I CAN see the tear, and i know what he is saying too, can read lips.
"Shit fellas, why, I'd a given my OTHER testicle, to see that!".
Some of the points you make are a trifle gungho Blackstump, a trifle ott, but
"Germany is still with us, England is still with us, Russia is still with us, Japan is still with us, France is still with us".
YEP. Pretty much does the people talking about allied war crimes, in the eye. We took the fascistic barstards down, and WHEN they were down, did we stamp on their throats?. Did we herd them into concentration camps?. Did we "offer" their women jobs as "Comfort women"?.
Hell, we didn't even make them pay their debts left unpaid from the PREVIOUS war!.
"If you'll fight the British Isles, well, you'll fight the British Race". Even the black sheep of the family turns up eventually!.
Bracken fern was another good in us King country boys. Made awesome arrows. I still have a scar on my right thumb where i was using an axe to sharpen them to fire an the older kid across the road and missed. Doh!!![/quote]
Oh aye. We used to make up whip arrows with the Bracken stalks (We call it pig root, pig fern, up here) and when we really wanted to sow death from concealment, we made bigger whips, heavier handles for more throwing inertia, and made the arrows out of fennel stalks instead.
Once apon a time, we carted one of us home from a "toi toi war" with extremely serious head wounds. He had made up some fennel arrows with chipped scoria "heads" on, and nailed one of the "big" kids in mid throw of a spear, with about a kilo of rock and fennel shaft, right in the teeth. And the big kid promptly flew down the hill in a rage and pounded Bill with boots, fists, and *double handful of hair* the earth.
The sort of weekend we called fun, kids today would run screaming from.
I just saw "300" and I gotta say, that was a BLOODY excellent movie.
1) The Roman Pilum, yes, very good choice, God4saken. I think their use of it counts as the first "Shock tactics" as a matter of fact. The disciplined advance, then the entire front cast their spears on order, drew gladis and into them!. Comes down again to the unheard of at that time, level of discipline the Romans exersized over their troops. And we know that their "inviciblity" changed the world.
Then you have the English longbow, but I think between these, you ought to have the
2) Scorpion of Saracuse, for one thing, it was the result of the worlds first international arms fair the tyrant of Saracuse having offered a golden fortune to anyone that turned up offering a military superweapon. And for another thing, it was simply a turning point in the worlds history.
Now we have the
3) Longbow. Again, it changed the world, let tiny England take up far too many of the worlds headlines "Shock Victory for Henry the fifths rag-tag army!"
4) "Greek" fire, the napalm used by the Byzantine empire, which made them the dominant force in the region for over 1000 years. (ok, I agree again, certainly revolutionised naval warfare, won such an important battle as Battle of Syllaeum, which stopped the Arabs invading Europe for 30 years. So, world changing)
I think some PARTICUALR sword, can't really deserve to be considered "World changing" because a sword is a sword is a sword, unless it is Excalibar, that is. So i think we have
5) Cannon. Changed everything. Forts became reduced to delaying positions, not impregnable, massed armies suddenly WERE stopable, navies became moving batteries rather than floating transports.
6) The "Dreadnought" battleship, back then everybody have to have them, they were more than a status symbol.
(sure, I accept this. In the days of the Wooden Wall, you could mount a fairly effective navy with small vessels, by chosing not to engage the opponents first class "Line-of-battle" ships, because they couldn't do much damage to a swift frigate, while the frigate remained able to interdict trade. Once the battleshps came along, if you DIDn't have their match, then you didn't have ports any more.)
And then i agree with the rest of your list, except i think you need PLANES, before you can have a ship to carry them. So I added planes.
7) The submarine, debatable on whether it was the Confederate navy's "CSS Hunley" or the US navy's "USS Holland" as the first true combat submarine. But they dramatically changed naval warfare and are still an influence today.
The aircraft carrier ( and planes to fly off them ) and how it has changed naval warfare and the ability for "Force Projection". The Royal navy's "HMS Ark Royal" was supposedly the first. Not many countries have them now as they are deemed to be too vulnerable and expensive.
9) The atomic bomb, like the Dreadnought, everybody had to have them. Ironically they helped to prevent wars too.
10) and lastly... The Improvised Explosive Device or IED or "Homemade bomb". The preferred weapon of the terrorist/freedom fighter. How many people from around the world have they killed over the last 100 years? How many wars and peace negotiations have they influenced?
Kids these days don't know HOW to play outside, all their games have to be on the computor . . . .umm . . .
All kiwi blokes my age, used to play war outside, with Toi Toi fronds as spears. This goes back to way before europeans came to our Islands. The other name for them is Prince of Wales Feathers. They grow on a bush, have a long (about 2 mtrs for a long one) tough stalk about broomhandle thickness, and fluffy feathers on one end, the end of the stalk that hits you is toughened with a knd of war-head. You just snap them off the bush, and bingo, armed spear-chuckers. Maori boys used them for war training, and we used to find a small hill, and split into two groups, the smaller group got to hold the hill top against the assault team coming up from below.
I was going to provide a link, but too long, put Toi Toi into google image.
I mean, given the discovery channels previous Amero-centric boostering, they will have the Sherman, as the "world changing" tank, when really the world changed when the BRITISH made Little Willy, the Sherman was just the world still shaking itself down into its new configuration.
We have to tip our hats yanky-land-wards for Little Boy of course, but every other world-changing-weapon was made somewhere OFF the US shores, initially, maybe the refinements of some ( Half? most?) of them were polished into full gloss somewhere around 'n' about Chicago, but the world changed in 1718 when James Puckle made his "Defense gun" , . . . . in LONDON, not when Gatling brought to birth the first of the following refinements to the concept.
Not having watched the programme, and with only the spur of your round discontent with it, I hazard to guess that they entirely left out the Crossbow?.
I reckon they ought to ask Jamie and Adam from Mythbusters, to compile a list, and some EXAMPLES too.
I would be very surprised if any of us western types (Around my age, it occurs to me to add, 42 now ), had not actually played "Battleships" as their first wargame.
I played that first when we (my twin and I) were 7 years old, at least that early, because there is a photo around somewhere, of us laying on the floor beside a game, with "Tyger" the cat in the photo, and she passed into cat heaven when I was 7.
. Also, the scenes descibed of torture and mass rape by the Russians was detailed. So detailed that it left me wondering if it was true. I can only assume yes since the book is non-fiction.
That's the problem with most memoirs, isn't it. We ALL only remember part of any event we see, failable humans in the first place, we can only see so much of an event because of limits like trauma, too much happening at once, and personal prejudice INEVITABLY making us look at any event we see, in a way unique in each individual. An American soldier (in those days) seeing a German civilian raped, sees a different event to a German civilian seeing it.
And in this case, obviously the German sniper couldn't possibly have SEEN the actual rapes and tortures take place himself, or he would have either been killed, or put a stop to them. So obviously he was reporting either secondhand reports, or on having seen the resuts, most likely.
Massed rapes did in fact take place in the East of germany, and it is pretty certain it was ordered by Stalin as a kind of warfare too, from all accounts. However, particular depictions of particular events in ANY work that isn't by either a Russian that did the raping, or a woman that suffered the rape, quite literally are secondhand at the least. Probably likely to be in essence perfectly truthful, but as you thought, I think, for them to be graphic AND detailed, they are obviously embellished after the fact.
mooxe wrote:
. After reading three East front books in a row, my thoughts of them all run together sometimes. The end result is all the same though. Mass confusion , flying drumhead court martials, carnage on an unimaginable scale, and finally, fear of capture by the Russians. The endings of all these books were suspenceful. All the soldiers knew they had a better chance surrendering to the Allies.
Anyways, good book. Focused alot on the Gross Deutchland (sp?) regiment.
What was the spur to read three in a row, mooxe?. Did you chance on a hoard on ebay or something?.
I guess they were deadly frightened at the idea that someone would have one of those Russian shaped charge grenades handy.
Still, it does show that the Iraqi people in their day to day lives seem to be unconcerned who is drifting up behind them.
If the US military was a disiplined organisation, these men would be sought out and retrained, do you think?. Or are they allowed to drive about a country where the average wage is 8 dollars a week, damaging the cars of the people they are suppposed to be helping?.
Forum: The Mess Posted: Sun Feb 18, 2007 1:45 am Subject: Riddle
On the grounds that lightning doesn't strike twice, I have wagered 10 bucks on Aussie to revenge themselves, we won the toss again and elected to Field, first ball any minute now, At Eden park.
I don't know how well that last match was reported on in Aussie?. I remember from having lived over there, NZ beating the Wallibees and not ONE single newspaper printing the actual result, it was all given over to criticism of the team.
So for Any Aussie that missed this particular point, the Australian Cricket team was handed its worst one day defeat, by NEW ZEALAND, we bowled you crosseyed and kept you to 148 runs, then TWO BLOKES carried their bats, and cleaned you up in only 45 overs.
Only team in the world to beat Aussie by 10 wickets.
*Can now die a happy man*
I dread to think what is about to happen in revenge.
Close Combat Cross of Iron, the re-release of Close Combat III, The Russian Front should be available any day now. Matrix Games, the publisher just missed getting it out before Christmas and it now looks like it will be the first part of January, as they have gone on holiday.
It will not initially be in stores, but available for order as a box set or direct download from their site.
WOO HOO, I always prefered this game to the later ones.
Yeah, really stupid bloody waste of lives and more importantly, those young men ought to have been wandering around europe TOGETHER, finding drinking establishments, and rooting foreign girlies.
"Hey, Hans, it is that mad bloody English again, with his bow and arrows and his bagpipes. Hey there, you mad English, where is your sister you promised me?"
"Hi Fritz, want to drink French Beer with me, we can compare it to REAL beers".
Wish it had never been allowed to happen. We would be living on Mars, or somewhere further out, by now.
Forum: The Mess Posted: Tue Feb 06, 2007 9:15 pm Subject: Riddle
Oh well, your evil plans are on track. . . curse you, Australian Cricket Team, curse you AND your little baggy caps.
And Steven Fleming, may his soul rot and his bowels gush out, did his patacake best to waste balls blocking till the run rate required was impossible AND . . fume, seethe . . . . he did his normal "Run out the young upandcoming player, before he makes me look the hasbeen i am" trick.
ARRRRGH. Who would be a kiwi cricket fan, i ask you.
Yep. we just didn't kill enough of the dirty nazi barstards.
I am very glad that Germans are our friends now, and actually some of the better citizens in the world, because that meant our generation got to miss out on the whole "Beat up on the really good soldiers at massive expense" thing that the previous generations had to endure.
Just wish we hadn't had to trade in our Empire for the win.
Forum: The Mess Posted: Sat Feb 03, 2007 1:15 am Subject: Riddle
Some Romany-Marshs, a lot of Marinos, a couple of Black-faces . . . good-times, ah yes. . . .
And how do we know that this is in New Zealand, folks, and not Australia?.
See some green substance on the ground in the background, Blackstump?. Did your grandfather ever speak to you of that mystical substance "Green Grass" ?. You know, what the ground grows spontainiously if it "Rains" ?.
In August of 2004, Zappi, Homba, Bambam887, RedScorpion and MOOXE all pitched
in to create this Close Combat site. I would to thank all the people who have visited
and found this site to thier liking. I hope you had time to check out some
of the great Close Combat mods and our forums. I'd also like to thank
all the members of our volunteer staff that have helped over
the years, and all our users that contributed to this site!
Topic: 
The aircraft carrier ( and planes to fly off them ) and how it has changed naval warfare and the ability for "Force Projection". The Royal navy's "HMS Ark Royal" was supposedly the first. Not many countries have them now as they are deemed to be too vulnerable and expensive.
I dread to think what is about to happen in revenge.
Typical Aussie gamesman ship, lol.
