Re: [MV] Normandy Trivia

From: Ryan M Gill (rmgill@mindspring.com)
Date: Mon Jan 12 2004 - 12:18:27 PST


At 8:57 PM +0100 1/12/04, Nigel Hay wrote:
>Vice President Blair has said we mustn't call them Crescent Wrenches any
>more as it may upset Muslim sensitivities.

Is Rudyard Kipling now verboten?

I've been teasing my friends over in Iraq or just returned about
Sepoys and other Kipling-esq things to see if they've picked up on
it. One fellow said the most Iraqi he'd learned (learnt) was "get out
of my checkpoint Abdul".

>All this talk of wrenches on the beaches reminds me of the re-supply drop at
>Arnhem that dropped canisters of new, red berets packed flat to the
>beleguared troops.

I thought that tale was largely apocryphal

>In our local paper this week is a fascinating memory of Normandy about the
>Falaise Corridor of Death in August 44, from a Frenchmans point of view - no
>ordinary Gaul this one, he was a Panther crewman in the SS, the SS
>recruited from most conqured contires and there was even a Birmingham
>battalion ( no, not in AL, but UK)

I've heard about it. It was barely a platoon of men was it not? A
friend of mine had a good friend who I met that was an Alsacian who's
father was pressed into service in the German army and sent to
Russia. It was several years after the war before his father was
released from the Russian POW camps.

>Just getting back to work after 10 hours of no power here in the Bocage
>following a freak storm.

Nige, you live in France?

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