Castles Still Have Their Uses...

...and not just as storage facilities for a certain Armorer's chump change superb coin collection (see yesterday's H&I comment thread -- skip past the nose-whacking parts).

From this morning's below-the-fold:

Troops foil attack on Hangu fort

PESHAWAR (AFP): - Pro-Taliban militants attacked a paramilitary camp in northwestern Pakistan overnight in a clash that wounded a dozen soldiers, officials said Thursday.

One militant was killed in the hour-long shootout following the raid on the fort by more than a dozen heavily-armed men...[who] attacked with rockets, hand grenades, and Kalashnikov rifles, but were beaten off.

It gets more interesting.

[Hangu police chief Ghulam Mohammad] said the body of a militant killed in the fighting was lying in the fort. Others fled in the darkness...the attackers are thought to have come from the nearby tribal region of North Waziristan where the army is hunting pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda militants who fled Afghanistan...

The fort at Hangu is a two-story Brit edifice -- if you read any of Kipling's ghost stories from the Raj, you can probably visualize it. Mud brick, loopholes, parapet, the whole nine yards. *No* moat, *no* massive wooden main gate, night assault with modern weapons into -- for all intents -- a barracks with a sentry box and a couple of roving fireguards. At least one attacker, who may (or may not) have been wearing a boom-belt, penetrated and was promptly dispatched.

Attacking a castle, even when most of the inhabitants are asleep, is not a good idea.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Thanks for all the offers of CARE packages (both here and via e-gram), but I dragged all the need-to-haves over with me, and, given the Byzantine routing of our mail (more on that later), we'll be out of here before anything from stateside arrives at Shangri-La.

One need-to-have suite I was *specifically* told -- in writing -- to bring was dress-me-ups so that I wouldn't embarrass the United States of America at Ambassadorial functions.

Kids, *that* is funnier than you could ever possibly imagine.

Those Who Know, Know.