So Much For The Army

Oy. The story is as follows: female recruit can’t handle bayonet training, gets cussed out by the instructor, bursts into tears — and the instructor is now facing a court-martial because feewings.

I’d put in a little excerpt from the article, except that it would cause all veterans’ blood pressure to soar and the howls of outrage would upset all the other people in the cubicle farm*.

And the Brits expect their army to go to war… it is, as they say, to laugh.


*I know that most of you read this website at work. Don’t bother lying to me.

Happy 100th

Britain’s Royal Air Force celebrates its centenary today. Which is an excellent excuse for me to show pics of my all-time favorite Brit warplanes, in no specific order.

Bristol Beaufighter

SE.5a

Hawker Hurricane IIc

Avro Vulcan

De Havilland Mosquito

Supermarine Spitfire

Hawker Hunter

Sopwith Snipe (not the Camel)

Avro Lancaster

Hawker Hart

This last was, I think, the best-looking biplane ever made. There are still several models (not replicas) flying, even though production ceased in 1938.

A couple of gratuitous book references about the early days of the RFC/RAF respectively:  Goshawk Squadron and Piece of Cake, both by Derek Robinson. And for the story of possibly the toughest human being who ever lived:  Reach For The Sky, by Paul Brickhill.