The FReeper Foxhole Profiles Sam Houston

LOL. Yikes... I think I'll head for home now. ;-)

You even hit on the name for the threads "treadhead tuesday". So far I've got the M1, Sherman, T-24, and some of the German WWII tanks. I'm looking at the Stuart, Grant, M-60, Sheridan, Leopard, Mekava, Churchill and some of the modern Soviet Tanks.

I've crewed in Shermans, in the Vietnam era M48 and M551 Sheridan, and even the M41 light tank used by the Vietnamese. I've spent some time around M24s [sometimes called *Walkers*] and M3 and M5 Stuarts/Grants/Lees and the M8 and M20 armored cars in foreign service; likewise I've spent a bit of time in the Russian T55, grandson of the venerable T-34 *Scaup*. I've neverhad firsthand dealings with the Soviet IS-1 to IS-10 *Stalin* series, but I know those who did, and didn'tr care for them a bit.

The M1A1 came a bit after my time, but I've fired 4 rounds from the 120mm gun versions and scored 4 hits. I went through the tank gunnery *Table 8* exercise* in a earlier M1 tank with the older M68 105mm gun and scored better than I ever did in an M48 or M60- and I was very good in an M60A1.

Don't overlook Great Britain's Centurion, which the Israelis took to war in 1956, '67 and '73, and which the Australians used very effectively in Vietnam. Likewise the British WWII Comet and Matilda are worthy of note, as are the D-Day *Funnies*, and the current Challenger II that served the Brits alongside us in Iraq deserves notice.

Oh, and dont forget the earliest of British tanks, which gave the vehicles their very name, and their German A7V.

I'd include the WWII M3 Lee as well, the tank destroyer *substitutes* of WWII, and the histories of some of the various tank divisions and smaller orginazational units as well.

I didn't have to know that :)

Why? Are you big?

No, but I'm sweet. My friends call me sweet Victoria.

Well, Texas wants you anyways.

Thank you very much.

Al my ex's live in Texas…

Morning Radu. First in again.

I ain't eatin' no worms! LOL!!!

Be back in a bit. Hubby wants to do some last-minute shopping but I wanted to stop in first.....while folks are awake. LOL!!
*HUGZ* all 'round.

The Walker Bulldog and Chaffe, how could I forget those!!

I was thinking of the Centurian Miltilda. The first tanks would definately be covered.

Snippy is working on Hobart's Funnies.

I already have a thread on the German Sturmgeschutz ready.

Sweet too, huh?

Before I head out, I thought I'd leave this pretty christmas page for y'all to enjoy. I got it in an e-mail yesterday.
Click here and enjoy.
See y'all later.

Not "too" tooth, LOL!

Thanks Radu. Some really nice scenery shots in there.

That too. ;-)

I already have a thread on the German Sturmgeschutz ready.

Splendid. But it's the ones the Finns used in the Jatkisota

with which I'm more familiar, mostly against T34/76 *Scaups* and KV1s.

6 road wheels, those are Germam Stug III's supplied to the Finns.

6 road wheels, those are Germam Stug III's supplied to the Finns.

Yep. Model *G* versions, though refitted with Russian DT machineguns for auxiliary armament, and a few other improvements. More om the Finnish sturmis, and the Finnish tank museum at Parola, *here*.

The British abandon the concept of the self destructing carrier Pigeon .... : )

Thanks for the link, Archy.

The thread will cover both the Stug III and IV. The disadvantage to being on the West Coast is we have no decent Armor museums with foreign armor. :-(

ROTFL!!! That's when they developed "the Killer joke"

Opening Scene:
A suburban house in a boring looking street. Zoom into upstairs window. Serious documentary music. Interior of small room. A bent figure (Michael Palin) huddles over a table, writing. He is surrounded by bits of paper. The camera is situated facing the man as he writes with immense concentration lining his unshaven face.

Voice Over:
This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of jokes.
In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence, he will die... laughing.

Ernest stops writing, pauses to look at what he has written... a smile slowly spreads across his face, turning very, very slowly to uncontrolled hysterical laughter... he staggers to his feet and reels across room helpless with mounting mirth and eventually collapses and dies on the floor.

Voice Over:
It was obvious that this joke was lethal...
no one could read it and live...

Ernest's mother enters. She sees him dead, she gives a little cry of horror and bends over his body, weeping. Brokenly she notices the piece of paper in his hand and picks it up and reads it between her sobs. Immediately she breaks out into hysterical laughter, leaps three feet into the air, and falls down dead without more ado. Cut to news type shot of commentator standing in front of the house.

Commentator:
This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock, comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. Sudden... violent... comedy.
Police have sealed off the area, and Scotland Yard's crack inspector is with me now.

Inspector:
I shall enter the house and attempt to remove the joke.

About now an upstairs window in the house is fiung open and a doctor, rears his head out, hysterical with laughter, and dies hanging over the window sill. The commentator and the inspector look up and then continue as if they are used to such sights.

Inspector:
I shall be aided by the sound of sombre music, played on gramophone records, and also by the chanting of laments by the men of Q Division...

(Points to a group of dour looking policemen standing nearby)

The atmosphere thus created should protect me in the eventuality of me reading the joke.

(He gives a signal.)

The group of policemen start groaning and chanting biblical laments. The Dead March is heard. The inspector squares his shoulders and bravely starts walking into the house.

Commentator:
There goes a brave man. Whether he comes out alive or not,
this will surely be remembered as one of the most courageous
and gallant acts in police history.

The inspector suddenly appears at the door,
helpless with laughter, holding the joke aloft.
He collapses and dies.
Cut to film of army vans driving along dark roads.

Voice Over:
It was not long before the Army became interested in the military potential of the Killer Joke. Under top security, the joke was hurried to a meeting of Allied Commanders at the Ministry of War.

Cut to door at Ham House.
Soldier on guard comes to attention as dispatch rider
hurries in carrying armoured box.

Notice on door:
"Conference. No Admittance"

Dispatch rider rushes in.
A door opens for him and closes behind him.
We hear a mighty roar of laughter...
A series of doomphs as the commanders hit the floor or table. Soldier outside does not move a muscle.

Cut to a pillbox on the Salisbury Plain.
Track in to slit to see moustachioed top brass
peering anxiously out.

Voice Over:
Top brass were impressed. Tests on Salisbury Plain confirmed the joke's devastating effectiveness at a range of up to fifty yards.

Cut to shot looking out of slit in pillbox.
Camera zooms through slit to distance where a solitary figure is standing on the windswept plain.
He is a bespectacled, weedy lance-corporal (Terry Jones) looking cold and miserable.
Pan across to fifty yards away where two helmeted soldiers are at their positions beside a blackboard on an easel covered with a cloth.
Cut in to corporal's face-registening complete lack of comprehension as well as stupidily.
Man on top of pillbox waves flag.
The soldiers reveal the joke to the corporal.
He peers at it, thinks about its meaning,
snickers, and dies.
Two watching generals are very impressed.

Generals:
Fantastic.

Cut to a Colonel talking to camera.

Colonel:
All through the winter of '43 we had translators working, in joke-proof conditions, to try and produce a German version of the joke. They worked on one word each for greater safety. One of them saw two words of the joke and spent several weeks in hospital. But apart from that things went pretty quickly, and we soon had the joke by January, in a form which our troops couldn't understand but which the Germans could.

Cut to a trench in the Ardennes. Members of the joke brigade are crouched holding pieces of paper with the joke on them.

Voice Over:
So, on July 8th, I944, the joke was first told to the enemy
in the Ardennes...

Commanding NCO:
Tell the... joke.

Joke Brigade:
(together)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Pan out of the British trench across war-torn landscape and come to rest where presumably the German trench is. There is a pause and then a group of Germans rear up in hysterics.

Voice Over:
It was a fantastic success. Over sixty thousand times as powerful as Britain's great pre-war joke...

Cut to a film of Chamberlain brandishing
the "Peace in our time" treaty.

...and one which Hitler just couldn't match.

Film of Hitler rally. Hitler speaks; subtitles are superimposed.

Hitler:
SUBTITLE
MY DOG'S GOT NO NOSE

A young soldier responds:
SUBTITLE
HOW DOES HE SMELL?

Hitler:
SUBTITLE
AWFUL'

Voice Over:
In action it was deadly.

Cut to a small squad with rifles making their way through forest. Suddenly one of them sees something and gives signal at which they all dive for cover. From the cover of a tree he reads out joke.

Corporal:
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput!

Sniper falls laughing out of tree.

Joke Brigade:
(charging)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

They chant the joke.
Germans are put to fight laughing, some dropping to ground.

Voice Over:
The German casualties were appalling.

Cut to a German hospital and a ward full of casualties still laughing hysterically.
Cut to Nazi interrogation room.
An officer from the joke bngade has a light shining in his face.
A Gestapo officer is interrogating him; another stands behind him.

Nazi:
Vott is the big joke?

Officer:
I can only give you name, rank,
and why did the chicken cross the road?

Nazi:
That's not funny!
(slaps him)
I vant to know the joke.

Officer:
All right. How do you make a Nazi cross?

Nazi:
(momentarily fooled)
I don't know... how do you make a Nazi cross?

Officer:
Tread on his corns.
(does so; the Nazi hops in pain)

Nazi:
Gott in Hiramell That's not funny!
(mimes cuffing him while the other Nazi claps his
hands to provide the sound effct)
Now if you don't tell me the joke, I shall hit you properly.

Officer:
I can stand physical pain, you know.

Nazi:
Ah... you're no fun. All right, Otto.

Otto starts tickling the officer who starts laughing.

Officer:
Oh no - anything but that please no, all fight I'll tell you.

They stop tickling him.

Nazi:
Quick Otto. The typewriter.

Otto goes to the typewriter and they wait expeaantly. The officer produces piece of paper out of his breast pocket and reads.

Officer:
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

Otto at the typewriter explodes with laughter and dies.

Nazi:
Ach! Zat iss not funny!

Nazi burts into laughter and dies.
A German guard bursts in with machine gun,
The British officer leaps on the table.

Officer:
(lightning speed)
Wenn ist das Nunstruck git und Slotermeyer? Ja!...
Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.

The guard reels back and collapses laughing.
British officer makes his escape.
Cut to a film of German scientists working in laboratories.

Voice Over:
But at Peenemunde in the Autumn of '44,
the Germans were working on a joke of their own.

A German general is seated at an imposing desk.
Behind him stands Otto, labelled "A Different Gestapo Officer". Bespectacled German scientist/joke writer enters room. He clean his throat and reads from card.

German Joker:
Die ist ein Kinnerhunder und zwei Mackel uber und der bitte schon ist den Wunderhaus sprechensie. 'Nein' sprecht der Herren 'Ist aufern borger mit zveitingen'.

He finishes and looks hopeful.

Otto:
We let you know.

He shoots him. Film of German sdentists.

Voice Over:
But by December their joke was ready,
and Hitler gave the order for the German V-Joke
to be broadcast in English.

Cut to 1940's wartime radio set with couple anxiously listening to it.

Radio:
(crackly German voice)
Der ver zwei peanuts, valking down der strasse, and von vas... assaulted! peanut. Ho-ho-ho-ho.

Radio bunts into "Deutschland Uber Alles".
The couple look at each other and then in blank amazement at the radio.
Cut to modern BBC 2 interview.
The commentator in a woodland glade.

Commentator (Eric Idle):
In 1945 Peace broke out. It was the end of the Joke.
Joke warfare was banned at a special session of the Geneva Convention, and in I950 the last remaining copy of the joke was laid to rest here in the Berkshire countryside, never to be told again.

He walks away revealing a monument on which is written:
"To The Unknown Joke".
Camera pulls away slowly through idyllic setting.
Patriotic music reaches crescendo.

Snippy is working on Hobart's Funnies.

Excellent. But don't stop there.