Whimsical Wednesday - Mickey Mouse Riot Police

I don't know if I should be laughing or be worried....

By Bopchara (Link)

2015 Commitments

So, let’s look towards my goals and hopes for my 2015 commitments.  Part of my issues on some of these will be that I probably be working out of town most, if not all, of the year with one or two weekends a month home.

Personal Related:

• Change my diet / eating habits to lose weight and become more health oriented.
• Try to exercise more, mainly by walking
• Try to clear out more items from my aunt’s house and get a Building Inspector to find what needs to be corrected for possibly renting it out or selling it
• Go back to cleaning up my basement
• Try to get rid of more books and start reducing my CD & DVD collections

Entertainment Related:

Read / listen to a minimum of 24 books by the end of the year, especially since I am not planning to read many novellas or essays this year.  Specially, I want to finish reading the current Ridgeway book that I am reading and finish off the other two that are on my list to read on the same subject.  I also plan to read a couple of books on WW1, some books on the Argentine side of the Falklands conflict, and to finish off the Ian Fleming’s James Bond series.  After that, my main goal is to read the four volume opus by Bruce Nichols’ Guerrilla Warfare in Civil War Missouri (just over 1600 pages including notes & indexes!)

I play to track on my blog’s 2015 Commitments page also all of the radio plays / dramas and movies that I watch as well.  I am sort of interested in see how many different things that I watch / listen to as well.  The catch will be that I will only list it one time if I listen / watch it multiple times. 

Traveling to site-see or visiting local sites will be at a minimum this year as I plan to spend most of my free time and time off working on my aunt’s house or my house.  However, I do plan to go to the Missouri History Museum to see the Utopia: Revisiting the German State in America exhibit.  Otherwise, anything else will not be planned.

Gaming Related:

Here is where I am going to make up a bunch of wild and out-right lies.  I know that I am lying to myself, but here we go!

My basement gaming table is one of my top priorities for 2015.  I want to get everything cleared off that I got on it, which really is not much, but I need to sort, inventory, and bag it for selling instead of just sweeping it in to a trash can.  I think I can realistically do it in two days, if I can only commit myself to it when I am back at home.

Continue on with my 15mm Ridgeway project in painting my Canadians and start repainting my Fenian figs.  Next I am going to lay out a scale map and see what I need for terrain to make this a playable game prior to the 150^th anniversary of the battle in 2016.

I am planning to restart my 15mm ACW project this year too.  I am going to try to mirror it when I start reworking on my Fenians for Ridgeway. 

If I get my Ridgeway project near completion, I might start back up my 1/6000 Falklands Conflict naval project.   This should be an easy painting project due to the smallest of the models.

I plan to start working / buying up more terrain.  This will be pretty restrictive as I will really only be able to do it the weekends I am home since I will be limited to how much space I can pack of gaming items that will need to  be transported back with me in my car at the end of the out of town project.

I am hoping to run at least three games this year: a 20mm Falklands game, a 10mm Vietnam game, and the third to be determined later, but I am thinking of running an ACW game using paper figures from Billy Bones Workshop until my 15mm ACW figures are done.

Due to other commitments for spending free time on cleaning out my aunt’s house and other projects around the house, I am not planning to attend any gaming conventions this year.

I will start back up on my downsizing of my dead gaming projects and try to get back to selling stuff off, but if I am out of town for most of the year, I might only try to sell off only a small amount periodically as I will be limited to what I can carry with me in the car along with all of my important items (clothes, cooking ware, etc.)

One thing that will be good this year is I will have my house finally paid off!  So now I have what I have being using to pay my mortgage can be spent on other things.  Most of it will go to making sure my aunt’s house will pass inspections, increase in my insurance for a second home, extra property taxes, etc. and another large chunk will go to savings, but I should have extra cash for gaming.  I am probably going to start buying more pre-made terrain, especially snow/winter as I really don’t have any of that.   Then I probably start sending stuff off again for painting commissions. 

Finally, new projects – I am planning to avoid doing any new projects this year.  Yeah, I tend to break this one every year, but I am trying to really mean it.  I am going to only buy things to finish off or add to existing projects.  The only exception that I might make is breaking down and buying the 28mm Perry’s ACW / British Intervention figures to do Ridgeway in a larger scale.  I guess one could argue that this would be a new project, but I am looking at it as an extension to my existing project…but there are no plans to buy the figures now.

As always…cheers!

Sapper

A Year in Review: 2014

Well, another year as come and gone and a lot of broken resolutions from 2014 were never made.  So with tears in my eyes, lets cover what I resolved in January of 2014, copied right off from my entry in January in Italics, and my end-of-year answers in red:

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Personal:

Weight loss: To weigh 10 lbs lighter by the end of year, but to strive for more. Yeah, this was an epic failure.  I gained weight.  I have since lost some of it, but not the 10 lbs that I wanted.

Orienteering Society:  If I am relocated to a major city that has an orienteering society, I will join it and be involved in at two events, more if possible  Never even tried...sigh

Clearing out the house:  I will take a week off in March/April/May, weather & job dependent, and get a “Got Junk” dumpster delivered to get the old furniture out of the basement & garage, then go to my aunt’s and do the same in her garage.  Sadly, this came too true.  I did get a truck load of junk out of my basement and garage in the Spring (roughly 400 cubic feet of crap!)  However, with my aunt passing away during the summer, we also had to get rid of a lot more at her house then what I was planning.  I still have much more to go through.

Inventory / Sell books:  Complete my inventory and sell/give away to charity at least two banker boxes of books Sadly, again this was not completed in some ways, but like the one above, it was more than what I wanted to do.  I did not complete my inventory, but did give away one banker box of books to troops overseas.  My aunt was avid reader too and we have been giving away most of her books.

Record with books I read:  Record which books I read over the year for a review at the end of the year. Done and also started to add audio books & plays to my list later.  I read / listen to a total of 52 books, essays, thesis's, novels, and novellas.  Of which 33 were Non-Fiction and 19 were Fiction, which almost gives me a 3:2 ratio, which is highly unusual for me as it normally more like 5:1.  I think that it was mainly due to the fact that majority of the Fiction books were novellas, instead of novels, making them a much faster read.

Blog:  Make at least one post a month, but with the goal of doing three a month.  The subject and length is not important, get me to keep with some regular activity is important. Sort of made it.  Some months were less than 3, others were more than 3.  As an overall goal of 36 entries for a year, I had 37 total.  Unfortunately, several of them were about my aunt's illness and death, followed by the rioting & looting in Ferguson only 2 to 3 miles away. 

Sight-Seeing/Events: Go to the 150^th Anniversary of the Battle of Pilot Knob, Missouri.  Also visit the Cahokia mounds.  Take one week off to travel to both western Missouri and eastern Kansas for the 150^th Anniversary of the Civil War’s Price’s great raid, plus Bleeding Kansas sites, or travel down to eastern Arkansas and western Tennessee and Mississippi to see various Civil War sites.  If the finances and work are good, take one week off to go to New England to see American Revolutionary sites and Lovecraft’s territory. Happily, the main event was successful and I did get to go to Pilot Knob to see the 150th anniversary with Steve H & Pat L.  I also did get to see a battlefield for Black Jack in Kansas and the 150th anniversary reenactment at Fort McAllister, GA.  Besides that, I worked in Richmond, VA, for two weeks and got to visit the Edgar Allen Poe Museum & the Tredegar Iron Works Historical Site.  While at home, I got to go to the newly opened Civil War Museum in historical Jefferson Barracks; went to a Civil War book signing at the Soldier's Memorial and along with a nice historical walk of downtown St Louis with Steve H & his bother Phil H; sat on a lecture from Dr Mark A Lause about his book on Gen. Price's failed 1864 invasion of Missouri, as well as a lecture from James W Erwin on his two book series on the guerrilla war in Missouri; and finally, I went and saw the Prohibition exhibit while it was in St Louis.

Game Related:

Gaming area:  After the removal of the junk furniture in the basement, clear off my table space and run a game at my house no later than June 7, 2014 (incidentally, I am planning to run a D-Day game on that day for the 70^th Anniversary), but earlier would be better.  Sadly, another failure as I only ran one game and have not finished clearing off my table in the basement, even if it is almost done.

Inventory/selling “Lead Mountain”:  To completely sell off everything 15mm WW2 that is not specifically for my core company size forces.  To completely sell off everything of my 10mm WW2 project, except specific pieces for display.  To completely sell off everything of my 15mm Plains Indian wars.  To start inventorying and selling off my 25mm projects/figures that are not part of any project that I really want to keep. Another complete failure.  I started to redo my inventory and create an Excel spreadsheet and give each baggy of items a code number so I could keep track of who bought it, did they pay, the tracking code for mailing (if any), and a record that I did get rid of it so I would not be looking for it again if I found an old list.  But with my aunt's illness and death, that project sort of came to a stop and I never got back to it.  I did however give the 15mm Plains Indians figures over to Steve H.

Painting:  Commission out my 25mm Winter War figures and finish off my 20mm projects first.  Anything beyond that will be part of my 15mm WW2 projects. Ha!  I only painted one (1!) figure this whole year and never sent anything off to be commissioned.  Epic failure!

20mm Anarchy in the UK project:  1) Buy the needed vehicles from BW Models before they close for good.  2) Buy more civilian vehicles from Oxford / other sources.  3) Finish making my base cover for the urban environment and have enough buildings done to do a 4’x4’ game in an urban area. See above

25mm Winter War project:  1) Build the bases for the forest sections and work on game mat. 2) Paint (or commission) at less one platoon for both sides (see above) See above

Run games:  Run at least four games, at least one at my house: 1) 20mm WW2 D-Day using TFL’s Chain of Command; 2) 20mm Falklands using TFL’s Chain of Command; 3) 20mm Anarchy in the UK to be determined (could be two platoons skirmish, Gangsters/Police, Humans/Zombies, etc); and 4) 10mm Vietnam using either Charlie Don’t Surf or Tour of Duty. I only got the 20mm Falklands game off (Link to the AAR).

1/6000 Falklands project:  Paint and base the ships I really want to start crying now...see above

15mm Ridgeway project:  Read Vronsky’s “Ridgeway” and take detailed notes. OK, I am reading Vronsky's book and taking notes.  Also the only figure I finish painting is for this project.  So I give myself a successful mark here.
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Well, there you have it, my Year in Review.  I am going to try to type up my 2015 commitments later tonight. 

Until then...be see you!

Sapper

Happy Holidays!

I meant to post this earlier, but just was not able to do so.  So happy holidays to all, regardless of your choice for which holiday you choose to follow or recognize.

I am going back to enjoying Festivus

I will try to get back and post at least one more entry before the end of the year.

Cheers

Sapper

Project Ridgeway / Fenian Invasion and other things

Before I get into my Project Ridgeway, let’s touch on the other things that have been going on.  First, I am working out of town again and I am back in Savannah, Georgia.  I got to see the 150^th anniversary reenactment of Sherman’s assault on Fort McAllister just outside of Savannah.  Unfortunately, I misread the events schedule and thought that the reenactment was to start at 5pm, when in fact it started at 4pm.  This was because in their event schedule they stated that the assault would begin at 5pm (as it really occurred 150 years ago.)  That was the time the Federal reenactors would charge up and over the walls and not the beginning of the assault.  I really wish that they were clearer in their description for when it was to begin.  Anyways, I still got to see it, but I was not in an ideal spot for pictures.  Regardless, I forgot to bring my good camera from Missouri, so I only had my camera on my phone.  Needless to say, the pictures are not good…sigh.
 

I have also finally caught up on the movies that I want to see that are still out over the last few weekends: Fury, The Equalizer, Big Hero 6, The Penguins of Madagascar, Nightcrawler, and Birdman.   I am looking forward to see the final part of The Hobbit and probably go see St. Vincent too.  (Yes, I now The Hobbit is now out, but I am going to wait until the weekend to see it.)  After that, I don’t think that there will be anything that I will be interested in until Kingsmen comes out in mid-February, and then Avengers & Mad Max in May, then there will be several movies after then.  Now, I still have to get around to seeing Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, which somehow I missed seeing it when it came out, probably because of all of the rioting and crap going on next door in Ferguson.

On the reading front, I have been trying to read my book on the Battle of Ridgeway by Peter Vronsky.  I am just having a really hard time reading it.  Not that it is a difficult or boring read, or that I really have no time to read, just because I am not use to reading actual physical books, especially hardbacks, ever since I got my Kindle about three years ago!  I don’t think that I actually read a hardback book since then.  I mostly read when I eat dinner and sometimes at lunch.  It is really hard to keep a hardback open and flip the pages while trying to eat.  Plus, since I am trying to take notes while reading Ridgeway, it is that much harder too.  So, I read a few more additional books on my Kindle over the past few weeks inside of keeping up with Ridgeway.  So I have now finished the following books to add to my list:

Live and Let Die by Ian Fleming

A Damn Close-Run Thing: A Brief History of the Falklands Conflict by Russell Phillips

British Artillery During Operation Corporate by Major Chris D Landry

Submarine Operations During the Falklands War by Lt. Cmdr. Steven R Harper

Mau Mau Kenyan Emergency 1952-60 by Peter Baxter

Dyatlov Pass Keeps Its Secret by Irina Lobatcheva (which I am about 2/3^rd of the way complete)

Project Ridgeway:

So, I am now re-gearing up to get my Project Ridgeway up and running again after 20 years or so of being dormant. Currently, I am reading up on it and making notes.  I will say this about having more access to information to read, that I am finding that my initial views of the engagement and the Fenian preparedness to be a lot different now.  I am now seeing that the Canadian Militia was actually in a worst condition then what I believed and the Fenians’ failure was more due to internal spies, political infighting, and US government interventions then anything that the Canadian Government could do.  One of the real surprises that I found was that just under 10% of the crew of the USS Michigan, an armed tug that played a critical role on patrolling the US & Canada border, were actually part of the Fenian Brotherhood and that they successfully sabotage the ship from intercepting the Fenian crossing over into Canada leading up to the Battle of Ridgeway!  Another surprise that I found was of the Fenian prisoners captured by both the Canadians and the US government (who captured almost all of them), was that almost a third of them were Protestants.  So this was really a true nationalist, and not a sectarian, movement.

Books that I have read:

The Enrolment List for the Militia in Hamilton, Canada West (1865) (newspaper article from the Hamilton Evening Times)

The Skirmish at Lime-Stone Ridge by Anonymous (newspaper account of the Battle of Ridgeway) 

The Last Invasion of Canada: The Fenian Raids, 1866-1870 by Hereward Senior

What I am currently reading:

Ridgeway: The American Fenian Invasion and the 1866 Battle that Made Canada by Peter Vronsky

What I plan to read still:

Troublous Times in Canada: A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866-1870 by John MacDonald (the minister of the militia)

History of the Fenian Raid On Fort Erie; With An Account of the Battle of Ridgeway, June, 1866 by George Denison (the commander of the militia forces at the Battle of Fort Erie)

Plus there are quite few other resources that I have gotten recently, thanks to the Internet Archive website and www.ridgewaybattle.ca that I plan to skim through to see if I can find any other tidbits of information.  It is amazing how much more stuff has become available since 20+ years ago.

Miniatures:

I am doing my project in 15mm as that was the scale that I started all of this in 20+ years ago.  Luckily, the Fenians will be the easiest to do with miniatures that are available in this scale.  My Fenians are Old Glory, but now that I have some new information about the uniforms, or lack of in many cases, for the Fenians at Ridgeway there will be some changes.  Some of them are going to be repainted, and others are going to be replaced to get a more accurate representation of what was at the battle.  I am going to have to look for armed civilians for the replacement figures.  I will probably be looking at Old Glory’s Boers or their Boxer Rebellion’s armed Europeans to try and keep all of the sculpts similar.  But I am afraid that too many of the Boers will have the leather cartridge pouch belts and the Boxer Europeans will look too upper class to work since I can’t find pictures of them.  So, I will also be looking into Blue Moon’s ACW infantry in shirts if they are not too out of scale with the Old Glory figures, but wish that they had a mix of civilian hats with the floppy hats.  The final thing that I will need to do is the mounted Fenian scouts.  I’ve got Old Glory ACW cavalry for them.

The Canadian militia, however, is a different story.  Sadly, there currently is no miniature lines specially designed for the Canadian militia in 15mm.  But now there is a 10mm line from Pendraken and a 28mm line from Perry that covers the Canadian militia for the 1860’s, but that would mean re-starting from scratch again.  So for now, I will refrain from buying yet another scale for a very limited project (but, those Perry’s are pretty…plus doing 25mm would make Blake and Don happy…must resist!)

So the bulk of my Canadian militia is from the now defunct Falcon Miniatures.  Luckily for me, I bought all of the figures that I would have needed to do the Canadian militia at a 1:10 ratio way back when I started this project.  But unfortunately, I will never be able to expand on them to get smaller ratio for bigger units.  I found that their ‘ACW Militia with Shakos’ actually looked very close to the Canadian militia uniform for the bulk of the forces.  Also, their ‘ACW 79^th NY Highlanders’ will work great for 10 Company, of the Queen’s Own Rifles of Toronto.  There are some things wrongs, but they are workable.  The thing about the ACW Militia that I don’t like is that they are marching with their rifled muskets at attack march.  I rather had them skirmishing or advancing instead, especially when the Highlanders are attacking.  Oh well, you can’t win them all. 

The other problem is the lack of officers, flag bearers, musicians, and NCOs.  I will have to live without the flags, musicians, and NCOs, but I am using officer figures from the old Military Miniatures of New Zealand’s (how many here can remember this old company before it became the 800 lbs. gorilla that it is today?) line for their New Zealand Wars, which has been since sold off and now belongs to Battleline Miniatures.  I could also go to Battleline’s 1860’s British from their NZ War line for the line militia troops, but they are wearing the pillbox style hat.  So far everything that I have read states that the militia was wearing shakos and not caps or hats, so they will not be right either.  I tried looking for pictures of the units shortly around the period of the battle, but have not found any.  I have only found pictures much later or for other units.  So, I am sticking with the shakos.   

So next dilemma is what figures to use for 5 Company, QOR.  They were armed with Spencer carbines.  I am sort of leaning towards using my NZ War’s Armed Constabulary figures for them, but they are wearing billed cap.  I might be able to putty them up to look like shakos, but I am not that good.   I might just roll with them as they are now.   Now this leaves Lt Col Booker, the overall commander of the militia at the battle.  He was the only militia officer mounted on a horse.  What I am using is a Minifig’s British mounted officer for the Crimea War.  He is clearing a smaller figure compared to the rest, but that is all that I find. 

Finally, will be looking at figures to do the various militia and British regulars to do the Battle at Fort Erie that occurred after Ridgeway and the do the possible battle with the Lt Col Peacocke’s column at Fort Erie had the Fenians decided to stand because the US Navy did not stop their reinforcements (plus add some more Fenian troops to represent reinforcements filtering in from Buffalo, New York, as well.)   Plus I need to read up on the Battles of Pigeon Hill (1866) and Eccles Hill (1870) to see what militia units where involved there too.   I think for the most part, the Battleline’s 1860’s British infantry will work for those.

Here is the other bugger, there really are no good rules for the scale (in terms of the number of miniatures on the board) that I want to do this in.  I always planned it to be a 1:10 ratio for miniatures to men, so there would only be about 80-90 figures on the board, per side, and use a slightly modified version of Space 1889: Soldiers’ Companion.  However, I have since lost those notes since the one game that I did run 20+ years ago.  But since then, I have got to read more about the battle and realized that that this system is not good either. 

The battle was pretty much fought by companies in skirmish orders and there was a real low casualty loss.  Matter of fact, the Canadians only suffered about 6% of the total force, killed, wound, or capture.   The killed was just barely over 1% of the total force!  At a 1:10 ratio, that means any losses with more than 5 figures would be higher than the real battle.  So this is conflict that was lost more due to friction of the morale than casualties.  Most game systems don’t start enforcing morale rolls until there is a 25% or greater losses on a side.  So I think you can start seeing my need to look for a low casualty / high friction morale system for a game mechanic.

The next issue is Command & Control, which ties back to the items that was addressed above.  With the average Canadian company only about 40-50 men strong, that means at a 1:10 ratio there is just 4-5 figures per company.  That is too small of number of figures for most skirmish systems too, especially when you start realizing that most the Canadian companies that were skirmishing occupied a frontage of almost 300 yards!  For an example, if I was to use RF&F ground scale, 1” = 25 yds, a unit of 40 men standing in close order takes up 1”, but 300 yds is 12”!  So any rules set out there now will fail in their system to reflect command & control.

The best answer to all of my problems to reduce my figure ratio to a lower number, like 1:5 so I can have bigger companies of 8-10 figures each, making them in with some current rules out there.  But I have to stick to my original ratio of 1:10 because I can’t buy any more Falcon Miniatures to beef up the Canadians as they no longer exist. 

So, in the end, it looks like I am going to have to create my own rules.  I have some ideas already, but I still need to put them down to paper and test them out.  But, I plan to steal / copy / find inspiration from several existing rules and mixed some various elements together, mainly from Space 1889: Soldier’s Compendium, Regimental Fire & Fury, The Sword and the Flame, and the Too Fat Lardies’ friction rules.

Basing:

Since it looks like that I am going to make my own rules, I am free to do my own basing.  I was originally thinking about mounting 4 figures to a Flames of War size base so it would represent a company and use a Minibit’s dice frame on the base to keep track of the strength of the company (1 pt per 10 men).  But I then ran it to the issue of what I am going to do to show the frontage of a skirmish order. 

So next I thought that I might mount each figure on a penny and use them individually.  I sort of like that, but that means 80-90 figures to move, plus trying to keep track of what company each figure goes too.  Then that lead to me thinking of ground scale issues.

Now, I am thinking that I will still mount my figures individually on a rectangle base.  On the base I will put a label on it to identify which unit that figures goes to, plus, I am thinking of mounting Minibit’s dice frame to keep track of the stands strength.  I can go two ways on this.  One is that each stand represents 10 men (one figure) and with the die I can use it to keep strength for each two men (i.e. if 10 men, the die will be set at “5’.)  Or, I can use the stands to track every ten men and only use the number of stands per company as necessary (i.e., one stand for 6 Company is in close order formation so all 40 men occupy the same footprint of one stand, so the die shows “4”, where 9 Company is in skirmish order over 300 yards, I would use all four bases for the company spread out across the 300 yard scaled front with each base with the die set at “1”.)  This will allow a player some tactical options on deploying skirmishers.  I am playing around in my head with this idea, but I think this might be the answer.

In the final note for my Ridgeway project…I actually painted a figure!  This is the first figure that I finished painting this year!  It is not completely done, but basically he is finished.  All that is left is to mount the figure to a base (with is part of my issues listed above), paint and flock the base, and spray a sealer on it.  The figure is the first of 25 figures for the Canadian 13^th Battalion Volunteer Militia (Infantry) (Hamilton).  The remaining 24 figures are about 30% or so done as well.  Maybe by the end of the year, I can claim them to be finished too (save the basing and sealer).  I plan to be painting them tomorrow. 

Cheers,

Sapper

Audiobook "The Road To Kalamata: A Congo Mercenary's Personal Memoir" read by "Mad" Mike Hoare

This is a quick update about my current audiobook that I am listening to today.  I had to do a lot of driving for work today, so I finally started to listening to one of "Mad" Mike Hoare's books that is available on audio.  They are also read by the man himself too!  

So I started with The Road To Kalamata: A Congo Mercenary's Personal Memoir, which is the shortest of the books, plus it is about his 4 Commando, so chronologically comes before his other books even thought it was written much later.  I really am enjoying it!  I have about an hour left and plan to listen to the rest of it before I go bed tonight.  I am not sure when it was recorded, but Hoare sounds great.  Considering the book was published in 1989, that means that he was 70 or older when he did the audio for it.

Anyways, it got some great stories (and some sad ones) that can make some interesting scenarios for games in the 1960's Congo, or even modern African games.  I don't want to give away too much as I might be tempted to get back to doing B'Maso and want to save some things for unsuspecting players.  But besides that, there is something unnerving to hear Hoare say, "Come to Daddy!" Just not something I would expect to come from someone like him.

Sapper

I am OK as of now - Ferguson, MO...again

For those who remember my previous post, I live really close to Ferguson, MO.  So far it has been quite where I live.  But you can hear the sirens off in the distance periodically.  Several local businesses, especially the liquor store, near me have boarded up just in case now.  I will periodically pop on every few days just for a head count that I am OK.

Oddly enough, this is my fourth(!) nearby (less than 3 miles) riot in my life.  Two back in my college days where I was going to school (the Rodney King riot and the ABC fraternity riot) and the two here (the one about 3 months ago and the current one).

Hopefully the violence will die off or be suppressed quickly.

Sapper

Test - 150th Anniversary Reenactment of the Battle of Pilot Knob, MO

Well, better late than never.  It took me a while, but here are the photos from the 150th anniversary reenactment of the Battle of Pilot Knob, Missouri, back in September.  I was there with Steve H & Pat L only on Sat.  It turned out that the Sat reenactment was only about the first day of the battle, covering the fighting of the gap and in Ironton.  So that is why there are no pictures of the Rebs storming the fort!

If you click on the caption for the photo of the US cavalryman, it should take you to my photo album so you can look at the pictures as your leisure.  Below that (if it works!) is a video I made using the same pictures and adding a soundtrack.  I have tried several times to get the soundtrack to work, but it keeps cutting in and out to me.  I don't know if it is that I have a bad connection or if the video is bad.  Give it a try and let me know.

I was planning to have an article about the battle with this posting, but I am still working on that.  Whenever I get it done, I will re-post these pictures and video.  

Cheers,

Sapper

Holding the line!

No words can express the meaning...

Source or here

Whimsical Wednesday

I so need this app for my cell phone!

And I need this app for my GPS / Sat Nav!

You can never have too much Brian Blessed in your life!