First off, no, we didn't get hit by the tornadoes that whipped through Leavenworth County yesterday, thanks for asking... (Terry is excused from the snark, she *called* to check). The same storm killed a man from Lawrence when he was struck by lightning while riding his motorcycle. That would appear to be the Lord calling you home, and for his sake, may that be the case.
SWWBO and I heard the sirens, twice yesterday - but only because we were outside and the storm that produced the tornadoes was south of us. If the sirens had been meant for us... well, our first hint would have been the freight train roaring by where none should be.
Yes, I know, weather radios. I do miss in-town cable... not just for the high-speed internet access, but because even if your TV was off, the emergency messages will come through. Out here, even the weather radio is weak, for some reason.
What? Tornadoes in Kansas don't catch your eye? Heh. Insular bassids, the lot of you.
Today the weather is crappy enough to periodically kill the satellite links meaning no 'net, no TV, and no working outside, so I amused myself sitting on the deck in a torrential downpour (hey, it's a covered deck) plinking at the redundant electrical insulators from the few remaining fence posts left from the Castle's time as a dairy farm. We've recycled most of those posts into different fencing or other purposes.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah - tidying things up.
First up - the Whatziss. I lightened up that picture of the Armory of the Papal Guard.
Blake was correct, on both counts. The upper guns are the Hispano-Suiza MP43/44's and the lower rack is full of MKPSs. Might be the greatest single conglomeration of those weapons in the world, unless the Swiss still have them in storage, which is certainly possible. Those are two-handed swords on the right, with one being flame-bladed. The shapes on the shelf running below the ceiling was discussed by Cricket and Bill - once I lightened up the picture, I'd say they're helmets, not forms for the helmets to sit on. In fact, looking at the helmets at the far end, and the swords, etc, I would say the Swiss Guard hasn't thrown much away over the centuries. The rifles high up on the circular rack look like Rolling Blocks, and what appears to be Mausers (but that's just guessing with this resolution) on the bottom.
Okay, in the "photo-phun" post, I had a pic up of a soldier in Korea during the fighting in 1951, and asked you what you thought the story might be, since there's clearly a story in the picture. Well, there's two pictures, and this one tells the story rather better. I just wondered how an eclectic bunch such as us would see the first pic, before I showed you the one that tells the story.
Last, but not least. Now that Castle Argghhh! is about the only english-language resource on the web for the italian Perrino M1910 machinegun, it's time to put another picture of the gun on the web - this one showing the left side of the gun, with the ammo strip sticking out. H/t Boquisucio for finding it.
SWWBO and I heard the sirens, twice yesterday - but only because we were outside and the storm that produced the tornadoes was south of us. If the sirens had been meant for us... well, our first hint would have been the freight train roaring by where none should be.
Yes, I know, weather radios. I do miss in-town cable... not just for the high-speed internet access, but because even if your TV was off, the emergency messages will come through. Out here, even the weather radio is weak, for some reason.
What? Tornadoes in Kansas don't catch your eye? Heh. Insular bassids, the lot of you.
Today the weather is crappy enough to periodically kill the satellite links meaning no 'net, no TV, and no working outside, so I amused myself sitting on the deck in a torrential downpour (hey, it's a covered deck) plinking at the redundant electrical insulators from the few remaining fence posts left from the Castle's time as a dairy farm. We've recycled most of those posts into different fencing or other purposes.
Now, where was I? Oh, yeah - tidying things up.
First up - the Whatziss. I lightened up that picture of the Armory of the Papal Guard.
Blake was correct, on both counts. The upper guns are the Hispano-Suiza MP43/44's and the lower rack is full of MKPSs. Might be the greatest single conglomeration of those weapons in the world, unless the Swiss still have them in storage, which is certainly possible. Those are two-handed swords on the right, with one being flame-bladed. The shapes on the shelf running below the ceiling was discussed by Cricket and Bill - once I lightened up the picture, I'd say they're helmets, not forms for the helmets to sit on. In fact, looking at the helmets at the far end, and the swords, etc, I would say the Swiss Guard hasn't thrown much away over the centuries. The rifles high up on the circular rack look like Rolling Blocks, and what appears to be Mausers (but that's just guessing with this resolution) on the bottom.
Okay, in the "photo-phun" post, I had a pic up of a soldier in Korea during the fighting in 1951, and asked you what you thought the story might be, since there's clearly a story in the picture. Well, there's two pictures, and this one tells the story rather better. I just wondered how an eclectic bunch such as us would see the first pic, before I showed you the one that tells the story.
Last, but not least. Now that Castle Argghhh! is about the only english-language resource on the web for the italian Perrino M1910 machinegun, it's time to put another picture of the gun on the web - this one showing the left side of the gun, with the ammo strip sticking out. H/t Boquisucio for finding it.
The shapes on the shelves *could* be 16th Century morions (they're the right color), but that spike is a poser -- unless it held bundled ostrich plumes in place. The helmets at the far end are ringers for some I saw in the Ducal Palace armory in Venice (and no, they don't let you take pix inside).
We had it set to "all counties" and "alert enable" and it was hooting every 20 minutes yesterday.
Watches, warnings, marine advisories (we're not that far from Lake Michigan) ... you name it.
Our area is served by KIG63 on 162.550 at 1000 watts out of Grand Rapids MI.
It looks like you are served by KID77 on 162.550 at 1000 watts out of Kansas City MO.
NOAA KS Station listing http://www.weather.gov/nwr/CntyCov/nwrKS.htm
It's a question I had to deal with very young, and my Marine buddy still disagrees with my answer. See, he was cheating on his gf, a lot. After about 6 months I stopped covering for him, and when asked by the gf I gave the truth. Loyalty does't mean covering for a buddy doing dispicable things. IT never has, and it shouldn't. I didn't go run to her to cough up, but when asked, yeah, I came clean.
Same here. Are we talking about criminal acts? Some of them are. What's wrong with letting that be known? Come on, really, how is that a direct attack on the honor of the Grunt? I don't get it.
Seems to me some are arguing that loyalty to the military means going back to the WW2 set-up where we gave medals to US submariners for gunning people in the water but sent IJN sailors to war crimes trials for same. I don't, and won't, play that way.
Honestly, I suspect this is just a proxy for hatin' The One(gorge rises in throat).
Looks to me that a bullet went through that magazine.
And...the Marines had to be forced to take prisoners on Iwo, and we didn't take prisoners on D-Day, and we fire bombed Tokyo and Dresden and gave blankets with small pox to the idians. And we must be very terrible people who should be neutered and walled off from the test of the world who are all upstanding individuals of great merit and don't mean us any harm.
Sigh. All hail the drama queen arguments, huh? Oh, if we admit we did wrong we have to resort to martydom and seek to hide away. Bollucks. Totally.
Yeah, we firebombed Dresden. A classic example of overkill and a violation of the rule of proportionality. There were military targets there. Dresden itself was a righteous target. Vaporising all the civilians there, on the other hand, was not. Mixed verdict.
Hell, the mastermind of the Tokyo firebombing said he should've been up on charges. VD Hanson has the quotes in the forward to Soul of Battle. Un-mixed verdict. LeMay himself knew he belonged up on charges for it. Victors justice sucks.
My point is let's be honest with ourselves. Did we do bad things? Yes. Does that make us hopeless? OMG, that's such a 2nd grade argument, and it wasn't very good back then either. If it's against the rules, take our knocks for it and get on with it.
If it's illegal lets own up on it. Are there idjits who'll use this as ammo for anti-mil screeds? Sure. But their reach is pretty limited, and blogs, plus the honest admissions of error that humanize, limit that. What's worse are the arguments of 'well, if we admit that we lose a,b,c...' type stuff.
Marines at Iwo had a mitigating factor. They enemy didn't surrender and was often not hors de combat. Righteous kills.
D-Day? Yeah, we took prisoners. What're you talking about? Was it inconsisten in how prisoners were taken? Yeah. Some of that was righteous, and some was not.
But what's wrong with admiting mistakes were made? A lot of this is based on the honor of the Services. Fine, but what's honorable about lying and hiding the truth?
I don't think the Swiss Guard's collection of subguns violates the weapons ordinances in Vatican City.
Was refering to the Obie bruhaha, Unk.
The Japanese performance (and the rational Marine response to it) is the poster child for the Geneva Conventions - i.e., providing an agreed-upon framework for ending hostilities, whether wholesale or retail, in order to contain the mayhem.
The problem with how it's evolved in usage is that signatories are expected to behave IAW the Accords even when fighting someone who does not, when in fact someone who refuses to follow the Accords is allowed to be treated outside the scope of the Accords, which argument the Bush Adminstration was making wrt to "unlawful combatants."
And the basis for the 1949 update. Just in time for the Norks and ChiComs to be able to violate the new, improved one.
Ooops -- *neither* one ratified it until '56. Silly me -- so Commie massacres of POWs was no violation, then, right?
I agree. The rules are there to keep us away from what Clauswitz termed 'Total War'. That's not a nice place to go, since it comes to genocide.
Unk, see, that's the kind of crap that chaps my hide. A) If we could've gotten our hands on the bastards who did the KOrean War massacres, without starting another war to get them, they'd have been hung 50 years ago(since even The Hague folks still believed in hanging then). We couldn't so they weren't. B) What does their having crossed the line have to do with our doing it? Just as what you do, illegal or legal actions, does not create a legal precedent for me to do the same so too are our actions mutually exclusive from Commie attrocity. I mean, really, do I hae to turn into your mom and ask if everyone else jumped off a bridge you would too?
Armorer, I agree. I usually draw out a flow chart for people when I argue it in person, showing that terrorists and sometimes NSA(non-state actors) fall outside the purview of both the group of stuff refered to as the Law of Land Warfare(GC included) and civilian law.
Yet, simulated executions is beyond the pale, terrorist or not. You wanna slap the guy? Fine. You wanna do some play acting? Fine. You wanna lie to him(like telling him that you're putting out the rumor that he talked, knowing that it's a death sentence for his family)? Fine. They exist outside the rules and stuff you couldn't do to Sov soldiers you can do to terrorists is a legal bit of reasoning I can follow and agree with. But saying that because others don't honor them is not an excuse for us to allow ourselves to devolved into wolves from sheepdogs.
It does not mean fighting with one hand tied behind you back.
Not to mention that it would suck to lose everything you've gathered.