In Case You Were Wondering
And even if you weren't, which is a punchline we have resorted to of late.
Your Humble Scribe has been pondering and wondering these past few hours, alternating between the battlefront of Burma in 1944, an area described by James Holland in his 'Burma '44' where the terrain, climate and diseases all want to kill you in horrible style quite before any enemy with guns shows up, and the latter stages of the Somme campaign. Art!
This work is about the Battle Of The Admin Box, a little-known engagement in February of 1944, in the Arakan area of Burma. Hence the title. I don't think it's spoiling much to say that the Japanese got a right and proper shoeing in this battle. Looking for a bit of contemporary back-up, Your Humble Scribe consulted the relevant Volume of 'The War Illustrated' only to find no mention of the battle by name. 'Little-known' and the 'Forgotten 14th Army' indeed.
ANYWAY since there is a shortage of BOTAB, we are going to resort to 'Charley's War', because I read more of it and took photos, too. I bet you can hardly wait. Art!
The Pat and Joe of today's title
Just to remind you of what's what. Art!
The editor slipped up here. that ought to be 'reign' NOT 'rein', and any sub-editor tasked with proofing ought to get a slap on both wrists and each ankle. O yes there are tanks and machine guns and shizzle. This picture would be dated in the autumn of 1916, when tanks were, to the Teutons, a ghastly novelty. By early 1917 Teuton machine guns had been issued with special 'K' ammunition, which was supposedly armour-piercing. The astonishment and terror of Teuton stubble-hoppers when coming face-to-face with these brutal behemoths is also factual. Art!
Hmmmm there were cluster grenades, as depicted above, but they were more an issue in the Second Unpleasantness, and matey here would be hard pressed to come up with an innovation like this on the fly. Conrad's Classification: possible but unlikely. Skating on thin ice, Pat. Art!
A touch of poetic licence here, as the old 'Mother' Mark I version could manage about three miles per hour, or walking pace, so a terrified Teuton trooper could manage to outrun them, were they not frozen in fear. Joe does a nice rendering of an Mg 08 here. Art!
A tale torn from the headlines. There is a famous quote from an aerial observer at the time this event occurred in real life:
Sorry, it won't allow me to taupe it. Doesn't change the fact that it happened. Plus one for Pat and Joe! Art?
Hmmmm. This is what Conrad would class as an urban legend. Not necessarily false, just dubious in occurrence. In popular histories of the First Unpleasantness, you will find bold assertions that 'hundreds or thousands of men drowned in the mud', which may very well be true, except Conrad has never seen any evidence produced to support this statement. If you were wandering the lines alone and fell into a glutinous shell hole then yes, you might well go missing, your corpse not being recovered for months. On the other hand, if you were part of a patrol, your comrades would drag you free. Besides which, the really bad swamp of shell hole craters-cum-marsh didn't happen until late 1917. Great for creating an atmosphere of peril, mind. Art!
Absolutely dead to rights Pat, a well-observed detail. 'Trench foot' was an affliction that tormented front-line soldiers in the - you may be ahead of me here - trenches. It was caused by feet being constantly wet, cold and unclean, and in severe cases could lead to gangrene and amputation. Since keeping the feet of tommies clean and dry in a muddy trench was simply impossible, they were issued whale oil to rub into their feet and create a protective mitigating barrier. Conrad has never read any reference to how badly it smelled, so we will allow Pat his poetic licence again. Art!
Ah yes, the Eeeeevil Officer, this one being a doctor. Frankly this is a caricature, you should see the satire being laid on with a JCB here. There were doctors as callous and hard-bitten as this, thanks to being in service for years. and coming across endless malingerers. All the skivers would mercilessly hound a new MO and see how far they could push their luck, which tended to make the MO jaded and cynical over time. Not quite as much as the suet-sack above, mind.
Enough blood and thunder for one Intro! Let us move on.
The Flabby Fraudster LOSES Again
Another gentle shoeing, which the Big Orange Oaf Himself needs on a regular basis, to stop him dozing off on the job again. Art!
A Florida judge has dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Truth Social’s parent company, Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. (TMTG), against The Guardian and other outlets over two articles. the ruling marks another legal setback for President Donald Trump’s media-related litigation, with the court finding that the reports in question did not meet the high bar required to prove defamation against a public figure.
This is Dozy Don's trademark use of a legal club; threaten to sue for billions in order for those he's extorting to pay up millions to make the suit go away. He's not batting 100 in court of late, having two other cases being dismissed by judges; one against James Comey, ex-FBI chief, and Letitia James, the black female attorney pursuing him in New York. I bet he's seething about that last one! Art?
As Is Now Traditional -
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| Sorry, no Bob Semple tank today |
"What?" you might be thinking. "How can a sea-going cruiser end up in Teuton hands? Didn't they tend to come off the worst when facing the Senior Service*?"
Without watching the video, Conrad is going to guess that they mean a British cruiser tank, one of the pre-war categories they maintained. Allow me to watch the vid and get back to you.
Which might prove difficult, as the vlog item has now vanished. Bah!
Found it. Ha! Conrad triumphant! Art!
Because the Teutons were always short of kit, they re-purposed everything they got their sweaty mitts on. including British cruiser tanks.
More Mechanical Mishaps
From 'Discovery Tech US' and their annoyingly undetailed video montage, with a snarky AI voiceover trying to sound like George Clooney. Bah! in advance. Art!
More forklift flubbing, with the vehicle completely obscured by the huge stack of drink cans it's hauling around. What can possibly to wrong? Art!
An Oooops moment, if ever there was one. Art!
That's the defeated driver walking away. He attempted to save time by lifting two pallets of product instead of one at a time, as shown in a still from the beginning. Art!
Ooops oops fruit loops
Further forklift fails. Art!
This clip is filmed with a phone camera, implying that the observer knew something was about to go down, rather than a randomly-placed security camera. What can possibly go wrong here, you ask? Art!
Observer changes position for a more dramatic angle, and you can see all those boxes of Edinburgh Crystal** beginning to tip. Art!
Conrad thinks he began to move the topmost pallet without lifting it free of the ones below, and the movement was transferred, sufficiently to topple the whole lot. The dorklift driver doesn't even pause, he's determined to get that top pallet and damn the consequences.
Finally -
This is hilarious. Art!
* The ROYAL NAVY to you lot.
** Or flourescent lights
