Had a very good trip to deal old Blighty, as they call it in old WWII films, with good weather, no riots in my immediate vicinity, no attempts by US Immigration (a scurry crew if ever there was one!) to prevent me coming back in, or anything vaguely dire happening. I got to spend lots of money, sing with my old band, the incredible Ken Wood & the Mocers (First single out now, 34 copies sold!), visit some friends and go jaunting off into the Welsh borderlands for a few days in a hired Mini (sort of shoebox with wheels, a marvelous toy car). My wife is a comfort-minded sort who always complains when it rains, which does most days in England, and wouldn't let me breathe in my heritage by ambling the length of Offa's Dyke dreaming of the 8th century and stealing some Welshman's sheep! The Dyke is a tremendous thing even today, and one can see why Charlemagne regarded its creator, Offa of Mercia, as his only equal in the west. We went to various places in central Wales, including the S. Wales Borderers Museum where the Second Battalion, 24th Foot was raised - and I was most impressed by the Zulu War room, which, apart from shields, assegais, etc., has two excellent dioramas, a 30mm Rorke's Drift by Ian Knight and a 56mm Isandhlwana - a very large piece - by (I believe) Norman Abbey. I met a fellow who runs a militaria shop - most of his C19th uniforms had been rented for "Victorian Week" - who told me his great granddad was at Rorke's Drift, and that he had visited it for the centenary in 1979.
Wales is great, all sheep, mist and mountains. On the way back, we visited Ludlow Castle, nicely ruined by Cromwell. We spent an afternoon at Lichfield - about 30 miles from my folks home outside of Birmingham - where there is a fine C13th cathedral built on the site of a much older church. There is a chapel there for the Staffordshire Regiments - my granddad was in the South Staffords - with the regimental colours and plaques listing those who fell in different campaigns - again, some in the Zulu War, and some drowned on the Nile 1886 - not surprising really! Lichfield is one of my wife's favorite places; she'd like to live there. The beer is good too. Then again, after two years in the states, any English beer is like nectar.
What did I waste my money on: Wee, 34 packs of assorted 15mm Minifigs from Adventure Works in London, mostly the figures that the White Plains people can't bother themselves with - Dark Age Picts, Scots, Merovingian and Ottonian Franks, Lombards, etc. Plus its nice to buy figures in packs of four or eight, rather that 24's - I can't deal with 24 matching Saxon archers, it offends my sense of disorder. Adventure Worlds do mail order for those, like me, who don't trust the Minifigs factory in Southhampton to get orders right. Accept Master Charge too. Bought more 1/300th Hodendowah and other Sudan types. I have every Hodendowah born between 1899 and 1884 in my collection ! Not try, of course, but those little fellows look like thousands! Books! Michael Barthorp's WAR ON THE NILE and THE ZULU WAR in the Blandford series. Haythornwaite's UNIFORMS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION WARS, etc., at very low prices. My friend Ian Greenwood of Wargame Developments "Guthnier's Army" and SLINGSHOT - informed me that my "Long Serpent" game had won the Alan Nicholls Memorial Prize (Gosh!) for the best medieval article of the year. I'd never heard of the prize, of course, but was glad to get 20 quid to spend, which I did at the University of London bookshop. I bought four volumes of Norse Sagas, as was only right and proper in the context.
Back to MWAN #19 Table of Contents
Back to MWAN List of Issues
Back to Master Magazine List
© Copyright 1986 Hal Thinglum
This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com