Aguirre

My good man, I think that I shall let you in on a secret. Tasmania, Australia and New Zealand are all one country. The inhabitants of the various provinces may insult each other, but in reality the only difference between us is that New Zealanders, Victorians and Western Australians shag sheep and that the rest of us do not. Oh, and... Salt... Lake... City? No, I'll leave it. That would be like inviting a couple of doorknocking godbotherers in for cup of tea, drugging their tea and then hacking their limp bodies apart with a machete and storing them in the freezer. Too easy. Not that I've ever done it.

Thanks for the excellent responses. The information has put things in perspective a bit, which is mostly what I wanted, and I imagine will make further research a fair bit easier.

If you've got access to a good library, yup. </font>

Okay, here's one for the Übergroggen . I remember reading a while ago on this forum that, during the war, formations tended to have more men in supporting roles than they did on the front line, with various ratios given for different combatants/formations/periods. A few questions have been bothering me about this, so I thought I would ask them. My interest is primarily in the Wehrmacht and RKKA: 1: Firstly, is there actually any clear-cut or agreed upon definition of what a 'font-line soldier' is? Is this simply anyone designated as an 'Infantryman' in TO&E? 2: Am I indeed correct in assuming that the supporting personnel referred to were actually organic to a division? If so, what roles did they take, and to which units did they belong? 3: What sort of higher level support units were there, and how standardised was their distribution? What sort of support would an infantry corps expect? 4: Is there any way I can find more information on this topic without actually spending money? I am aware that these questions might be tricky (or simply tedious) to answer, so any and all responses will be greatly appreciated. Edited to prove that I can count. [ May 16, 2005, 07:18 AM: Message edited by: Aguirre ]

Ahh, the sound of mewling pathetick-ness. The never ending susuration of sibilantic speech, bought to fever pitch by inbreeding. Priceless. Noba. </font>

Ah, dear. There sometimes comes a time, to horribly and unjustly mangle the words of Douglas Adams, when, usually on a Sunday afternoon, or, in this case, Sunday evening, you (still with me?) experience a certain restlessness(esss); the Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. A time when you realise that you will never finish the article on Taiwan that you are reading in NLR, nor ever use the revolutionary new, ah, revolutionary stuff it describes. A time when you realise that you most likely have as much unread email as you did three minutes ago when you last checked, and that your body does not in fact require a minimum weekly garlic intake that will cause you to become seriously ill if you do not eat more noodles this instant. A very dark time. A time, to put it simply, when the attraction of the Peng Challenge Thread looms ever larger in your mind, rather like the dubious charms of a friend of a friend who has been eyeing you all evening as you become increasingly inebriated and uncertain as to what you should do. And so here I am. Returned, confused, unlikely to have been missed or even remembered and making it all up as I go along. If there were another SSN around somewhere for me to vent my bile at I would do so, but new blood seems to be in short supply at present. Instead I shall leave you all with a snippet of verse: When all the shores of knowledge fade Beyond the realms of night and day, When the quick stir of thought is stayed And, as a dream of yesterday, The bonds of striving fall away: There dawns sometimes a point of fire Burning the utter dark, that may Fulfil our desperate desire. -Anonymous, 'A Ballade of the Centre'

Do recruits get to skip to the end of the rainbow/skweegee their third eyes with Certain Sacred Substances of the Church? To they get to play with kewl swords? Do they get to combine these things? Cos, like, if so, I'd sign up in a jiffy. Mind you, willfull hedonism and being adressed as 'Brother Aguirre, Knight of the Order &c.' would be pretty good too. Where do I sign? I'll send Tasmanian beer!

Oh, good point. That could be fun if using colored smoke on targets acted as a sort of temporary TRP. </font>

If I may chime in here, I'm not sure how feasible it would have been to have attempted a breakout. I remember seeing a translation of a German document listing the supposed combat stengths of various formations within the Sixth Army in late 1942. Unfortunately, I can't remember any details about the source or the exact date (sometime in November, I think), but the thing that impressed itself upon me was that even at this stage units were in poor shape. Only one or two divisions were rated as 'fit for offensive duty', whatever that means, and fuel and ammunition were in short supply (though I suppose this was usually a complaint). Still, moving undernourished, frostbitten units on foot through deep snow and often harsh weather in extreme cold wouldn't have been much fun. Attacking an entrenched enemy combined arms force in such conditions, and with minimal armour (if the there were any remaining tanks that could be moved that far) and artillery support would have been unlikely to achieve much, I think.

Always either passed out or on fire? I don't quite understand.

Don't drink cheap schnapps. Really. Just don't.

My post will not be edited for the one from Belgium who misspelled my misspelling. Why? Because the word is French . It is a silly language, and it deserves to be misspelled. Come to think of it, it ought to be 'misspelt'. If the Germans had won the war, at least we wouldn't have had to put up with this sort of thing. Perhaps Churchill should have considered this before making such a fuss over Poland. In conclusion: Non-phonetic spelling is silly. Except for Orange , which the Germans keep and would have kept. Because it's cool. Edited to remove a typo. Hmph.

I am impervious to such silly insults. My misquote was a de facto snipping, don't be disingenuous. Anyway, I like being pretentious and inaccurate. And I stopped wearing the hat years ago.

Sorry to interrupt your little mise en scen, but do you really think that this sort of puerile nonsense is amusing? I have seen the original Thread. It was a revelation. Wit. Flair. Discussion about the actual game. Taunts, gloating, a bitter compulsion to make one's enemy feel the humiliation of defeat. The joy of pixelated carnage. I found fond descriptions of fields full of burning wreckage and destroyed pixeltruppen. But also, more importantly, I found a wonderful, naive novelty. There was certainly toilet humour, but it all meant so much more. The original denizens were like primates dancing around the primeval fire, amazed at their own newfound powers of creation and destruction. Certainly, they ate each other's lice and touched yourselves in a manner that is not acceptable when in company; but I believe that it is precisely because the thread was beyond the pale that it was able to achieve so much, to move beyond the merely mundane into an ascended state of poor taste and self importance. And yet, here you are, Boo Radley (if 'Boo' is indeed a name), the triumphs of the past scattered behind you like the bodies of so many mutilated toy überfritzes. Nothing has really changed, but this is precisely the problem. You can contiue to make light of urine (heaven knows, I do), but the utopian impulse has past you by; you are still a simple ape, condemned to scratch yourself in an arena of spectacle and definition and wonder why you can no longer smell the choking black smoke of progress. From where I am standing, I can piss on you from a considerable height with ease. Were I entitled, I would challenge you and beat some sense into you in the field, but alas, your station makes you immune fom such intereference. You will continue to blithely ignore my falling urine as I shall attempt to ignore yours, sheltered as you are by walls of privelege that the founders never intended.

You are an Iguana. You are a repellant, cold blooded monster. You smell strange. You have a comical name. I'm sure you eat babies (I know I do). Now, take a deep breath and move on.