With war close to Tippelbruder the future of templates from the shop here seems uncertain. David Linienblatt has volunteered to serve with his cousin's Freikorps, as he has some skill with a rifle, and he feels that as the ostensible cause of the war he cannot let other men fight for him without risking his own life on the field of battle. Should he fall in combat, who will carry on the templates? Nearly 100 templates have now been produced; will there be more?
16 comments:
David,
As a seasoned veteran myself, I can only say that during the two major campaigns for which I earned medals I had a number of "down times" where I could have used a sketchbook and a reference work or two.
Thanks for the templates so far, and good luck in the war!
Ed
(a scene in the palace of Koenig Maurice of Stagonia)
The servants whisper that the rumors are true. His Majesty is indeed playing with some strange toys.
He had glass blowers make a bunch of glass "soldier" figures, then had them painted in Tipplebruder colors.
He lined them up at one end of the great table and he crouches at the other end and using a spoon as a catapult he launches lead shot toward the figures . . . and chortles every time one of the glass figures is smashed.
Surely the man has lost his wits . . . surely.
Thanks, Ed.!
Would you care to tell more about your experiences? I'm sure we'd all be interested; I know I would.
David.
Will no-one rid us of this turbulent King? [A palace revolution would be good or just a teensy-weensy assassination... One good assassin rather than three would be fine. :-)]
Allegedly written on a wall in Tippelbruder outside the Hawk and Spittoon public house.
Pfft! Vile Stagonians. Get rid of Maurice and you probably get his crazy second cousin on his father's side, once removed.
As to campaign medals, first Gulf War and Somalia (as a C-130 navigator, not on the ground). I sat in the headquarters for all of the current unpleasantness until I retired last year.
Hi Ed,
Sorry to be so long replying; I've been rather busy the past 36 hours.
Well, once Maurice is removed we can start removing all the nasty Stagonian monarchs as they pop up - nothing like a hefty bit of regime change... ;-)
Have you thought of writing up your experiences in the military? I imagine you must have seen a lot worth recording. Presumably some is covered by "state secrecy" clauses but that wouldn't cover the most interesting aspects of the experience. (It's the historian in me, I'm afraid - I always feel people should write it down!)
David.
David,
I know that I wish my father had written HIS experiences in WWII down. It isn't that he was especially heroic or anything, he never even fired a shot in anger.
He was in the Signal Corps and stationed in Central America. He had lots of wonderful stories of his "adventures".
Mainly they involved dealing with nature. Building telegraph lines, searching for downed planes, visiting places like the Galopogas Islands, etc.
He was involved in catching a "spy" . . . an old German national who was reporting via wireless on shipping through the Panama Canal. When they triangulated his location and found him, the fellow simply surrendered. He was quite surprised that it had taken as long as it had for them to find him.
He also had the privilege of blowing up one of the Canal's locks. A new general didn't think that the security was very good . . . and Dad's unit got the job of testing it. They set dummy charges and when the general and colonel in charge of security were touring the lock, they set off the charges. The colonel was on a plane (having been relieved) that afternoon.
Dad said that they soldiers who had been responsible for guard duty had been doing it for so long (I seem to recall him saying 18 months) that they just saw what they expected to see. Some of Dad's unit even wore "campaign buttons" as their "security badges".
We still have the skin of a boa constrictor that dropped on him. One of the things he said was that, while you couldn't unwind them from the head back, doing so from the tail forward wasn't difficult.
And there were wonderful stories of some of the people he served with. He got to see a lot of things, starting as a private and ending up as a captain, he saw things from both the enlisted and commissioned viewpoints.
Lots of great stories.
-- Jeff
Hi Jeff,
Interesting! At least you've now written it down, to some degree!
I'm in a similar position. My father was a gunner in the Merchant Navy, right through the war, saw several combat theatres (The Atlantic, The Med. and Arctic Convoys (including possibly the notorious convoy PQ17)) and was torpedoed 3 times. I heard a few very short anecdotes from him; for instance, he mentioned the grim job of dragging body parts out of the sea off Salerno, putting a body, head, 2 legs and arms in a weighted bag and dropping them back in the sea. He also mentioned disliking ball ammunition and never using it in the ammunition belts he put together for his guns. Just occasional small insights, really, but he rarely talked about it and didn't write anything down as far as I know. After his death my sister snaffled his diaries and I've not seen them so I'd like to have a look through some day. Unfortunately he was a very difficult man to get on with. Relatives have suggested that it was his war experiences that soured him. They remember him coming home drunk after being torpedoed, when he was adamant he would not be going back. Of course he did. He was only 17 when the war started and I can hardly begin to imagine what it must have been like at that young age to go through what he did.
All the best,
David.
My Father's brother had an interesting army career -- in a perverse sort of way.
I only heard him talk about it once. He was in the National Guard before the war (WWII) with an artillery unit. He talked about how they trained to use differing charges and angles to deliver three rounds from the same tube on a "time on target" technique. He loved it . . . and in the whole time he was in combat, his unit never used it.
I mentioned that my Father started the war as a private and ended it as a captain . . . well my uncle (his brother) was a 1st Lt. at the start of the war . . . but he was a "reserve officer" assigned to a "regular army" artillery command, whose policy was not to promote non-regular officers -- so he ended the war as a 1st Lt. as well . . . even though he spent was in Europe from Normandy to war's end.
-- Jeff
I hope that Linienblatt serves with honor and returns safely to his craft as soon as the requirements of his honor permit.
Thank you, Ike. We await the outcome of the battle with some concern! Not long to wait now, probably.
David.
P.S. I had a look at your website - very interesting to read about your wedding in Thailand in the 1960s. I gather from your commentary on that that you were on leave from combat in Vietnam - is that so? That was no doubt an altogether nastier reality than even a real David Linienblatt would face at Tippelbruder...
Jeff, David,
A quick Ed-ography: I graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1986 and flew in C-130 transports and C-5 Special Operations (which, no, I can't tell you what we did), and several wing and HQ jobs. I retired in 2006 as a major.
David, I have written one small piece about my experiences. It was given an award for writing from the Air Force Squadron Officers School. It is only 2 pages or so long, and I will email it shortly.
Most of the rest of my "war stories" are more humorous than otherwise. I must admit, though, that being in Kuwait City an hour or so after it was liberated, with all of the oil fires raging around us, was a scene I will never forget.
Cheers,
Ed
Ed
David: Yes, "ikeland" is my oldest blog - thought I was a "writer" when I started it. But the wedding and photos are true story stuff. "Thailand in the Sixties" is a fictionalized account - the names are changed to protect the guilty - of my first R&R from Vietnam to Bangkok in '66. My wedding was three years later, when I was stationed in Thailand. Served in Vietnam from '65 to '69, combat engineers. No biggie.
P.S. Still married to the lady as it happens. *smile*
Thanks, for the info., Ed. I'll email again shortly in reply to your latest.
All the best,
David.
Hi Ike,
Thanks for the information.
Glad to hear you are still married to the same lady! :-)
Have you written more about your Vietnam experiences?
All the best,
David.
David: No, I haven't for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my lack of talent at the business of writing.
Let's see how the battle falls out and hope for the best for Tippelbruder and its inhabitants, including our intrepid uniform designer.
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