The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Tero » Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:01 pm

Do hearses have a special low gear to drive in processions at walking speed?
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Sep 19, 2022 3:49 pm

JimC wrote:
JimC wrote:
Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:47 pm
Tero wrote:
Sun Sep 18, 2022 8:31 pm
Well, there has to be a reverse. It will go in reverse at full speed too.
Like Italian tanks in WW2?
Tero wrote:
Sun Sep 18, 2022 10:47 pm
I thought it was French tanks.
Such snide remarks about the Italian war machine stem from their hopeless performance in the early stages of the North African campaign...
Leave it Jim. The war is over.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by laklak » Mon Sep 19, 2022 6:43 pm

Don't mention the war.
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by JimC » Mon Sep 19, 2022 8:56 pm

Is it evil of me to enjoy reading about the crushing defeats the Italians suffered in the early months of the campaign? Look up Beda Fomm...
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Sep 20, 2022 1:15 am

My ex's dad fought in the North Africa campaign and then up through Italy. What he saw left him a dribbling wreck - he never really recovered. Talk about Italian cowardice belies a grimmer reality. The victors are always the heroes of their own narrative.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by JimC » Tue Sep 20, 2022 1:36 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 1:15 am
My ex's dad fought in the North Africa campaign and then up through Italy. What he saw left him a dribbling wreck - he never really recovered. Talk about Italian cowardice belies a grimmer reality. The victors are always the heroes of their own narrative.
No, it wasn't really cowardice in the early days of the North African campaign - it was appalling Italian leadership and bad military decisions, coupled with a cool, professional and daring British campaign.
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Sep 20, 2022 7:37 am

Yeah, sorry Jim - I know you were just being whimsical. Didn't mean to be snappy. The ex's dad told me some of what he saw and did, and I guess I carry a little of that secondhand trauma with me now.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by JimC » Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:22 am

Brian Peacock wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 7:37 am
Yeah, sorry Jim - I know you were just being whimsical. Didn't mean to be snappy. The ex's dad told me some of what he saw and did, and I guess I carry a little of that secondhand trauma with me now.
My dad was also in the Middle East in WW2. He was a sergeant major in the Australian Artillery, surveying gun positions in northern Palestine, for an attack that never came. Later, he returned to Oz, surveying coastal artillery positions in Queensland, against a Japanese attack which also never came, so he had an uneventful war, in some ways...

I have always had an interest in reading military histories of WW2, but I always realise that the reality for individuals was usually harsh and traumatic...
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Hermit » Tue Sep 20, 2022 10:28 am

JimC wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:22 am
I always realise that the reality for individuals was usually harsh and traumatic...
From what my father told me, most of the time was spent on mundane things like getting from A to B, setting up positions, digging trenches, waiting for the field kitchen to finally get its food into your tin, swapping rumours about what is happening nearby or far away, waiting for an attack or an order to attack. He did get into some actual fighting, but battles made up a small percentage of a soldier's life even when retreat turned into a rout.

Around January or February 1945 his unit was near some barracks already to the west of where he was born, waiting for orders, when a Red Army detachment turned up unexpected and uninvited. It set up a firing position, which included a mortar launcher, on the other side of the railway track. He finished up with a piece of shrapnel in his left shoulder and was told to find his own way to a lazaret. Rumour had it at the time that the Soviets had already cut the roads to the west, so he crossed the iced up Haff and headed for Danzig. This took him three days. From there he got on a hospital ship, which took him to Hamburg, which was totally ruined by then, so he went inland and found a bed somewhere.

Although he was given marching orders when he was deemed fit to fight, his next encounter with the enemy was to be taken prisoner somewhere in Bavaria. He had been sent south to take command of an artillery unit, the location of which nobody could tell him. Germany's war machinery had collapsed totally by then. Nobody could arrange for transport or even provide him with an army uniform. He was decked out with a navy kit. His transport was a pushbike he borrowed. Travelling mostly at night because allied fighters planes shot at anything that moved on the road, including children, during the day was hazardous, it took a week or so to reach the general vicinity where the supposed artillery unit was guessed to be, but then an American APC bailed him up at a farm. Feeling outnumbered and outgunned, and never having been an enthusiastic soldier to begin with, he surrendered.

The piece of shrapnel was never removed. He still had it when he died in 2011 a month after his 87th birthday.

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by pErvinalia » Thu Sep 22, 2022 12:22 am

Record players. You can't explain that.
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by laklak » Thu Sep 22, 2022 6:11 am

Magic scratchy lines. Tape recorders - they're the real mystery, just a bit of brown plastic tape. Probably got something to do with magnets. I mean, fucking magnets, how do they work?
Yeah well that's just, like, your opinion, man.

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Thu Sep 22, 2022 8:09 am

Nobody knows.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Tero » Thu Sep 22, 2022 10:54 am

Molecules. Molecules are involved. Both magnets and grooves in PVC.
https://esapolitics.blogspot.com
http://esabirdsne.blogspot.com/
Said Peter...what you're requesting just isn't my bag
Said Daemon, who's sorry too, but y'see we didn't have no choice
And our hands they are many and we'd be of one voice
We've come all the way from Wigan to get up and state
Our case for survival before it's too late

Turn stone to bread, said Daemon Duncetan
Turn stone to bread right away...

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by NineBerry » Fri Sep 23, 2022 7:56 am

Tero wrote:
Mon Sep 19, 2022 2:01 pm
Do hearses have a special low gear to drive in processions at walking speed?
Horses don't have gears at all. You only need gears with combustion engines. Electric engines don't need gears. Horses use basically electric engines.

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Re: The how does that work (you can't explain that) thread - Ask here.

Post by Brian Peacock » Fri Sep 23, 2022 8:12 am

At last, someone brings a little sanity to this thread.
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"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice.
There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia."

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"This is how humanity ends; bickering over the irrelevant."
Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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