Affentitten

Man wouldn't that be a great job to have in the Bulgarian army? Sitting in an immobilised 30 year old tank hull waiting to get one shot off before you were steamrolled by NATO.

This thread is useless without pictures.

From SO's link:

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a criticism of the families involved, but more of the wider emotional ‘movement’ for MIAs. (Since the Michael Jackson death I have been pondering a lot about this need for people to get involved in expressions of mass grief and emotion....like they get some sort of kudos form participating in it.) The example you gave of 18th C sailors I think is different and more understandable. It did happen and shipwrecks were more survivable than a supersonic aircraft crash. Even the Vietnam era is comprehensible, since there were POWs and after all, America did not have access to Vietnam compared to the access it has had to Iraq in the last 6 years. It would be interesting to know though what % of KIA & MIA initial findings were later shown to be wrong. ie. If the guy’s wingman sees him hit the ground with no ejection, but the body is not recoverable does he then go down as MIA or presumed KIA? And does this get re-opened later? I recall an episode in Chickenhawk where the author’s chopper is forced to land and investigate the still burning wreck of a US aircraft in order to verify no survivors. But the bodies couldnlt be recovered because of enemy action. So is this quick visual acceptable to confirm KIA? And what does the family get told? (“Mrs Johnson, I saw the plane hit the ground and he didn’t get out. I know it says MIA, but don’t get your hopes up.”) Perhaps this Speicher focus is also a product of the relative rarity of US MIAs these days? Less examples for more people to obsess over.

"Closure" seems to be the word of the decade. I wonder if families really need as much closure as the media seems to think they do, or whether it's just one of those lip service sayings. At the other end of the closure scale: The excavation and identification of some Australian unknown WW1 soldiers buried after Fromelles has been getting a lot of press here. And I saw one of the descendants of one of the soldiers being quoted saying "At least now we'll have some closure." Like after 90+ years they didn't have it before? Sure, it's great that now Great Uncle Dave has a known resting place, but were the third or fourth generation of his relatives really restless about the fact that he was still unrecovered?

That's what I mean. It's almost like they got lobbied to re-visit it by MIA fanboys. His wife obviously moved on, but there seemed to be this need not to close the case. A product of the Vietnam experience?

Oh my God. That's over £11800498 4s 3d!

I'm interested in precisely why so much hope was held out for so long with this one? I know there has to be positive ID of the remains, but given that Iraq has been occupied for 6 years now, why was there this conspiracy theory bubbling along that he was still alive? Even on the Wikipedia talk page about this poor guy there are still people refusing to believe he's dead. Why is there often such a need to create these sort of secret POW mysteries?

Could the phone be tapped?

So I say that medieval warfare was different because of its small size and more localised (ie. decentralised) context and you say......the same thing?

A few months ago I was waiting to turn onto the mian road near my place and a guy came past texting. He was riding a motorcycle.

I guess he just didn't stick out enough to be noticed.

And of course always worth checking that Junk email folder to see if the email has been dumped there without you realising it.

The indentures for Henry V's campaigns also inlcluded the vital rules for dividing up the spoils and ransoms. The king generally got 1/3 of each retinue leader's prizes and 1/3 of each leader's men's prizes. Except in the case where royalty was captured and these had to be handed over entirely to Henry. And I should correct myself that not every man had an indenture. It was only the retinue leaders, but within their documentation would be the muster roles of the troops they had contracted to provide.

SO, I don’t consider Medievals incompetent, though many were pretty slipshod. Partially this reflects the relative lack of professionalism, literacy and bureaucracy compared to say the Romans, not to mention the fairly small size of the more localized medieval campaigns. The Romans thought nothing of sending thousands of well equipped men from one end of the content to another when they needed to. Medieval European kings often had trouble organizing half as many men to limp across the English channel for one summer. If the Romans had been running the Crusades…. Other kings may have had a system. But Henry V was much more rigid about it because he was keener on managing the expenses of his foreign wars, especially given the large sums he was ‘in hock’ to his wealthy nobility and parliament. His father had also neglected this sort of treasury management and not left Henry V much of a legacy. Previous monarchs often left this admin up to their retainers and/or were not so picky about creating a paper trail down to the level of individual soldiers. This of course created inaccuracy and the medieval equivalent of defence contracting fraud, with nobles claiming expenses for non-existent men-at-arms or needing to be supplied with weapons that they should have had etc. One of the cool things about Henry V’s military admin was the use of ‘indentures’ for troops. The contract was written out twice on one sheet of parchment and signed. The sheet was then cut in two by the soldier in a zig zag pattern. He then kept one half of the contract and the state kept the other half, along with all his other records. (In the days prior to filing cabinets and ring binders, a simple felt bag was used for each man.) When the soldier finished the campaign and wanted to be paid he had to produce his half of the contract. This was then matched up to the ‘indents’ on the state’s copy as proof.

This sort of record keeping is what made Henry V such a great king. He wasn't just a good field commander, he was an expert administrator, fund raiser, financier and so on.

All do-able with even a basic M-79 or HK-69. When it's a crowd and you want to gas them, you don't exactly need a sniper rifle.

Well this Lords test is certainly a bit of a turn up for the books! Can we reverse the script from Cardiff? I doubt it. But it's going to go closer than anyone thought. When I woke up this morning I expected to find that Australia had already been defeated.

I think the claims on that Wiki page as to be "the first" are wrong. I vividly recally in about maybe 2001 covering a robot that fed on slugs. It was designed to trundle up and down the rows on vegetable farms. It sensed slugs with IR and used an arm to scoop them into a tank on its back, where they were converted into biomass fuel. ....and a quick google proves there is indeed nothing new under the sun! slug eating robot

But you guys don't talk up your cricket team. If NZ loses a cricket test, nobody has staked anything on them winning. Whereas England has spent years polishing this turd.

I think the point is "the media". Even Ponting said that the blatant time wasting was not the reason we didn't win. Saving a few minutes made no difference once the need for Australia to bat again cropped up. And of course the irony of Ricky Ponting moaning about things not being in the spirit of the game is not lost on many of us. But you've got to admit, nobody celebrates a draw like England fans.

Or as Peter Roebuck put it: "When he (Flintoff) took Phil Hughes's wicket on the opening day, he stood for an eternity with arms upraised. Next morning the picture appeared in most papers. It was the only Australian wicket to fall all day."

I think both teams have cause to say that this was the one that got away. The pitch turned into a bit of a bowlers' graveyard, that's for sure. Glad I didn't stay up to watch the last couple of sessions!

I would't say that. I think the side we sent to SA this year was worse in terms of skill and experience. It has certainly surpised me though how long it has taken to get over the McGrath/Warne/Langer team. We should have been on our feet by now with a consistent team.

Well no surprise that the Welsh have taken over Dr Who and invented Torchwood. What further proof of behind the scenes alien contact do you need? Actually I was surprised that there even was a cricket pitch in Cardiff. It's certainly not holding many surprises for the batsmen at this stage though.