Affentitten

Full scale would of course leave him with some major issues regarding garage clearance! But the 3/4 thing obviously involves some compromises in crew accommodation. Tank driving positions are cramped enough at full scale, so the interior must not be authentic for him to drive buttoned down.

Would you call a guy in full plate on a horse a tank?

Dogs (ie. canis familiaris) may have different traits between breeds, but they are still the same species.

Guy with baby = chick magnet

Congratulations. There's nothing like a cuddle from a daughter.

And will it matter? Every Trekkie in the known universe will still buy it and be chattering in Klingon over their headset.

Meh. Most of the farmers in the European Union have been doing that for decades. Or the opposite: producing heaps of something that nobody wants and then getting it bought off you for a guaranteed price.

Actually a concern I had at one point was the physio bills. The backpack was very heavy and some of the kids were being a bit too exuberant in the way they were trying to throw it on and swing around. I had fears for ruptured disks!

Well here is the AAR: Went pretty well, but the attention span of the kids was limited to say the least! There was a quick talk done by another of the dads that he probably let go a bit too long. Getting 8 year olds to comprehend “In Flander’s Fields” is tough. I chimed in with a few things. I think the key take out for many at that point was that peeing on a scarf and putting it over your face could help against chlorine gas. We then did a simulation of what would happen to a group of 1914’ers who had joined up from the same school district. What was fantastic was that someone earlier had asked if joining the army for WW1 was compulsory. I said no, not in Australia, but lots of people joined anyway. But then when we did the demo I called for volunteers for my ‘army’. About half the kids sprang up and came straight away. Another quarter saw that so many others were going and slunk over. The remaining quarter I admonished and said things like “You’ll get a free trip to France. You might get a medal.” A few drifted over. Then the last couple of hold outs I said “Chicken, hey?” And up they sprang. Perfect WW1 enlistment!! I then killed them, wounded them, blinded them etc. Only 4 from the cub pack made it home unscathed. That really sunk in for a lot of them. Then we did the exercise carrying the heavy pack and rifle and they had a lot of fun with that. I’d give the evening an 8/10.

Written by a Kiwi! Keeping it real as, brew.

Hey! What about we form a Soviet? Soviet of Pacific Austra-Zealand?

The North Koreans wouldn't get past the first bakery on the beach front. We'd just roll back and then return a week later to find all these little guys with exploded bellies and badly made boots.

Fine by me. The state cricket might even get more than a dozen people watching a game then.

Come on, you know it makes sense. Stop this joke of nominal sovereignty and become a proper state of Australia. We'll still let you have your own rugby team. But you can ditch the Black Caps if you want. Join Oz, New Zealand - it's for the best

Didn't you guys lose the right to co-host the 2003 RWC over advertising?

The other tragedy of the whole thing was how Churchill got stuck carrying the can for it all, despite the prevarication of Jackie Fisher and Kitchener. I think the obsession with capital ships was part of the issue. They had become such symbols of prestige. Perhaps de Robeck wouldn't have been as rattled by the loss of smaller ships. It's all easy in hindsight, but the obvious conclusion is that faint-heartedness lost one of the truly great opportunities of the war. The what-ifs from this one are exponential considering that Russia may not have been in the same social situation in 1917 had this "3rd front" been successfully opeend against Austria-Hungary.

They didn’t get spanked. The Brits had a couple of battleships damaged and (some hours afterwards) another old battleship hit a mine and sunk. The French lost the Bouvet quite quickly and de Robeck lost his nerve. The tragedy was that they had already won. The Turkish forts were knocked out, no more mines were available and the Turkish torpedoes used up. The field pieces left to the Turks had almost no ammo and couldn’t penetrate the ship armour. Royal Marine demolition parties were moving about onshore with impunity to destroy strong points. The only think protecting Constantinople were a few muzzle loading bronze cannon that faced the wrong way. Occupying Constantinople was not a military intention. It was a political one. The Turkish capital was awash with civil unrest and the Sultan pretty much had his bags packed. The Young Turks were pushing hard to depose him. The thought was that if Constantinople could be taken, revolution would ensue and Turkey would at the very least become neutral or a client state. It was only after a few more weeks of stuffing around and the land invasion of Gallipoli that Turkish resolve stiffened through nationalism. It’s interesting to me how far the Royal Navy had come since the days of Nelson. With no major surface engagements since the Napoleonic times, the RN had developed an almost fetishistic wariness of losing vessels. In Nelson’s time, captains who lost their ships faced a routine court martial. This was to make sure that their ship had not been lost through negligence. Losses in battle and through following orders were quite acceptable and the officers were exonerated. But over the next hundred years this developed into an obsession that no ship must ever be lost under any circumstances and any captain who did so was guilty of the most heinous crime. “Going down with the ship” was pretty much the equivalent of the revolver at the temple as a way of avoiding disgrace. De Robeck, when the British minesweepers started coming under fire, began to get jumpy. The loss of the Bouvet and the damaging of the two British battleships freaked him out at a time when he was already bringing his second line up to cruise through the Straits and on to victory. He panicked about losing more ships and even remarked that this would be the end of his career. He then signalled a general withdrawal and over the following weeks kept revising upwards his estimates of what it would take him to force the Straits. The Admiralty concurred with their man on the spot and refused to sanction the operation unless the Army committed land forces....and there we have it. The same chariness of loss can be seen at Jutland. In a way, the British Army and the RN had opposite experiences in WW1 and resolved different lessons about what constituted acceptable losses that were then applied in WW2.

Better yet, we could go up the local kebab shop and invade it. First one to get to the top of the counter and knock off a few Ottomans wins. Meanwhile the Sea Scouts could float around ineffectively worried that might lose a kayak forcing the Dardanelles.

Well I have also demonstrated to my daughter to one of the creative punishments we used to get in the school cadets. Arms out straight in front of you, palms down. Lee Enfield laying across the back of your hands. See you in 15 minutes. If I see your arms drop, you stupid boy, you'll be scrubbing the floor of the Q Store with a toothbrush!

Oh OK, we call them Gumnuts (or Gumnut Guides, technically). Pippins is a much cuter name. Like little apples. That age group for pre-Cubs is called Joeys here.

What's Pippins, Precious?

Actually what I am going to do is kill them. Not literally of course. But I'm going to divide them up into groups representing the 1914 volunteers. A few will be fine and come home. Others will be lying on the floor dead, others sitting down wounded. Some blind, some mad etc. Maybe 1 of them out of the group will get a medal. I think that will be more effective with young kids than just sprouting figures that are too big for them to comprehend.

Well it could be worse. I could have the whole thing directed by a 17 year old boy from the private school up the road.

Ha ha. Just tested it out on the daughter with about 13 kilos in the pack, which would still only be <50% of her body weight. Haven't added the 2x4 'rifle' yet. Went through the whole comedy routine. "Can you grab that pack and bring it over here, please?" "No, pick it up. PICK IT UP." etc etc

But you live in NZ: last bastion of chauvinism! The Scout movement here is co-ed throughout. Girl Guides still exists as a female only institution, but it's dwindling in membership. My daughter's Cub pack would be about 33% female. I guess that if you wanted to fight the court case, you could join Guides as a boy. But I doubt many 10 year old males would be willing to act as the legal guinea pig. Good idea re the weight. If I stick them with about 15 kilos in a pack and make them run round the hall for a minute that will be fun. Shame I can't make them do it in knee deep mud. For the craft section they are making a periscope.