact remains that no trace of him has ever been found. Ergo: a vani
The Wrightson Stuff
More of Berni, or Bernie, either seems to be acceptable. Yes, we are back in the FPG trading cards artwork again. Art!
Ol' Bern sure did like bodies rising from the grave, didn't he? Conrad - ever the realist - doubts this could easily happen, because your modern coffin is a very robust piece of kit, nor are human hands better at excavation than a spade or shovel. Or - they're just at the end of a weekend-long bender on alcohol and illegal pharmaceuticals?
"The War Illustrated Edition 193 November 1944"
Let us see what they have for us today. Don't forget the two-week minimum mandated delay between a photographer taking a picture and it appearing in TWI. Art!
Ah yes, the Greeks. They had given the original Italian invasion a right shoeing, forcing the Teutons to intervene, who were not slowed down much by a British intervention. Then the Teutons had to take over when Italy joined the Allies and their Greek garrison forces went home, deserted, or joined the Greek resistance organisations. The Greeks were also fighting a civil unpleasantness between Royalist and Communist factions, and the locals must have been pleased to see the British Freedom Army if it meant a quiet life. Here at top you see the RAF flying in British forces, below that a column of Greek ELAS partisans on the march, at bottom starboard some Greek urchins make friends with the Tommies - interesting flag selection! - and to port a group of alleged Greek collaborators were rounded up by the RAF Regiment. Good news for the collaborators as if ELAS got their mitts on them there'd be many a lamp-post being employed as a gibbet.
This is the Muraglione Pass in Italy, showing you one reason why the campaign there tended to work in fits and starts - there were a lot of mountain ranges to cross. This picture also shows you the underlying sinews of Allied might; a huge logistical tail to support the combat teeth. Again, "What's Wrong With This Picture?" The need to enforce march discipline thanks to the risk of enemy air attack; if this were behind the front lines then you'd see fifty yards between vehicles and a few mobile AA guns.
Disaster Looms!
It's okay, it's only Donold Judas Trump it's happening to. Bring out the popcorn and get munching, because his TMTG stock continues to - what's the word?
Plummet!
Art?
Oh dear. Things really accelerated in September, his stock was only sloooowly declining until then, now it seems to have ramped up. Conrad wonders if investors are desperately dumping their own stock before Pumpkinhead dumps his and kills the stock value stone dead.
Must remember to get more popcorn on the weekly shop tomorrow.
Finally -
Better sort out those remaindered pies, hopefully they haven't gone as mouldy as the remaindered somosas, they looked akin to a purple and green leopard.
Chin chin!
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