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

[Tero]

Do hearses have a special low gear to drive in processions at walking speed?

[Brian Peacock]

Well, there has to be a reverse. It will go in reverse at full speed too.

Like Italian tanks in WW2?

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.

[laklak]

Don't mention the war.

[JimC]

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...

[Brian Peacock]

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.

[JimC]

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.

[Brian Peacock]

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.

[JimC]

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...

[Hermit]

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.


My father with his mother. Date and location unknown.

[pErvinalia]

Record players. You can't explain that.

[laklak]

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?

[Brian Peacock]

Nobody knows.

[Tero]

Molecules. Molecules are involved. Both magnets and grooves in PVC.

[NineBerry]

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.

[Brian Peacock]

At last, someone brings a little sanity to this thread.