Quote from: mad lemmey on 14 February 2016, 11:15:41 AM
Phil, our very own Flashman!

That's a lie...I was let off with a caution.

Quote from: Westmarcher on 14 February 2016, 10:14:35 AM
You missed out a few others as well, Nobby .....
"Well? Did you grab him? The taxi's waiting." Rome, 44BC
"Can I have a go of that bow and arrow?" Hastings, 1066.
"Whatever you do, don't let the horse run away." Bosworth, 1485.
"Lets creep up behind that sentry and surprise him." Chancellorsville, 1863
"This looks like a nice place to stay." Bates Motel, 1960.
"Watch what you're doing with that drill, Phil." Bloody Sunday, 2007.
"Watch what you're doing with that drill, Phil." Bloody Sunday, 2009.
"Watch what you're doing with that drill, Phil." Bloody Sunday, 2014.

Someone else I knew I could rely on for abuse ! 

But you've all forgotten the very first quote.

"Strike a light !!......That was bloody loud !"......


("Oooooh....that looks pretty !")

(Approximately 15 billion years ago......give or take.)


Cheers - Phil

  to all of them!

Quote from: Westmarcher on 13 February 2016, 11:59:52 AM
What SS Division did your father serve in, Orcs?

 

Because of his beliefs he joined the Non Combatant Corps and volunteered for Bomb Disposal.  They got treated really badly.  He spent 10 months under canvas (through the winter with 3 blankets.)  They were not allowed to get any medals of official recognition.  This particular Lance Corporal was a eventually sectioned  after he hit a live bomb with a crow bar with the words " this piece of Sh*t wont hurt you"  They all dived in a slit trance and waited for half an hour in case he had started th clock ticking again.

One night a Heinkel crashed on an important railway juction with a fulll bomb load. He and the rest of his section were ordered into the carsh site and what was left of the plane to remove the 250lB bombs so they wouold not go off.  The Bombs were so hot they had to wear asbestos gloves.  20mm rounds were cooking off al round round them  - They never even got an official thank you.

When digging down to a bomb the cooks sent their sandwich lunch (normally Sardines) in Carbolic Soap boxes so when they got to eat them that stank and tasted of soap.  To his dying day if you opened a tin of fish all he could smell was carbolic soap.

When I was a kid and we watched war movies, whenever the troops were singing he wouild say - "Thats not th words knew, it was far ruder than that."  if Mum was out of earshot i could normally get him to sing the "real version".






 

Superb

Stirring stuff, Orcs (obviously my comment was a dig at the sadistic corporal). Also makes you mad at the way the likes of your Dad and other like thinking men who put themselves in harm's way, were treated by others (who do these cooks think they were? Steven Seagal?) who probably never even saw any of the enemy the whole war (used to work beside an old guy who served in transport and said he never saw a German the whole time he was in Europe). Really astonished that your Dad got no recognition for his bravery. You should tell his story to more people. Don't know if this will work but this association might be a good place to start(?)

http://www.royalengineersbombdisposal-eod.org.uk/medals.html

My Dad was lucky. He was in a 'reserved occupation,' making landing craft and so served in Dad's Army. He said there were lots of guys in his unit in their twenties - so much for a bunch of Grandads as portrayed on TV. He lost two of his brothers in 1943 and wanted to join up but was talked out of it by his relatives. First brother was a sergeant in mine disposal. There was a difficult device and he decided he couldn't order any of the guys to tackle it. He was killed in January. The second brother died in December. He was evacuated from Italy suffering from Black Water Fever.

My father-in-law had a great war as an aircraft fitter in Canada in a pilot training squadron. No rationing but nevertheless used as 'ballast' for flights and on some occasions, recovering the bodies of the poor guys whose planes had crashed. His brother's story is probably the most amazing/harrowing, however.
   
For years, my wife had talked about her uncle (his brother) who died a P.O.W. of the Japs. He had been in the naval reserve and before the outbreak of war his unit 'won a prize' to experience service aboard some cruiser or battleship. War was declared when they were aboard so they never got home and the ship was posted to the Far East. We have letters to his brother saying how guilty he felt about being so far away from the action and having an easy time of it while Britain the folks back home were in peril and undergoing the Blitz. Then Japan entered the war and he was captured in Hong Kong. Later, he and his fellow prisoners were being transported by ship when it was torpedoed by an American submarine (of course, it wouldn't have known there were Allied P.O.W.s aboard). The name of the ship was the SS Lisbon Maru. One day, my family and I were in the Army Museum in London. My wife and kids had had enough (I was too slow - clocking just about every exhibit there was) so I had to admit defeat. So we headed for the exit along this long corridor with the odd portrait and glass cabinet. I stopped to tie my shoelace and as I got up, I spotted a charcoal drawing of a sinking ship in this old glass cabinet - it was the Lisbon Maru(!) and had been drawn by one of the survivors.

The story as I recall was that when the ship was hit and started to sink, the crew and most (all?) of the guards abandoned the ship leaving the P.O.W.s locked up in the holds. The P.O.W.s communicated between each hold by tapping on the hull in morse code and worked out a plan of escape. We understand there were 3 signallers. My wife's uncle was a signaller so must have been involved. They managed to get out and started to jump overboard and swim for the shore. Many of them were machine gunned by the remaining guards who had started to row back to the ship when they realised it had stopped sinking. Many died in this way, others were recaptured but others managed to swim ashore where many were hidden by the locals whilst the Japanese hunted them. We don't know how he died.

Many years later when working in Glasgow, a workmate (who originally came from Bradford) came out with this astonishing comment one day about the father he would have had if he hadn't died on a Jap ship that had been torpedoed by a US submarine! Yes. It was the same ship!

As a further postscript, here is a link I have just found (after typing all of the above! D'oh! Sod it! I'll leave it uncorrected!. Please excuse any inaccuracies in my recollection of events).

http://www.lisbonmaru.com

Quote from: Just a few Orcs on 15 February 2016, 09:24:20 AM

They all dived in a slit trance

Bloody autocorrect again, Orcs!   

My two granddads were 'lucky':
One was on the Arctic convoys as Sub-Leuient in HMS Duke of York, saw service at North Cape and was happy to talk about his time as a gunnery officer in the spotting tops (so cold tea froze, had a shell from Scharnhorst pass UNDER him)!
The other was a flight Sgt in a hurricane squadron until early 41 when he refused to fly solo again. Never explained why. He then went on to Tiger Moths as a trainer, then spent 43 onwards sitting in an airstrip in Iceland, refuelling bostons and liberators before telling them how to find the Faeroe Isles!
His sister was allegedly with the SOE, but refused to talk. Rumours include she was Philby and Macclanes' stationary Clark and Edward VIII 'guard' in Bemuda, with orders...
Step-father ones' dad was a GI, bit of a family scandal.
Step-father twos' dad was a captain on destroyers in Scarpa, had no good words for Mountbaton after he ignored the locals who told him where a minefield was and sunk half his own flotilla! That one was hushed up!!!
My next door neighbour for many years had been on minesweepers, he has refused to join the guards as he wanted to be in the navy (and stil had his white feather), lost the end of a finger in a breach, the day before his ship sailed, he was the only survivor. He was then on the clear up after the failed American practice landing in Dorset, said a local guide was on their boat and was found to be looting the bodies they recovered. He simply shook his head when he told that tale and said 'Poor bugger drowned before we got him back to port for trial!'
He was at D-Day mubesweeping too. Lovely guy, his with was from Singapore, got out on the last evacuation ship, straight into blitzed out London! She mixed a wicked G&T (T optional)

My great uncle died in similar fashion, though in his case the Japanese ship transporting him and many others to Japan to work as forced labour was attacked by US planes and lost with all hands.

In the 1970's my uncle got a job in Japan and he and my aunt and their two younger children lived out there for four years. I had a conversation with my grandmother while they were out there and she clearly felt they were fraternising with the enemy!

My Granddad was in WW1 and was "lucky" enough to survive although minus part of one buttock thanks to shrapnel. My Father suffered from ill health so ended up in the Home Guard in WW2

My paternal grandfather's hearing was damaged by a near miss by a large calibre shell. The shell-burst buried him up to his shoulders in mud. As he said himself, it wouldn't have been so bad if he hadn't been upside down at the time!

My maternal grandfather was too young to fight in WW I and was on the reserved occupation list so never fought. However, he did tell me once of how he cycled miles through the Essex countryside during WW I to see the remains of a Zeppelin that had been shot down over London. His younger brother was captured by the Japanese and worked on the Burma railway.
  One of Ma Subs' uncles -despite hailing from Birmingham- was posted to the Essex Regt in India during the war. He always told me that he had spent his time behind the lines. It wasn't till after he died that we found out he was really one of Wingate's Chindits!

Yes tha Japanese were terrible.  Particuarly not marking  POW transport ships   still don't admit to most of what they did.

Worked with a bloke who was a Japanese POW.  He refused to buy anything Japanese.  If he could not get a non Japanese item he did without it.

And back to the subject.

A No. 15 blade into the index finger of the left hand trying to pry a figure from its base.
Remember children...Make all cuts away from yourself. 

(Which was nothing compared to what nearly happened yesterday, when I tripped on the Dremmel's flex, while holding a scalpel..(twerp !)...Could have been an embarrassing chat with the boys in blue...
"So, Mr Lewis.....Explain again, how you stabbed your wife in the back with a sharp instrument, while she was sitting at the computer"......It was close. 

Cheers - An Idiot.

How did you ever get to be old?

The best thing about corn on the cob skewers is that when combined with a cork they make excellent painting handles for the larger scale figure

Although god knows how much blood Mr T will lose in assembling them . . . 

Quote from: fred. on 24 February 2016, 05:01:12 PM
How did you ever get to be old?
 

Luck.....Pure & simple.
Cheers - Phil