#Military Cemetary

[cookie-nom-nom]

me: *having a great morning*

wtnv: we have a new episode for you :)

me: oh boy I love new episodes what’s it called?

wtnv: :))))))

me: *is no longer having a great morning*

[ladyanthropologie]

June 30th, 2023

Today, I continued to travel through Normandy. We stopped at Arromanche, a commune in France that is located in the middle of the D-Day Landings. Specifically, it was on the beach code named "Gold", the others were "Juno", "Sword", "Utah" and of course, "Omaha". It was these locations that various divisions of the Allied military started the Battle of Normandy, or Operation Overlord. Once victory was claimed, the Allies built a giant artificial port at Arromanche, remnants of such which can still be seen today. D-Day, or Operation Neptune, was just the start. Everyone remembers D-Day, but barely anyone knows (and I don't even remember it being taught in my history classes) that the Battle of Normandy lasted over 2 months! It wasn't until 2 months after D-Day that the Liberation of France truly got started. The largest amphibious invasion in military history, D-Day started the downfall of Nazi Germany.

Now that the Allies have a foothold in France, they were able to tactically and surgically move through the region and liberate France (which a year later).

After a lunch in Arromanche, we traveled to Omaha Beach itself and visited the American Cemetary in Normandy. 9,387 soldiers are buried here, most of which lost their lives in the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing operations. It was created on June 8th, 1944 (D-Day happened only a few days prior). On the Walls of the Missing are the names of 1,557 soldiers. Rosettes mark the names of those who have since been recovered and identified. The Cemetary will be holding a special celebration to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day next year, June 6th, 2024.

Again, to put in perspective, the US lost 416,800 soldiers (1,700 civilians). France lost 217,600 soldiers (350,000 civilians) and Germany lost 5,533,000 soldiers (1,067,000 - 3,267,000 civilians). **Numbers given by the National WW2 Musuem in New Orleans. Historians have repeatedly said the numbers are unreliable, as the deadliest conflict in human history, it's difficult to put actual numbers between the military and civilians, between the dead, wounded, and lost**

Most of France was destroyed, between air raids and the Nazis and Germany military destroying places as they left (they were given orders to do so). You can see the scars of this today.

While at the American Cemetary, I read some profiles and stories on different people who died, survived, were lost, or stuck at home. One such explained the origins behind the story Saving Private Ryan, which I thought was cool.

Afterwards, we traveled to Mont Saint-Michel, where we stayed for the night.

[worldofmorbidities]

Reasons why Trump shouldn't be President:

● He used a military cemetary for advertising his presidental campain, despite being a known draft-dogder.

● He basically arranged a domestic terror attack on the Congress (Jan 6 2021) because he didn't get reelected.

● According to documentation, he have been to Epstein Island numerous times.

● He have made rape jokes, such as "grab her by the pussy".

● He is actively using religion in his campain in order to gain Christian votes, while he in reality doesn't give a shit about religion.

● He advocates for the limitation of; bodily autonomy, freedom of faith, freedom of expression ect.

● His charity, The Trump Foundation, was shut down after he spent $2 million (which was supposed to go to the needy) for his own political gain.

● He have paid a porn star $130 000 as hush money after sleeping with her, which he is now undergoing a trial for.

Tell me if I missed anything:)

[leakism]

scrolling way down in my dms to look at all my deactivated mutuals like a veteran walking through a military cemetary

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Berlatsky at Everything Is Horrible:

When you say that we are facing a fascist takeover of the United States, you often get pushback. One common talking point is that, if we were actually in the middle of a fascist takeover, you wouldn’t be able to say so. There are various reasons this is silly. First, and most obviously, in any fascist takeover, there is some moment where the fascists are planning to take over but haven’t managed it yet. Warning of a fascist takeover at that point is still possible. Necessary even. But perhaps more to the point, we are actually at the point where fascists are silencing people. People in the US currently refuse to speak against Trump and fascism because they are afraid that Trump and his gutter fascists will harm them if they oppose him.

Fascist vigilante harassment chills resistance

This week, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump oozed orangely into Arlington National Cemetary to take a picture of himself standing over veteran’s graves with an oleaginous smile and a big thumb’s up. You may think this is tasteless. And you’d be correct. It’s also illegal. It’s against federal law to campaign in Army National Military Cemeteries. An Arlington official attempted to enforce the rules, and told Trump he couldn’t take his grotesque pictures there. Trump campaign thugs then verbally abused the official and pushed them. When the official filed an incident report, the Trump campaign issued a statement insulting them and claiming they were mentally ill.

The official decided not to press charges, because they were afraid that if they did, they would be targeted, harassed, and worse by Trump supporters, according to the New York Times. Again, an Arlington official, doing their job, tried to enforce rules that are supposed to apply to all. They were roughed up and insulted. And they are afraid to stand up to Trump and his campaign because they know that if their opposition to Trump becomes public, their life will be destroyed. This isn’t an idle fear. Trump has sicced his fascist dittohead minions on election workers whose only crime was refusing to throw the election for Donald Trump. They were doxed and harassed at their home, and one had to go into hiding. Trump also organized a violent coup, in which his supporters attacked the capital building, terrorizing representatives and workers, and five people died. News organization have found a list of incidents in which Trump supporters committed violence explicitly in his name.

Standing up to Trump is frightening. If he singles you out, his supporters will try to hurt you and your loved ones. Trump and his campaign flaks are quite aware of this dynamic, and they use it to their advantage. The campaign said it could release video backing up its version of events. It hasn’t done so, probably because the video shows that the Arlington worker was in the right. But if the video shows the Arlington worker’s face, that worker will be tracked down by Trump supporters. “We have video” isn’t evidence; it’s a threat. And Trump’s threats, implied and otherwise, worked. The official was scared to challenge the leader of a fascist movement for fear of fascist abuse.

The Trump-created Arlington National Cemetery fiasco is a sign that Donald Trump continues to stoop so low by politicizing his appearance there.

The official that tried to stop Trump’s stunt by telling him no on allowing him to conduct photography for his campaign decided against filing charges due to the fact that the person would be subjected to harassment and death threats from MAGA bullies.

[4dragonwings]

Ethos, Pathos, Logos, and the secret fourth option, Cecilos.

Appeal to Cecil Gershwin Palmer

consisting entirely of perfect hair and teeth like a military cemetary

[hillofthehank]

Okay but why is there a whole episode about Peggy helping Cotton secure a burial plot in a military cemetary then after he dies there is an episode of Hank having to flush all his ashes down Patton's toilet?

[k-hippie]

CHAMPIGNAC ... FEW LAST DETAILS :)

And of course, we have some mistakes in the links and in the cc content we are currently correcting ... What is a good Sims 3 World without a little headache ? :D And because we love difficulties, we are currently updating our own website ( which is a mess ) ... What else ? Nothing, everything is fine under the sun of this hot summer :D

The General Hospital is a Maxis one, but from Riverview. @nornities ( thanks A LOT for his/her patience to check Champignac ) pointed to us different things : missing mostly. so, somes of you may not see the Hospital ( Hopital des Bleuets ) in their game.

Bad links are currently corrected and both CC sims3packs folder and CC packages folder updated to include few missing stuff, including the Fresco Market items and the Skylight Studio roof elements we used + the Riverview Hospital :) HERE

The Open Swimming pool ( Champignac Bains Romains ) has lost its border texture ... don't worry : just replace with a one you like :)

The School is not the good one : too many missing stuff there, so we are currently uploading a new Champignac save game which should correct the little mistakes here and there HERE

Our Carpets Rabbit Holes folder had to be updated to get the Bistro RH : it is currently done ! But, you have to re-download the Rabbit Holes HERE

Our apologizes for this ! Really ... Anyway, we'll upload in the next hours a folder with ALL Community Lots and another one with ALL the residential Lots :) Just in case ... And here the 2 listings :

CHAMPIGNAC COMMUNITY LOTS

Small Park : Monticule funéraire oublié - Colline des Celtes Small Park : Petit Fleuriste Small Park : La Vieille Tour no1 Small Park : La Vieille Tour no2 Small Park : Place Olivier Magnolia Horse Training Grounds : Elevage Pégase Junkyard : Neo Casse Stadium : Football Club Fire Station : Pompiers Volants Pool : Piscine Municipale Pool : Bains Romains de Champignac Diner : Brasserie du Cercle Gym : Gymnase Club Visitor Allowed : Boulangerie DeNimes Elixir Shop : Boutique d’élixirs : Elixirs et Reliques Theatre : Théâtre & Opéra Cemetary : Cimetière Civil Hospital : Hôpital des Bleuets Bookstore : Le Kiosque no5 Library : Bibliothèque V. Hugo Café : Café Catane Military Base : Bureau des Armées Police Station : Police Municipale Grocery Store : Epicerie des Halles Market : Marché Bio City Hall : Nouvelle Mairie Art Gallery: Villa Medicis Fishing Spot : Lac des Collines Criminal Hideout : Cyber Crime Beach : La Petite Plage Gypsy Wagon : Oeil d’Irma Science Lab : Bio Sciences Supernatural Hangout : Taverne du Nain Business & Journalism : Centre d’Affaires Consignment Store : Boutique & Brocante Bistro : Bistro Gastronomie Nectary : Le Monastère School : Ecole Municipale Vampire Bar & Cocktail : Midnight Lounge

CHAMPIGNAC RESIDENTIAL LOTS

Maison Familiale : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Maison Bleu Indigo : 1 double bed Maison des Pensées : 2 double bed + 2 single bed Maison des Prés : 3 double bed + 1 single bed Maison Ensoleillée : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison des Colocs : 2 double bed Maison Élégante : 2 double bed + 2 single bed Maison Tournesol : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison Biscornue : 2 double bed + 1 single bed Maison des Haies : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Maison Neo Rustique : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison du Mardi : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison du Chanoine : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison de la Vieille Tour de Garde : 1 double bed Maison des Gardiens : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison des Roses : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Maison des Chardons : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison Nénuphars : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison du Bonjour : 1 double bed Maison en Coin : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison du Thym : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Maison Fougères : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Maison des Collines : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Maison du Coquelicot : 2 double bed Maison du Ginkgo : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Manoir Central : 2 double bed + 2 single bed Manoir Chapelle : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Mas des Vignes : 1 double bed + 1 single bed Ferme des Tortues : 2 double bed + 2 single bed Ancien Lavoir : 1 double bed + 2 single bed Ancienne Ferme : 1 double bed Intro de Qualité : 1 single bed Le Camp des Hippies : 1 double bed Le Bosquet de Gardenias : 1 double bed Champignac Starter no1 : 1 single bed Champignac Starter no2 : 1 single bed

We have carefully furnished all the houses of Champignac to avoid half empty houses when visiting your Sims friends in town but not too much to avoid useless weight ;)

Do you know the origin of the name Champignac ?

We'll ... Champignac is a village from Spirou & Fantasio which is one of the most popular classic Franco-Belgian comics. The series, which has been running since 1938, shares many characteristics with other European humorous adventure comics like The Adventures of Tintin and Asterix. It has been written and drawn by a succession of artists ... Spirou and Fantasio are the series' main characters, two adventurous journalists who run into fantastic adventures, aided by Spirou's pet squirrel Spip, the Marsipulami, and their inventor friend the Count of Champignac ... :D

Once again, sorry for the inconvenient. All files should be ok now, and oh ! one last detail ... Have Fun ! \o/

Blackgryffin

[rjhpandapaws]

A new scientist came into town today, he had perfect gorgeous hair, and teeth like a military cemetary

My art block finally lifted

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

israel has now made a map dividing palestine into 100s of sections and are bombing places palestinians were previously instructed to evacuate to more frequently. 80% of gazans have abandoned their homes and likely will only have rubble to return to. israel estimates they have killed 20% of hamas' 25,000 fighters (5000 military 10,000 civilian casualties). israel is treating gaza the way the US treated laos. they will never be able to eliminate hamas and this is only making more hamas. pointless

You are looking at it the wrong way. Israel tells western observers its a hunt for hamas but in actuality its a process of demolishing Gaza and driving the population into Egypt. It's a textbook ethnic cleansing.

They wouldnt be bulldozing cemetaries and demolishing public infrastructure like the legislature building and schools AFTER capturing it, otherwise. They are making Gaza plainly unliveable so Gazans fucking leave. This is why Israeli government officials are appealing European and American leaders to take on Palestinian refugees.

Israel understands attacking Hamas this way will create more Hamas-like militants in the future, so the solution is remove the population or utterly pacify it through population decimation.

[baby-its-freezing-outside]

I'm away from Tumblr for two weeks and now we're having polls for Tumblr sexyman and my man Cecil Gershwin Palmer is actually WINNING?!!! Also, people don't know who Cecil is?!! Cecil, the og eldritch podcast narrator? Cecil with his "teeth like military cemetary" husband with perfect hair? Cecil with his horror cat who floats?

This was the guy that actually got me into podcasts. He made me scream and cry and laugh and mostly made me very very confused. Welcome to Night Vale is the reason my favourite colour was That Shade of Purple™. I don't think even now you can discuss horror podcasts without discussing Night Vale.

So this is my petition to all. Listen to at least five episodes of Welcome to Night Vale. Please. More people should listen to that podcast. It is amazing. Also, Vote for Cecil Palmer. This has been a public service announcement. And now, the weather.

Also, here's the link for the final round in case anyone has trouble finding it.

https://at.tumblr.com/sexymanotd/final-round-sans-undertale-vs-cecil-gershwin/u4fx1iiotqto

[penname-artist]

'Pentopia' - My Minecraft Metropolis

I wanna talk about my Minecraft map!!! So here's some cool stuff to know about it:

It all begins here, with the mini-map of the former city of Aries, which is replaced this current-day city, appropriately called New Aries (yes I'm naming this after my zodiac shut up). This map is the first thing you see when you spawn onto the map.

Surrounding the mini-map is the grounds of the New Aries Horse Derby, a well-renowned track with a massive statue dedicating their most famous horse, Looking Glass.

And just here, through the tunnel with featured artwork on it...

The entire New Aries Derby track...

The longest portion of the racetrack is over 350 blocks. The track length is roughly around 1000~

Complete with (currently) one 8-horse barn, two small paddocks, 1 indoor arena, and 1 in-progress indoor arena.

But that's just the Derby stuff. Let's go now to the REST of New Aries...

To the right: in-progress zoo

Middle: water tower, wheat field, and fire station (in the back)

Left: Knock-off Wal-Mart

Left: Sundance Studios building

Middle: Stingray Inc. building

Right: vacant warehouse

(in the front are horse-access parking lots, because yes, I wanted to make those)

An overview of the festival grounds for the Derby, with parking, shops and pop-up tents, and a hedge maze

Left: knock-off Hogwarts slash college building

Middle: Aviary

Right: two-story library

Tennis court, public pool, and roller skating rink

A cattle field and a cemetary, behind which is the beginning of a residential area

Back left is courteousy of @ask-dusty-boy (a satanic church), up front is a McDonald's, behind with the #42 is a three-story office building, and to the right of it is a motel

A connected twin multi-story building and attached garden. In the back is a parking garage connected to the in-progress hotel.

Courteousy of @jackalsprey (a strip club)

the in-progress multi-story hotel

(I should mention right about now that nearly every standing building is fully furnished and labelled, and I've so far named, numbered, keyed and color-coded over 50 of this hotel's available rooms)

an ice-skating rink

A tunnel for both vehicles and trains which serves as a city limit for New Aries

and an in-progress mansion located behind the derby

Currently this map is still in it's early days and I have plans for MANY more facilities, including and not limited to: an aquarium, basketball court, restaurants, apartment homes, trailer parks, an amusement park, playground, military base, dog park, adoption center, hospital, vet clinic, gas station, hardware store, water park, campground, police station, clinic, eye doctor, morgue, strip mall, lake/beach, airport, etc.

Yes I spend my days working on this thing, because I can, and it is, undeniably, a lot of fucking fun.

[intheshadowofwar]

28 June 2023

The Salient

Ypres 28 June 2023

In military teminology, a salient is when part of one side’s territory sort of bulges into the other side’s. Imagine you have two lines of paint, one red and one blue, running parallel, and they’re slightly wet and runny. Imagine a bit of the red paint leaking into the blue line. Picture that, and you’ve got a fairly good idea of what a salient looks like on a map.

From a purely military perspective, you don’t want a salient. A salient means that the enemy has positions on your flanks that can provide enfilade fire - effectively, they can hit you from the front and from both your left and right. It is much better to defend a straight line - or better yet, have the enemy in a salient pushing into your line. From a purely military perspective, what the British and French should have done in November 1914, when the fronts began to harden into what would become trench warfare, was to fall back and abandon the town of Ypres to the Germans. Politically, this was impossible - Ypres was the last Belgian town of any note held by the Allies, and to abandon it would be to abandon the country altogether. Since Britain had entered the war to defend Belgium, this was unthinkable.

Hence, the Ypres Salient, established after the First Battle of Ypres in November 1914 and crystalised after the Second in February to March 1915 (the latter being the first used of poison gas in modern warfare, and the first major battle fought by the Canadians.) For the troops of the British Empire, Ypres was always a bad place to be posted - but it was in the summer and autumn of 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres, that the name became synonymous with hell on Earth.

I have some sympathy with Field Marshal Haig, at least in the early stages of the battle - the Allied badly needed a win. The French Army, after the disastrous Nivelle Offensive of early 1917, was in a state of mutiny. The Italians were foundering in the Alps and were about to be utterly hammered by the Germans and Austro-Hungarians at Caperetto. The Russian Army was disintergrating as the country fell into revolution. Of the main Allied powers, only the British had a functioning army. The burden fell on them. What I cannot sympathise with Haig on, of course, was the fact that the battle continued long after it made any sense to keep going. By October and November, in a morass of mud, gas, artillery and blood, the British Army was nearly bled white in a series of pointless offensive to take the blasted ruin of Passchendaele. It would be given up without a fight in the German offensives the following spring.

If you want the answer as to why the Allied appeased Hitler, you can find it in the rows and rows of tombstones in this small strip of Belgian land.

We started today with a brief walk along the walls of Ypres - they date back to Louis XIV, who built a lot of forts because he had a lot of enemies. (For the fortification nerds among you, I can’t remember if it’s a Vauban fort, but I suspect it probably was.) At the Lille gate, so called because it faces that city, we reached the Ramparts Cemetary. Most of the men buried here were killed in the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915, but there are clusters of 1917 names - little groups of men, all from the same battalions, all from the same day. Of particular note were about six men of the Maori Battalion, all of whom died on New Years’ Eve 1917. The men in these graves would have died all at once, victims of a direct hit from an artillery shell. One could escape snipers, machine guns, even gas, but at Wipers, a ‘whizzbang’ could always find you.

We met our new bus (apparently yesterday’s bus has been fired) and left Ypres for the second cemetery of our day’s touring, and perhaps the most unique I’ve ever seen. The Langemarck German Cemetary is one of the bleakest places I have ever visited. Slabs on the ground mark the dead - tens at a time - in what I can only describe as a pitiless mass grave of humanity. A distubingly large portion of these men died in October 1914, many of them cadets - these were the Kindermord bei Ypern, and their pointless, suicidal attacks on British positions were turned by their leaders into a propaganda tool to encourage young men to emulate their ‘sacrifice.’

There are over forty-four thousand German soldiers interred at Langemarck. This was because the Germans were given precious little room for burials after the war - the Belgians and French, pitlessly but somewhat understandably, called the bodies of German soldier ‘pollutants’ in their soil. As a result, German graves on the Western Front are filled to the burst point with wasted humanity. Of course it became a site of Nazi pilgrimage after the German conquest in 1940, and in an attempt to prevent this from happening again, the cemetary has interpretive spaces that a visitor must pass through to access the cemetery. That is the saddest thing about German cemeteries, I think - if they had a beautiful cemetery like the British and French do, it would immediately become a Mecca for fascists. One only needs to look at the grave of SS tank commander Michael Wittman, who despite being a Nazi of the worst stripe, still had tributes laid at his grave almost daily.

My personal verdict, though? Langemarck is obscene. It is dehumanising, alienating and almost industrial. When Seigfried Sassoon spoke of the ‘intolerably nameless names’ at the Menin Gate, he might very well have spoken about this. That there is probably no other option does little to reconcile me to this pit of inhumanity. Perhaps in that way it’s one of the best anti-war arguments I’ve ever seen.

We left Langemarck, passing the Brooding Soldier, a Canadian memorial to their victims of has attacks, and heading on to Polygon Wood. This is where the Australian Fifth Division chose to place their war memorial. The Australian Imperial Force in France had five infantry divisions - there was a sixth, the Mounted Division, in Palestine - and these were predictably numbered from one to five. The Fifth, the youngest of them, had perhaps the worst introduction to the war of all, starting their campaign at Fromelles, an unmitiagated failure of an offensive that still holds the dubious distinction of being the bloodiest day in Australian history. For reasons that are probably obvious, they didn’t chose to build their memorial at Fromelles - they chose Polygon Wood, part of the push towards Passchendaele. This is because Polygon Wood, by the standards of the Western Front in 1917, was actually a success - the Fifth took all of its objectives with ‘acceptable’ losses.

In a weird way, after Langemarck the graves at Polygon Wood seemed almost reassuring; yet it was confronting in its own way. Technically, the cemetery around the Fifth Division Memorial isn’t part of the actual Polygon Wood Cemetary - it’s the Butte New British Cemetary, and that’s pronounced like ‘boot’ you absolute children. But they’re effectively the same complex, and both of them are filled with dead Australians, New Zealanders and Britons. There are whole lines of headstones labelled ‘Known Unto God’ - these are the unknown soldiers, the men so badly mutiliated that they could not be identified. Some could be traced to a unit, a rank or a nationality - ‘an unknown Australian soldier,’ ‘an unknown soldier of the Manchester Regiment,’ ‘an unknown Australian Second Lieutenant’ - but that does little to erase the sense of cruel anonymity. Even so, people still lay tributes at these graves - poppies, flags, little wooden crosses. I’ve always liked that - people who don’t know and can’t know who these men were, but are willing to stop by their grave regardless. There was an unknown soldier with an Australian flag laid on it, and I was a little curious as it stood right next to one that was explicitly identified as Australia. Perhaps whoever left that flag was saying that, whether or not you were a Digger or a Tommy or a Kiwi in life, you’re in our house now, and you’re one of us.

I think it was the historian Mark McKenna who questioned the sincerity of those who make pilgrimage to foreign battle sites and mourn. Everytime I go to one of these places, I think they prove him a little more wrong.

We rambled into Polygon Wood itself, behind the cemetery, and found ‘Scott House.’ This is actually not a house, but a pillbox, taken by Australian forces in the battle. This would have been at the edge of the Hindenburg Line (or the Siegfried Line in German, not to be confused with the line of the same name in the Second World War.) The Hindenburg Line was built behind the German front at the end of 1916, after the Germans had taken a severe battering at the Somme and Verdun. They withdrew to it in the Spring of 1917, and it basically remained the frontline until Germany took the offensive again in 1918. It was something of a master stroke, and was really more of a series of mutually supporting lines of trenches, blockhouses, barbed wire and mines, funnelling the enemy into killing zones where they could be destroyed. It could also be manned by fewer men, allowing Germany to divert troops to the East to crush Russia. The fact that the blockhouse is still intact, over a century later, is a testament to its strength. Of course, in the end, the Hindenburg Line was cracked - or perhaps shattered was the better term. But we’ll get to that in a few days.

After leaving Polygon Wood, we briefly scouted past Tyne Cot - we’ll head back there tomorrow - and returned to Ypres for lunch. After lunch we headed to the In Flanders Fields Museum, in the rebuilt Cloth Hall at the centre of town. This museum has two basic functions - it’s a museum, recounting the history of the war in Belgium in general and in Ypres particularly, and the personal experiences of combatants and civilians, and it’s a memorial, explicitly designed to do justice to those who died in the Ypres Salient and to promote peace. There are things in it I disagree with in it (mostly the generic references to ‘the State’ in the first part of the memorial - all pre-war nations had their flaws, but I don’t think they can all be lumped together 1984-style as one generically malevolent ‘State’) but ultimately I very much recommend this museum. I think there’s a lot in there that other museums could learn from.

As I am wont to do, I’ve put some thought into an exhibit that really spoke to me. I think it’s the layouts of uniforms and equipment of the main combatants (with the somewhat bizarre exception of Britain, but I think that’s because most of their kit overlaps with the Canadians and Australians rather than any particular statement about ‘perfidious Albion’) as they were in 1918. Firstly, they’re laid out in such a way that it’s easy to see exactly what kit a soldier would be carrying, as opposed to being on a mannequin in full battle order (although don’t get me wrong, I love a good mannequin.) Secondly is the presentation - everything looks like it’s attached to a sprue, like a model kit. I don’t know if that’s intentional, but it gives everything a bit of a toy soldier feel - perhaps a sneaky little tweak on the nose at people with unhealthy interests in uniforms and guns (which I understand describes me, but I’m not above a little healthy self-reflection.) There was also a pretty neat exhibition on the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and its French, Belgian, US and German counterparts.

We had a chat with the staff at the museum, and then that was it. I went to Ypres Burger, because I find it conceptually entertaining, and called it a day there. Tomorrow, we’re going to talk about a famous and evocative poem that sits a little funny with me…

…no, it’s not Rupert Brook’s The Soldier. That doesn’t ‘sit funny’ with me, I hate it with white hot intensity. ‘That is forever England’ my bottom.

[swankyangles]

one more time, no interruptions. except you of course <3

[scottiestoybox]

Hey it is meme / cartoon Friday

Some would say deplorable. BTW, a thumbs up is always appropriate at a cemetary.   I wonder what actual military veterans have to say about this latest atrocity by Private Bone Spurs.     Lunch time at the Kennedy house…