Welcome Back! Oh, that's me who's back... Let me start by saying that I've spent the last month on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. Wearing my Marine Corps Captain's bars, I was forward deployed in support of the Commander in Chief, US Central Command for operations to reduce Saddam Husayn's ability to produce & maintain bio/chem weapons. After spending the month of February in the Middle East, peace broke out everywhere and for some unknown reason, the UN Secretary General believes his negotiations with a mass-murderer will be different than everyone else's. When the agreement is violated, Kofi Annan better be the first one calling for strikes... Sad news from the Board meeting. Bill Hogan has been overwhelmed by events and glumly announced that he would no longer be able to work as President or as a Board Member for HMGS South. With regret, he has vacated his position. We thank Bill for a year's worth of hard work and wish him well. Hopefully he'll be able to squeeze Recon and Hurricon into his incredibly busy schedule. Alas, elections are coming up and if you desire the opportunity to do a little extra for your fellow historical miniature gamers, then take the plunge and put your name on the ballot. At this time, Rickey Grice has been named to fill the vacant slot. The Board seats up for grabs are the seat formerly known as Bill Hogan and Curt Dees' seat. After the new members are elected, the new Board will take a vote among themselves to fill the key positions of President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer, and National Rep. Expect the election results to be announced at Recon. Recon is shaping up nicely thanks to a lot of work by the gamemasters and South powers. It's going to be a busy weekend with a lot going on. The MacDill Airfest is going at the same time, so if you get out during the late morning or the afternoon, you should be able to see the streaks in the sky that announce who's currently flying. I'll make sure to have an Airfest schedule available just in case you can't visually recognize aircraft at 15 miles. With Recon we're seeing an upsurge in new members. Is this great or what? We should sign up our 300th member any day now. The expansion of membership throughout the state of Florida is the best part - the new joins seem to be equally spread across the state. We also welcome a new member from Colorado - Hey Brent! And thanks to USNavy orders, we now have our farthest west member, serving aboard the USS Salt Lake City, out of Coronado, CA. However, this will change when your newsletter editor gets transferred to Korea in May. I'll still do the newsletter, transferring it digitally to my wife who will print a master copy, then give it to Rhett for his mass reproduction and bulk mailing. A lot of work for the short round man, but he is putting in a lot of effort to advance the hobby and deserves to be congratulated. Back to me. From Seoul (would I be the farthest East or the farthest West?), should I be elected, I'll vote remotely on issues presented at the board meeting. I'll be able to talk with Rhett a few days a week, so he can present any issues I have. My wife will cover all printing here in Tampa of flyer masters, handouts, the Rebel Yell, etc. There is one drawback, though. While I'm not here, there won't be a color Rebel Yell. It is far too much to ask for my wife to spend 20 hours printing out color covers for each and every HMGS South member. That's right, that's how long it takes every two months, running my printer constantly. It is the cheapest per page way to do it and I absorb most of the extra cost anyway in order to further assist the hobby. I get my reward by being a part of the games at our shows. Has anyone thought about possibly taking over the web page? This will be the most difficult undertaking from Korea. I can update it, but I'll need the folks here in Florida to provide me with input. For pete's sake, it's just HTML coding. Bryan Stroup has purchased a page for the Gainesville Garrison and will maintain it there. His page is very good and colorful. For those with the net surfing capability, give it a look at www.gainesville-garrison.com. While I was gone, my partner in Scotland, Mark Hannam sent me a CD with a number of recently finished products on there. The Cross of Iron and A Few Good Men at Arms are just a couple new releases from Gauntlet Publications (in the UK) and from Craig Martelle (me) in the US. Mathew Sparkes and Mark have outdone themselves with the latest two releases. If anyone wants to review these latest releases, let me know. I'll give free copies to the first couple of potential reviewers who respond. All I ask is that you send me a review within a month's time. I have publication deadlines that I must adhere to. The Gauntlet is also taking off. After so many good words from Hal Thinglum in MWAN 92, I am glad to say that I'm a part of this hobby. I get subscription requests almost daily and hope that The Gauntlet will continue to be viewed as a nice complement to MWAN. Never Fear, with me in Korea, The Gauntlet will still have a full color cover and insert pages as required. That's about enough of my rambling, so now on to the RECON PEL and HMGS South Elections Issue of the Rebel Yell. Back to Rebel Yell No. 9 Table of Contents Back to Rebel Yell List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by HMGS South 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