Commemorating 100 years since the end of the Great War by La Vie Parisienne

There are many serious commemorations of the end of the Great War happening at present so, instead, I will present this rather lighter tribute from the French magazine La Vie Parisienne. This issue appeared on November 10th 1918; the day before the Armistice was signed. The ‘elite troop’ type illustrated is a grenadier, in this picture by Georges Léonnec (1881-1940). She is holding a pomegranate (grenade in French) which, of course, engendered the name of the hand held explosive device due to its shape. In addition, split pomegranates are symbols of suffering and rebirth, as well as being fertility symbols.

It is typical of an illustration from La Vie Parisienne that it gets all this symbolism into what otherwise looks like a pin up (American troops were banned from buying the magazine in case paintings of ladies in a state of déshabillé overcame their moral sense). France lost over 4% of its population in the war, mainly young men, of course, and the magazine seems to be saying that the ‘elite troop’ ladies of France would have to help repopulate the country to contribute to its rebirth.

To the War Memorial on Remembrance Day and the football charge of the East Surrey Regiment

Guy and I went to our local war memorial on Sunday and I took a few pictures before the service.  Many readers will have gone to their local memorial on Sunday but the one in Oxshott is rather unusual in that it is not situated in the centre of the village but rather on top of a ridge on Oxshott Heath.  It was commissioned by Sir Robert McAlpine, the founder of the large civil engineering firm, who lived nearby, although there was some opposition to the plan at the time.

View from the top

This means you have to park down the hill at the railway station and trek up to the top where on a clear day (unlike yesterday) you can see the North Downs.  You feel rather more isolated than in fact you are as you can only glimpse a few buildings from the site.  During both World Wars the heath was the home to large numbers of Canadian troops, some of whom are remembered on the memorial.  In World War 2 it was the Royal Canadian Engineers who were stationed here and they used their lumberjacking skills, it is said, to help manage the woodland.  On the flat area at the bottom of the hill, in the photograph above, they built a baseball diamond and used the slope of the hill up to the memorial as spectator seating.  This slope, which is steeper than it looks in the photo, was very popular with my children for tobogganing when they were smaller.  Coincidentally, they used a seventy-five year old toboggan which belonged to their grandmother who was born in Montreal.

Oxshott was sparsely populated until the arrival of the Guildford line railway in 1885 led to the development of the vast villas that made up most of the original houses.  Some of these are still standing.  Oddly, until his death in 1882, the land was owned by King Leopold of Belgium: his own private colony in Surrey!

The memorial itself has the names on it of locals killed in both world wars, many of whom were in the local regiment, the East Surreys, who were based in Kingston-upon Thames.  The Great War section has the dates 1914-1919 on it as the regiment went to Russia in 1919.  

The East Surreys were involved in a famous incident in World War 1 when, on the first day of the battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916, Captain WP Nevill provided some footballs for his troops to kick in front of their advance across no-man's land.  Nevill was killed early in the charge but the regiment kept kicking the balls forward, as they advanced, until they drove the Germans from their position and even recovered two of the footballs which were sent home to the regimental museum.  Before the charge one was inscribed 'The Great European Cup-Tie Final. East Surreys v Bavarians. Kick off at zero.'

The incident became so famous that it was immortalised in a painting by the famous military artist Richard Caton Woodville (1856-1927) whose most famours painting is probably Maiwand, saving the Guns painted in 1883.  The Daily Mail commissioned a special verse.

 On through the hail of slaughter, 

Where gallant comrades fall, 

Where blood is poured like water, 

They drive the trickling ball. 

The fear of death before them, 

Is but an empty name; 

True to the land that bore them, 

The SURREYS played the game.

One of these footballs is still on display at the regimental museum at Clandon Park near Guildford, just one mile from where Guildford Wargames club meets.

Sobering thoughts at the Tower of London and Wargame Bloggers Quarterly

The Legatus was in the City yesterday, getting a long overdue haircut from the lovely Tracy.  It had been raining for most of the time during my meeting and lunch with Peruvian contractors but as I came out of the hairdressers at the base of the NatWest Tower (yes, I know it's not called that any more but it's the same with Debenhams in Staines which I still think of as Kennards, although it hasn't been called that for forty years) the sun came out.  Tracy had asked if I had been to the Tower of London to see the ceramic poppy display commemorating the centenary of the Great War.  I had not, so set off there before the light faded.  As I wandered down Eastcheap it was apparent that a veritable pilgrimage was in progress.  Lots of non-City types were heading east as well, in a road not known for its pedestrian traffic.  I had expected some tourists there but not the crowd around the whole perimeter of the Tower.

For all those who play the game of war the visual impact of all those poppies, each representing a person, was a solemn reminder that all the miniature people we move around our toy battlefields are there to mark, in many cases, the existence of real people who lived and died in the past.  Now the Legatus is not a deep thinker and as long as he has access to cold wine, hot food and warm women is pretty much happy but this brilliant display says more about the impact on Britain of the War than any book or documentary can.  The latter have, by their very nature, to look at wider issues of politics and strategy on the whole and, apart from some notable exceptions looking at the lives of soldiers, miss what this display conveys so well: That war is about individual people dying, violently and often in great numbers

Now I am not a pacifist and neither am I an isolationist - some threats to civilisation do need people to make a stand - a military stand (whether the Great War was one of these is a matter of debate) but it would be a good thing if sabre-rattling politicians could be made to spend fifteen minutes at this site (yes, Mr Putin) and think, for once.  Great Britain's losses in the Great War amounted to about 2% of the population or one in fifty people and this in a country which was not, unlike France (4%) in the combat zone.

Now last week I was invited to Eric the Shed's again for another game of Warmaster as our Imperial forces took the field against massed orcs and goblins again, in a larger game than last time.  I even remembered some of the rules and deployed some rudimentary tactics.  I have, like many historical wargamers, slightly looked down on fantasy wargames because my interest in recreating conflicts of the past stems from an interest in history, not gaming.  However, in retrospect, there is an argument that fantasy wargaming, which does not turn brutal conflict of the past into a recreational pursuit, is, perhaps, more ethically defensible than historical wargaming.  No real goblins, orcs, dwarves, men of Rohan or Empire handgunners were slaughtered to provide a setting for a game.  As my new lady friend, A, ventured (deliberately provocatively - she is a provocative woman) recently, isn't wargaming like playing a game about rape?  Can any acts of violence, defensibly, form the basis for a game?  Is the personal violation of rape any different from having your body violated by a musket ball?  There have been attempts in the past to protest against wargames.  The show that is now called Colours and takes place (sadly, not this year) at Newbury racecourse used to be called Armageddon and, as such was picketed by, amongst others, Greenham Common Peace protestors (and one of my ex-girlfriends became a Greenham Common woman so I know something of their mindset), forcing a name change to its less offensive current title.

I am uneasy about playing wargames set in the recent past but there are other games that unsettle me too.  When Wargames Soldiers and Strategy re-launched, a few years ago, it carried an article about a game concerning the assassination of Caligula.  I rarely get incensed enough by anything I read in the press to write to the editor (I did once when The Daily Mirror wrote a sneeringly disparaging article about an ex-girlfriend) but this nearly did it.  The scenario was about a small group of assassins breaking into the palace to kill the emperor.  This made me queasy enough, even if Caligula was a certifiable loon, but the author, Mark Backhouse, offered the following variant: "A second group of assassins start in the Palace complex at the same time with the objective of killing Caligula's wife Caesonia and daughter Drusilla".  I'm sorry, this isn't a wargame in my opinion it's trivialising the murder of women and children.  Nasty!

Now, of course, I am not going to suddenly stop painting my World War 1 British infantry and switch to Warhammer but just pausing to think to reflect on the personal consequences of wars of the past is not a bad thing and Paul Cummins Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red, to give the Tower installation its proper name, has certainly succeeded in this.

Anyway, on a much lighter note the second edition of the superb Wargame Bloggers Quarterly is out today and you can download it here.  Even more exciting, it contains a piece by the Legatus on Poulet Marengo (I may not be very good at wargaming but I can cook!) the dish cobbled up, or so the story goes, for Napoleon after the Battle of Marengo in 1800.  I was pleased to see a piece by Scott too on his stunning Lord of the Rings Durin's Causeway board and am looking forward to the Sudan feature.  This really is a great initiative and if you haven't downloaded it yet then do so!

Today's music is a seasonal favourite: Sibelius' 3rd Symphony, in the (excellent) version by the Scottish National Orchestra under Sir Alexander Gibson.  For a number of reasons it reminds me of the sort of "crispy autumnal day" (as my former girlfriend SA used to call them) we have had today.  Autumn has been most peculiar in the South East of England this year; it was twenty two degrees on Friday when the monthly average for October is twelve.  Today, however we had our first cold, bright autumnal day.  SA used to live near Richmond Park and on autumnal days like this we used to go running there, as it was this time of the year that our previous friendship became rather more intimate.  I had bought this CD at about the same time so first played it in her flat after the good 12km whizz around the park's perimeter. We would come back feeling flushed with autumnal well-being, warmed by the exercise and the pale sun with the scent of leaves and dead ferns in our nostrils.  Just time for a horizontal warm-down before a lunch of spaghetti alla puttanesca!  Coincidentally, the story behind the creation of this dish is not dissimilar to that of Poulet Marengo in that it is a found ingredients dish created, it is said, in the nineteen fifties by Italian chef Sandro Petti who had to knock together a dish for some customers late one night when he was short of ingredients other than tomatoes, olives and capers.  The Legatus first had it in Rome cooked by our princess lady friend with, as is typical in the region, the addition of anchovies.  So I think I will cook it tonight as the autumnal weather and the Sibelius reminds me of the dish (not to mention SA and her thirty three inch inside leg measurement!).

100 years ago today...

Like many others I am commemorating Britain's declaration of war in 1914 today.  I have already posted a picture of my grandfather in his KRRC uniform but he volunteered for the nascent RFC and spent the rest of the war there.

Here, from just over 99 years ago is the form postcard he sent to his father from France.  Not many of my contemporaries had a grandfather who fought in WW1 but because my father was 37 when I was born, I did.  I do remember meeting him when I was small.  It is this personal connection, missing from today's youngsters, which makes it easier to help them understand the importance of commemorating the World Wars.

Paint Table Saturday: 100 years since the beginning of the Great War

While I continue to work on my Afghans (and the British and Sikhs arrived this week) for the 2nd Afghan War, I thought it would be a bit boring to post yet another picture of them up.  Given the Great War anniversary, therefore, here, instead, is another project I am working on.  These are the new Mutton Chop Miniatures WW1 British (beautifully) sculpted by Paul Hicks.   These are the first four packs.  The command have just been released so I will order those soon.  

Paint Table Saturday: Riflemen!

I have done a little bit of painting since Salute, although yesterday was mainly devoted to moving (sadly, non-wargaming) things into the new shed.  I did start with a bit of base colour for my new Muttonchop Miniatures WW1 British.  These are absolutely the nicest WW1 BEF figures I have ever seen. Let's hope the range expands to more than the two packs already available.  I am going to paint them as Kings Royal Rifle Corps as that is the regiment my grandfather served in in 1914.

Haddon Perceval Bowen Harris July 1914

Secondly, I got base colours down on the next (and final) group for the Mexican Matamoros regiment including these fine Cazadores with their Baker rifles.  It's nice and bright today too.  Three days to paint!  Yippee!

Oh no, more new ranges!

Some of my Musketeer Early Saxons

I really like the sculpting style of Bill Thornhill of Musketeer Miniatures and have painted quite a lot of his Great Northern War and Early Saxon figures.  They really are a delight to paint!

L to R: Musketeer, Great War Miniatures and Renegade

Today he has announced not just one but four new ranges!  At Musketeer he is going to produce early war Germans for the Great War.  Now the BEF figures that Musketeer produced are the nicest Great War figures that I have seen but, sadly, they are quite small compared with Great War Miniatures and Renegade (of whose range I have painted quite a few early war Germans). Actually, I think the British were sculpted by Paul Hicks (who is launching his own early WW1 range this year) so maybe Bill's chunkier style will work with my Renegades.

Next up, he has announced that once he has finished on the Great Northern War range (obviously the Danes are never going to appear) this year he will also be working on a new range for the Sikh Wars.  Now, of course, I have already bought into the Studio Miniatures Sikh Wars Kickstarter but having two manufacturers doing the period in 28mm could be a good thing, if they are compatible.  I really am fussy about figures going together and can't understand people who can have figures of different sizes in the same army.

Footsore French Officer

He has also set up a new company in the US, where he now lives, called Footsore Miniatures.  He has announced two ranges for this firm: Caesar's Gallic Wars and, first, the Franco Prussian War.  Both will be of interest to me.   The Franco Prussian War figures could start to be released as early as March.  I have always been interested in this but the lack of a good modern range of figures has, fortunately, put me off. Certainly, the initial almost completed first figure is very impressive.

So much for reducing the lead pile this year!

Today, encouraged by Giles' comments, I have been listening to Korngold's Symphony, which was premiered in October 1954.  It's a symphony of mixed moods; with a Brucknerian third movement and a more typically "swashbuckling" finale.   The second movement's style will be very familiar to anyone who has listened to John Williams' soundtrack to E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.  Or, rather, the styles are the other way round!

Antonine to Zimmerit: another busy few days.

Not much painting done again this last week, apart from a bit on my first Empire of the Dead figure, Captain Nemo, as I have been whizzing around Britain a bit.  Tonight I have to stay up to take Guy to buy some computer game he has ordered which comes out at midnight so I may just sit and type a bit while the varnish dries on Nemo.

I was in Poole on Tuesday visiting the RNLI college.  I had sort of expected a sort of Portakabin not the impressive edifice I was presented with.  This was one of just five huge buildings on the site with another new lifeboat factory under construction.  The impressive indoor wave tank is used for practising rescues, capsize drill and life raft work and can generate waves a metre and a half in height.  I have been a supporter of the RNLI ever since I had to jump off a burning powerboat into the Solent in the seventies and was picked up out of the sea by the Yarmouth lifeboat.  I also really like their special Lifeboat tea so picked up some more in the shop there!  I can't paint without it!

I hadn't been to Poole since about 1973 and the thing that was most noticeable on the waterfront was the huge Sunseeker factory churning out massive motoryachts destined for places which are a lot warmer than Dorset.

I finished earlier than I had expected at the RNLI and was surprised when my wife suggested we go on to Bovington Tank Museum which was about fifteen miles away.  Again, I hadn't been there since 1971 and remember absolutely nothing about it but I suspect it looked nothing like the splendid museum that is there today.

My "little boy" with a Challenger

Whenever I see real tanks I am always surprise by how big they are.  It's a life of being brought up on Airfix kits I suppose!

Little Willie

 Mark I The Airfix one!

Mark IV

 Mark V

 Renault FT-17

Medium Mark A Whippet

When I went in 1971 I was fixated on World War 2 tanks and German ones in particular, so didn't appreciate the really outstanding collection of WW1 tanks they have there. It really made me want to get on and finish my Great War Miniatures Mark IV tank.  It was nice to see that my choice of Humbrol No 29 was spot on for this period!

Mr Hayton works on the Tiger unaware that he is about to be collared by the Old Bat.  Even a Tiger cannot protect you!

Guy was more interested in the modern tanks and he and I wandered off leaving my wife behind.  Now all of her family have this embarrassing habit of striking up conversations with perfect strangers.  When I was small I was told not to talk to strangers.  Not because they might be dodgy but because they were probably going to be ghastly.  As a result the Legatus is a shy, retiring type but not my wife.  Having lost her, we went back on ourselves and found her up in the turret of the famous Tiger I.  Yes, she had got chatting to the workshop manager. Mike Hayton, who was now giving her a guided tour of the Tiger.  He was preparing it as it is off (this week) to the set of the new Brad Pitt World War 2 movie Fury, which is currently filming.  Mr Hayton did not seem too enamoured of the idea of his beloved Tiger going off to a film set!  Brad Pitt visited the museum last week but Mr Hayton said he didn't recognise Pitt and had to have him pointed out to him!

I took dozens of pictures which I won't inflict on everyone, especially as someone on one of the blogs I follow took some much better pictures this summer.  I was intrigued to see the Bolt Action rules on sale in the very good shop as well as Flames of War rules, tanks and figures.  I didn't buy anything though!

On Thursday it was up to Edinburgh to see how Charlotte was getting on at University.  As she had to do Astrobiology on the Friday we went to see the Falkirk Wheel, as Guy is interested in doing engineering at university.  This is an impressive piece of equipment that removes the need for a staircase of locks and replaces it with a massive lift that can carry boats from one canal to the other.  Frankly I thought it looked more like some sort of rocket launching accelerator ramp.

 The grassy bridge across the ditch is the main Roman road into the fort (centre bottom in the picture below)  The wall is the bank on the left.

I was pleased to discover that only about a mile from the Wheel were the remains of the Antonine Wall and Rough Castle Fort.  All just grassy banks now (it was a turf and wood wall not a stone one like the more southerly Hadrian's Wall) but it was a bit of a bonus to climb around it for an hour.

These are some of the defensive pits that would have been filled full of spikes on the northern side of the wall.

The main fort from a neighbouring hill.  The fort was built on top of a high hill which would have had very good visibility all round.

Next day a solid breakfast was called for (although no haggis disappointingly) before the ascent of Arthur's Seat in weather that could be politely called inclement.  Horizontal sleet is always bracing.

I have to say that the more I see of Edinburgh the more I like it and I can see why Charlotte chose to go to university there, although as we were moved away from our airport gate due to a fire alarm on Saturday I did rather wish she had gone to Southampton, which is an hour's drive away, instead.  Next stop is Houston next week and then on to Colombia and Cartagena, pirate capital of the Caribbean!  Hopefully that will be it for travel in 2013.

Back from Copenhagen

Whenever I travel to a foreign city I often think that it might be the last time I visit it.  Not a problem if it's somewhere ghastly where you never want to go again (Seoul, Manila, Tallahassee) but more poignant if it is a nice city.  I haven't been to Copenhagen since 2007 and didn't really expect to go there again.  However, HMG decided I was just the man for some meetings this week so I found myself taking a taxi to the airport at 4.45am.  I had to go for a preparatory meeting there a week or so ago but that was only at an airport hotel so didn't count; although it did mean I missed SELWG.

Taut thighs.  Lots of them

I love all the Baltic capitals: Helsinki, Tallinn, Stockholm and Oslo but have a particular soft spot for Copenhagen.  It's a very easy city to walk about in as it is very compact (compared with Stockholm for example).  Of course the best way to get about is by bike.  Denmark has the highest proportion of cycle transport in Europe (even more so than the Netherlands).  You have to be careful crossing a road because the cycle paths are often easily mistaken for footpaths.  If you are using a crossing on a large road, like the four lane Hans Christian Andersen Boulevard, then you need to jog to get across in time before the traffic lights unleash a furious posse of cyclists.  The Danes don't dawdle on their bikes but hammer along on their big 28 inch wheels (very few mountain bikes but a few hybrids) at a tremendous pace.

Bikes are just transport and not a fashion statement as they are in Britain but there was an article in the paper in Copenhagen this week complaining about the 26,000 bike thefts a year in the country (compared with the UK's half a million).  The reason for even this comparatively small number, however, is that hardly anyone in Copenhagen locks their bike.  I didn't see a single lock on any of the bikes parked on the street.

Many of these cyclists appear to be attractive young women (or maybe they are the only ones I noticed) with long, slim (and presumably very toned) legs.  Again, hardly anyone wears traditional cycling clothes; just their ordinary day wear.   Of course it is all much more entertaining in the summer!  I had most of Tuesday to wander around and the weather was sunny and reasonably warm (you didn't need a coat after mid morning).

One of the few bad things about Copenhagen is the prices.  Taxis are really expensive and I had to get out more money as my taxi fund had been virtually used up on the trip from the airport.  There must have been something going on in the City (there was a lot of UN activity around Parliament) as finding a hotel had been a nightmare.  So I decided to take the opportunity to stay in the newly renovated (and fabulously expensive) Hotel Angleterre on the main square opposite the Opera.  Established in 1755 the hotel was the venue for the first performance by Danish composer HC Lumbye (the Danish Johann Strauss and composer of the brilliantly eccentric The Copenhagen Steam Railway Gallop; one of my favourites). Although I checked in at 9.30am the room was ready, thank goodness, so I could drop off my bag and walk to the National Gallery.

Snowscape by LA Ring

I really like nineteenth century Baltic landscape painting and the gallery has a fine collection of paintings by Eckersberg, Lundbye and, my favourite, LA Ring.  Usually I eat in the gallery's trendy cafe but as I was only there for one night and was having dinner out I decided to go back to the hotel for lunch as it was, conveniently, half way to where I planned to visit in the afternoon.

Lunch was very nouvelle cuisine but was absolutely delicious.  Lobster bisque, followed by turbot and then fillet steak with sweetbreads.  All washed down with three glasses of Sancerre at a rather eyewatering £16 a glass.  Don't worry though, taxpayers, I was paying for lunch and the hotel not HM government!  I could have stayed somewhere cheaper at government rate but I just fancied a little splurge.

After doing a few e-mails I set off for the Arsenal Museum which, unlike the National Gallery, I hadn't been to before.  The rather unpretentious entrance (Copenhagen is an unpretentious sort of city) belied the very large museum behind the door.

The current museum is located in the long left hand building on the model above.  Originally built in 1611 the complex had access for naval ships so they could pick up stores directly from the harbour inside.  By the end of the seventeenth century the ships were getting too large so all the naval supplies and arms were moved to the island of Nyholm, the harbour was filled in and only the army's weapons were stored there.

Canon de 75 modèle 1897

The ground floor contains dozens of artillery pieces from the fifteenth century to the present day.  This is the famous French 75 of World War 1 fame: the first artillery piece with a hydro-pneumatic (the French love their hydro-pneumatics) recoil mechanism which meant it didn't have to be re-aimed between each shot.  It's also the only artillery piece I know that has a cocktail named after it.  In the background is a Carden-Lloyd tankette a name very familiar to anyone who has read about the history of tanks.  Never seen one before though!

Also downstairs was a temporary exhibition about the Danish army in Afghanistan (no, I didn't know they were there either) with a number of very well done "environments" such as this mined Land Rover.

Upstairs was a huge gallery with a selection of exhibits from Danish military history from 1500 to the present day.  It was very selective with just a few items from each period rather than taking the Brussels Military Museum approach of throwing everything they'd got in.  All the signs were in Danish and English, helpfully. Visiting things in Copenhagen is made considerably easier by the fact that everyone speaks perfect English.

Not everything was Danish.  There was a collection of Russian army uniforms, a collection of nineteenth century military headgear and two fine sets of samurai armour.  One of these reminded me that some Japanees lacquered armour was brown which will add some variety to my Ronin figures.

The Thirty Years War was represented, primarily, by this nice set of cuirassier armour and pair of long pistols.  Fortunately, you are allowed to take pictures in the museum and there doesn't appear to be any restriction on using flash although the building is very well lit by large windows anyway.  Most museums around the world seem to permit photography; it's only in Britain that you tend to run into problems and that, I suspect, is more about protecting postcard revenue than the exhibits themselves.

Here is a Danish army cap from the First Schleswig War which got me thinking about what happened to Matt's range of figures from that conflict.  I wonder whether you can still buy them?

One very interesting exhibit was a complete set of uniforms of a US infantryman and cavalryman acquired by the museum just before the American Civil War, in 1858.  Jacket, trousers, shako, shoes, leather equipment, greatcoat, blanket and even socks.  Apparently it is the only surviving complete set of a US infantryman's and cavalryman's uniform and equipment from the period in existence.

I went back to the hotel to do some emails and drink some Carlsberg (inevitably) before having dinner at the ambassador's residence (no pictures allowed).  I did have time for a quick Vodka Martini or two in the Hotel Angleterre bar with a nice young lady I had met at dinner.  Too many olives, as usual but really, really cold so they get points back.  8/10.

Next day it was goodbye to my cosy (or hygge, as the Danes say) room and just time for a quick breakfast of interesting sausages and €6 eggs (not included in the set breakfast cost) before a day of talking to government people.  These talks went so well that I might have to go back to Copenhagen again, which will not be a trial.

Edinburgh next week and a chance to see the Antonine Wall (I know it's just a ditch!)