Its good to see national pride. Cheers to your mate!
Who spent 8 years on the East German border - commanding an anti-tank platoon. Life expectancy in his regiment in the case of WW3 was 20 minutes if everything went right. And that involved all the services playing nice. Aye, that will be right!
Unfortunately he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, holding an SLR (FAL to those who live in the US) when Chernobyl blew up.
Cost him his thyroid gland and a lot of chemotherapy. Not to mention having to take thyroxine for the rest of his life. If any part of his body is making thyroxine, it is a tumour.
I didn't expect to survive to see the 90's. WW3 was a big part of my early life. As in every day of it from 1960-1990.
My brother spent 27 years training to fight that. Many of the folks I was at school with did the same.
Given up trying to embed the appropriate video.
Dig through YouTube to find the Scars singing "Your Attention Please" With thanks to Thom Gunn who wrote the original.
That was what we lived with in the 60's to 90's.
The price of freedom is always costly, as is the ignorance of politicians. Its good to still have you among us Don.
I have lived where the pols had failed utterly. Have had an RPG-29 pointed at the tractor I was driving while being accused of being the SADF invading where I lived. No fun at all. But somehow I lived. Being in possession of the wrong coloured skin in the wrong place at the wrong time can be troublesome. Once spent way too much time (about half a second would have been too much time) looking up the barrel of an ancient Browning High Power which a Zairean soldier (scumbag/bandit - I was not in Zaire (DRC nowadays) at the time) was pointing at my head. 3 rounds had already come through the door. It is amazing how large the 9mm hole in the barrel is when it is pointed at your head. That night (Valentine's Day 1985) was not one of my better ones.
But....
I will not bear arms.
Now. Or ever.
My choice.
My consequences.
Freedom is where you find it.
And nobody can take that away from you.
Glad you made it, Don. Life is precious.
Despite their potential lethality (hmm, that an euphemism again? Probably so...) firearms can be fun though, like for such purposes:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8917730350468263249#
Freedom is where you find it - absolutely true. My freedom is restoring and driving my four-wheeled, gas-guzzling time masheens from the 1960's. Although that involves finding a new shortblock for my Mercury after that 289 has thrown a rod last week. Thankfully, I have some really decent lights now to find my way in that pesky engine bay in a dimly lit garage... two of them thanks to the knowledge from this forum (thanks Match!) and surely more to come.
It's strange how things go, I'd never heard of Aqua regia untill yesterday when I was reading the Wiki about gold.
I always get hugely sidetracked when I'm on Wiki I haven't got the slightest cluse what I actually was looking for now.