Funny Thing The Other Day...

My grandad was a marine gunner on the repulse when it was sunk, managed to survive and, luckily for him was re-assinged to a new ship at Singapore whereas many of the other marines were pressed into the defence of singapore.

Three of my grand uncles served the Kriegsmarine during the war - none of them survived. Two were submariners, both aboard subs which were lost with all hands in the atlantic (one in 1940, one in 1943). The third was assigned to a Kriegsmarine coastal battery in Norway and died when the battery was bombed.

Hey! I bought grandfather a british SMLE rifle (I'm collecting WW2 rifles of all the nations I can afford) and we went out into the back fields for target practice. Got a short story about how he used to be squad sniper during pre-landing commando missions in the south pacific.

Eighty odd years old, poor vision, mediocre reflexes, and reliably hit the tin can off the fencepost at 150m with no problems. Christ.

Also got a story about how his cruiser was escorting a convoy to Malta, and three Italian Battleships came out after his ship, then retreated and outran his cruiser, which he was astounded by.

Bigger engines means faster, I told him, explaining about the Soviet Pe-2 and German Bf-110 being faster despite being bigger. He still doesn't get how Finland won the Winter War, though.

Finland and the Winter War is *really* a story! It's what happens when you invade a country and there's only one road through inpenetrable woods, and its the middle of a Scandanavian winter.

Protip: Do not drive your tanks across a frozen lake when the other side has artillery!

Ha! I have a Finnish M-1939 Sako battlerifle. I would say "stupid russians" except they were more pathetic/desperate.

And Grandfather was back again today. It's not a sea story, but we tried to teach my cousin to target shoot, and she thought the SMLE was too frightening and kicked too hard. Then I took a turn using my Finnish re-barreled Mosin-Nagant 1891 and really made some noise.

When I was a younger man, I wanted a Martini-Henry more than anything!

When I was a younger man, I wanted a Martini-Henry more than anything!

When I was younger I wanted to be Superman hehe:

Now I grewed up to be Count Dracula which suits me fine

Martini-Henry? They imported a bunch of those lately. They're antique (made before 1899), like my M-1891 Mosin-Nagants, so they're not considered firearms.

There was a neat picture of german U-boat crew armed with Mosin-Nagants. Near the end of the first war, the german high command took away machineguns from Uboats and gave them to land troops, and gave the uboats captured weapons for shooting at mines and boarding enemy vessels.

see, Martini-Henrys for sale

Getting back to the theme of family members in Navy service...........my stepfather was a leading seaman and asdic operator on the Flower Class Corvette HMS Campion (K108) between 1942-45. They never sank anything, but scared a lot of U-Boats off on convoys and thankfully rescued many people who had been torpedoed. I did a lot of research on his ship and the best moment was when one of the other crew veterans sent me a copy of a photograph that actually had Ron in the picture. When I showed it to him he couldn't believe it and was clearly moved, he did not remember the picture having been taken. Here is a picture of the ship and the picture with my stepfather (far right, white cap).

very cool, Star!