vintageleadsoldiers

ACW

2014-12-11T23:31:00.001-08:00

unicorn miniatures

2014-10-04T12:45:00.004-07:00

unicorn Miniatures - Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future series, 1991, comprising: Dan Dare in Spacesuit, Treen Guard, Phant Commander, Super Phant, Phant Guard, Kruel, Electro Robot & Vora.

hill stagecoach

2014-10-04T12:34:00.001-07:00

rare hill flagbearer

2014-10-02T09:17:00.001-07:00

undiscovered hill acw

2014-10-01T02:17:00.001-07:00

britains us infantry

2014-09-30T09:21:00.002-07:00

original uniform

2014-09-29T05:04:00.001-07:00

RARE 1856-68 PATTERN UNIFORM.A rare example of the British Army's first pattern single breasted tunic as worn at the time of the Indian Mutiny.

say Cheese

2013-02-18T05:04:00.000-08:00

In 1839 the first Grand National was run. The first race was won by a horse called Lottery. A Captain Beecher was leading this race when he fell off his into a stream (brook). The fence where he fell is known as Beecher's Brook.You've seen it in a hundred costume dramas.
A young 6 year-old stallion "The Colonel" won the first of two back-to-back triumphs at Aintree by winning the 1869 Grand National whilst being ridden by George Stevens both times. The same George Stevens who won the 1856 National some thirteen years earlier and another set of back-to-back victories on "Emblem" and "Emblematic" in 1863 and 1864 making him one of the true legends of the event. It was "The Colonel's" second ever steeplechase winning at 100-7. The horse changed owners over the next twelve months with John Weyman passing over the honour of bringing back the champion horse to Matthew Evans a year later.

"The Lamb" became the first ever grey winner of the National in 1868 and one of only two grey horses to win the race, the other being "Nicolaus Silver" almost one hundred years later in 1971. The tiny horse that had been thought to be far too small to win the National found an unusual path to entering the 1868 event after he had originally been sold to a vet, who bought the horse for his daughter. "The Lamb" however proved to be too much to handle for the young girl allowing him to find his route into the Grand National for the first time in 1868.
The horse did however start with fairly good odds at 9-1 and was owned by Lord Poulett who also owned the horse in 1971 when he returned to the race winning again. The jockey George Ede and trainer Ben Land did not return with "The Lamb" though, but still enter the record books associated closely with the small grey horse.Horseback Riding was only available to the wealthy. Because they were the only ones that had enough money to own or rent and maintain a horse. Others that weren't so wealthy had to make financial sacrifices to enjoy the fun that comes out of horseback riding. Female riders needed gloves, boots, and equestrinne tights to fill the costume recommendations.
A group of Victorians sitting around the piano. Men in dinner suits, women twitching fans, the daughter of the household bashing out a Mendelsohn standard, polite applause muffled by white kid gloves, and another round of constipated dialogue.

If only somebody had thought to check the entertainment listings on the front page of The Times. Instead of suffering this well-mannered torture, they could have telegraphed the Cremorne Gardens and booked a table near the bandstand, scored a few strikes at the American bowling alley, taken in one of the shows or concerts, guzzled down a curry, danced until four in the morning, smoked a few opium-laced cigarettes, then returned home on the tube to negotiate their inevitable hangovers.
The processes of industrialisation partially account for the scope of these activities. During the reign of Queen Victoria, Britain was transformed from a largely agrarian society to one in which the majority of the population lived in cities. Those who relocated to these growing urban environments could no longer, as their parents and grandparents had done, pursue activities based around the rhythms of village life. Moreover, industrial jobs offered a precise delineation of work and leisure time that had never existed in the past. The Victorians were the first people to have statutory holidays and proscribed days off. The burgeoning entertainment industry was only too eager to help them fill that leisure time with recreational pleasures, enticing them into theme parks, shopping malls, amusement arcades and theatres.
There's a huge disjunction between the received image of nineteenth-century recreation, and the dizzying extent of the pleasures that were available to ordinary Victorians. 'Outside amusements were few,' insists one standard history textbook, 'hence the frequency with which the piano figured in the home.' Nothing could be further from the truth. The lives of Victorians were anything but staid and dull. Indeed, it's hard to think of a public pleasure with which they did not engage with intense, breathless enthusiasm
They were great consumers of recreational drugs, purchased at Boots and knocked back in suburban living rooms all over the country. Most popular was laudanum - a cocktail of opium and alcohol, which is still manufactured for medical use today. This substance wasn't just the tipple of a clique of artsy dopeheads, as it had been in the time of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas De Quincey (although Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Gladstone, Jane Carlyle and Florence Nightingale all glugged it back with enthusiasm). Opium was the People's Intoxicant, more freely available in the 19th century than packets of Lambert and Butler are today. The anti-drug laws by which our society is regulated appeared during the First World War, when the government became nervous that the packets of heroin gel that women were buying from Harrods to send to their sweethearts at the Western Front were having detrimental effects upon discipline.More healthily, perhaps, organised team sports achieved a new primacy. Large numbers of Britons learned to swim: a rare talent before the mid-nineteenth-century. The first international cricket match was played in 1868 between British players and an Australian side entirely composed of Aborigines. The Football League was founded in 1888, and had soon generated its own star system, which included figures such as Arthur Wharton, Britain's first black professional footballer, who kept goal for Preston North End and Rotherham, and also found time to break the 100 yards world record, and play professional cricket for Yorkshire and Lancashire.
For the first time, pornography was produced in a volume capable of satisfying a mass readership. Oddly, the industry was founded by a gang of political radicals who used sales of erotica to subsidise their campaigning and pamphleteering: when, in the 1840s, the widely-anticipated British revolution failed to materialise, these booksellers and printers found that their former sideline had become too profitable to relinquish. Lubricious stories such as Lady Pokingham, or, They All Do it (1881), and hardcore daguerreotypes, photographs and magic lantern slides, demonstrate the omnivorous nature of Victorian sexuality. Don't imagine that this material comprised tame pictures of gartered ladies standing in front of cheese plants; any permutation or peccadillo you can conceive is represented in the work that has survived from the period. And it was produced in huge quantities: in 1874, the Pimlico studio of Henry Hayler, one of the most prominent producers of such material was loaded up with 130,248 obscene photographs and five thousand magic lantern slides - which gives some idea of the extent of its appeal.
5 years after Harry Lamplugh won the Grand National as a jockey he was back again winning for a second time, but this time as the trainer of "Cortolvin" the 16-1 outsider. The horse who won while ridden by John Page and was owned by the Duke of Hamilton wasn't really expected to fair that well in 1867, but under the guidance of John Page and Harry Lamplugh, was prepared sufficiently to fly past the opposition and win at the big one Aintree.

The 1866 Grand National was won by "Salamander" a 40-1 outsider with larger odds than any winner for years. The horse had been born with a crooked leg and was thought to be near to worthless, with it being bought for a bargain price by Mr. Edward Studd of Rutland when in a terrible state. "Salamander" did however repay the faith Edward Studd showed in him by making a full recovery and returning £40,000 from the huge gamble placed upon him as Alec Goodman rode him to victory.

"Alchibiade" won the 1865 Grand National ridden by Captain Henry Coventry of the Grenadier Guards who only ever raced in one National. Starting at 100-7, the horse trained by Mr. Cornell ran a fantastic race battling hard to beat all others to victory. The jockey Henry Coventry was also cousin of Lord Coventry who owned the two winning horses in 1863 and 1864, while this year's horse owner was Benjamin John Angell, the same Benjamin John Angell who formed the governing body for horse racing in 1866 known as the National Hunt Committee.

tru kraft

2013-02-13T01:37:00.000-08:00

authenticast

2013-02-09T18:02:00.002-08:00

snipers in the acw

2013-01-31T01:04:00.000-08:00

During the American Civil War, the common term used in the United States was "sharpshooter", which is a reference to and a tribute to the Sharps rifles that were commonly used by Civil War "snipers", but the term "sharpshooter" does not originate with users of the Sharp's Rifle. The rifle was designed by Christian Sharps and made from 1850 onwards by the Sharps Rifle Manufacturing Company. They were renowned for long range and accuracy, and they were issued only to the best shooters. However, the term "sharp shooter" had been in use in British newspapers as early as 1801. In the Edinburgh Advertiser, 23 June 1801, can be found the following quote in a piece about the North British Militia; "This Regiment has several Field Pieces, and two companies of Sharp Shooters, which are very necessary in the modern Stile of War". The term appears even earlier, around 1781, in Europe.
Another common term used in the United States during the American Civil War was "skirmisher". Throughout history armies have used skirmishers to break up enemy formations and to thwart the enemy from flanking the main body of their attack force.They were deployed individually on the extremes of the moving army primarily to scout for the possibility of an enemy ambush. Consequently, a "skirmish" denotes a clash of small scope between these forces.
In general, a skirmish was a limited combat, involving troops other than those of the main body. The term "sniper" was not in widespread use in the United States until after the American Civil War.
Pity Gen. John Sedgwick. He was killed at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864 by a sniper 800 yards away. While he was placing field guns behind his front line, Sedgwick waved toward the distant Rebel sharpshooters and laughingly enjoined his gunners to ignore their sporadic shots: “What are you dodging for? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance!” Seconds later, a bullet smashed into Sedgwick’s face, killing him instantly.

Sedgwick, the highest-ranking Union general killed in the Civil War, was just one of the more prominent victims of Civil War sniping, a form of combat that came into its own as rifle technology improved during the 19th century. Effective sniping required rifles—as opposed to muskets—and the infantry rifle was still in its infancy in the 1860s.
Although Prussian guard troops had fired a few rifle shots in the European revolutions of 1848, British light infantry had been the first to use rifles to devastating effect: against Russian musketeers in the Crimean War, which was fought from 1854 to 1856 on Russia’s Black Sea coast. Thereafter, all armies had re-equipped with rifles, which were essentially muskets with grooved barrels that would “take” the soft lead of a bullet and fling it in a tight, spiraling shot at a distant target. Whereas musket rounds rolled and hopped like knuckle balls, rifle rounds screamed in like fastballs—straight down the pipe.
Or nearly straight. Even the best rifles developed in the 1850s and 1860s did not entirely solve the problem of trajectory. The standard .52-, .54-, or .58-caliber mid-19th-century rifle round was a heavy lump of lead, a veritable cannonball of a bullet. To fire it accurately downrange, infantry had to elevate their rifles so that the heavy, sinking ball would fly out far enough before toppling into an onrushing, distant adversary. Misjudge your distance from the enemy by as little as 30 yards—easily done at 300 yards—and your bullet would whistle harmlessly over his head. No wonder that Union infantry had required on average 900 pounds of lead and 240 pounds of black powder to kill a single Confederate in the Civil War, or that only one out of every 250 Prussian bullets fired in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 actually struck an Austrian.
Statistics like these suggest the difficulty of sniping in the Civil War. “Sharpshooting” was a job for marksmen. Getting into the New Hampshire Sharpshooters, one of dozens of Union light infantry outfits, required feats of accuracy: at 600 feet, 10 consecutive shots at an average of five inches from the bull’s-eye. Col. Hiram Berdan, who was ordered by Gen. Winfield Scott to create two entire sharpshooter regiments from companies raised in the various states of the Union, was himself a famous crack shot—the best in the Union army.
Winning army target-shooting contests every year between the Mexican War and the Civil War, Berdan used his celebrity to recruit. During tryouts for the Sharpshooters in 1861-62—regularly attended by President Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet—Berdan would fire at life-size drawings of Confederate President Jefferson Davis from 200 yards and score repeated head shots. One story had him asking a spectator, “Where shall I place the next one?” “In the right eye,” came the answer, and the next shot tore away the right eye.
Finely made or customized rifles generally were required to make such shots. A favorite Confederate sniper rifle—procured in small quantities from blockade runners—was the .45-caliber British Whitworth. When it was fitted with a telescopic sight, the Whitworth had what was grimly called “killing accuracy” of 1,500 yards. The Whitworth barrel was drilled in a hexagonal pattern and fired a bullet shaped like a threaded nut. Gen. William Haines Lytle, the Ohio-born Union soldier-poet, was shot off his horse and killed by a Whitworth-armed Confederate sharpshooter at the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863. (Lytle had 10 months earlier written his last poem—“Lines on My Thirty-Sixth Birthday”—which, true to its Byronic title, predicted his imminent death in battle.)
The Manchester-made Whitworth and its nut-shaped bullet also killed Gen. “Uncle John” Sedgwick at Spotsylvania Court House. The sniper was probably Ben Powell, a Rebel crack shot who, like today’s snipers, was conceded virtual independence by his officers. His only job was to rove along the Union lines looking for a clean shot. Berry Benson, another Confederate sharpshooter, recalled meeting Powell in the Wilderness (site of the May 1864 battle that resulted in nearly 30,000 total casualties) and examining his Whitworth, which was so powerful that it could serve as a sort of howitzer when no direct fire targets offered themselves.
“Having nothing to do, I went down across a field where Ben Powell, with his Whitworth rifle, was sharpshooting,” Benson recalled in his memoir, Confederate Scout Sniper. “There had been a number of Whitworth rifles (with telescope sight) brought from England, running the blockade. These guns with ammunition had been distributed to the army, our brigade receiving one. It was given to Powell, as he was known to be an excellent shot. In campaigns, he posted himself wherever he pleased, for the purpose of picking off the enemy’s men. I shot the gun a few times. It kicked powerfully. . . . Once at Petersburg Powell gave [Blackwood] the gun to shoot, and as there was nobody particular in sight to shoot at, he held it up at a high angle and fired it over into the besiegers’ camp. Not long after, in a Northern paper, he read an account of two men being shot at a well, struck by the same ball, which had come so far that the report of the gun was not heard. And the day given was the same day Blackwood fired the Whitworth.”

Weapons of choice
The sniper’s weapon of choice was the so-called American rifle. Individually crafted and sold to hunters and target shooters before the war, “American,” “benchrest,” or “match” rifles were so heavy—14 to 40 pounds, two to four times the weight of a factory-made infantry rifle—that they had to be aimed and fired with the barrel resting on a bench, fence, or other support. The accuracy of these aptly named “heavies”—like the 35-pound, .46-caliber Morgan rifle made in small batches by John C. Wells of Milwaukee—derived from the massive barrel and superior engineering.
To get the most from their rifling, benchrest bores were much tighter than standard rifles, which necessitated special accouterments. Merely to load a bullet down the long barrel, the sniper had to fit the benchrest rifle with a “false muzzle” and a “bullet starter.” The false muzzle was essentially a funnel placed in the barrel of the rifle to hold the wide bullet in place on the lip of the narrow gun barrel. The bullet starter was a stubby, piston-driven ramrod that fit inside the false muzzle and allowed the sniper to jam the bullet down the rifle barrel and seat it in the breech without gouging the finely wrought true muzzle.
Still, with just one really first-class sniper rifle per brigade—usually left in the supply wagons to be brought forward when opportunities arose—most sharpshooters made do with the best rifle they could procure officially or scrounge unofficially. As always, the rich, industrialized Union with its flourishing arms industry got the best stuff. After personally intervening in Washington with the army staff and the secretary of war, Berdan procured a special rifle for his two Sharpshooter regiments: the Model 1859 .52-caliber Sharps—nicknamed the “Berdan”—which, in skilled hands, became one of the deadliest weapons of the war. Though not as well engineered as a match rifle or the Whitworth, the Berdan Sharps was a breech-loader capable of firing four times more quickly than muzzle-loaders like the Whitworth, and it was accurate out to 700 yards in skilled hands.
But Berdan never relied on technology alone. “To be effective sharpshooters the men have to be as skilled in field craft as they are in marksmanship,” he wrote in 1861. “They must be self-assured yet highly disciplined and above all they must be dedicated.” This directive got to the heart of sniping. As terrifying as it was for the victims, it was hard on the practitioners as well—physically and psychologically. Berry Benson, a Rebel sharpshooter, surveyed his own results along the “Bloody Angle” at Spotsylvania and noted his disgust: “This horrid confusion, these wet, muddy graves—this reeking mass of corruption, of rotting corpses. . . .How a man can look upon such a scene and still take pleasure in war seems past belief.”

Freelance snipers
Neither army trained snipers in the professional, dedicated way that they are developed today. Rather, they used sharpshooter units to scout and harass the enemy. Some individuals, like the Confederacy’s Ben Powell or the famously shaggy Union sniper Truman “California Joe” Head, would stand out as particularly good shots and gradually slip the bonds of military discipline, working more and more as freelance snipers, less and less as uniformed sharpshooters. California Joe—a favorite of Berdan and the Northern press—was celebrated for the number and difficulty of his “kills” with the Sharps rifle, one of them at 1,500 yards.
It would generally be more accurate to call Civil War snipers light infantry, what the Europeans called skirmishers: American equivalents of the Prussian fusilier, the Austrian jäger, or the French chasseur. Although Hiram Berdan organized the two green-jacketed Union sharpshooter regiments, they were trained by Caspar Trepp, a Swiss infantry officer who had fought with Garibaldi in Italy and with the British in the Crimea. Like European light infantry, American sharpshooters were trained to fight in open order—with wide intervals between the men—use cover, and advance and retreat on bugle and drum signals.
As in Europe, big Civil War battles drew whole sharpshooter units into action. Pitzer’s Wood and the Devil’s Den at Gettysburg—a low ridge crowned with broken stone masses—were fought over by companies of Confederate and Union sharpshooters in July 1863. One of the most famous Civil War photographs—Alexander Gardener’s Death of a Rebel Sniper—shows a dead Confederate sharpshooter in a carefully constructed sniper’s nest in the Devil’s Den.
Firing at long range—more than 500 yards across Plum Run to the Round Tops—Confederate marksmen piled up Union casualties at Gettysburg before they themselves were rooted out by Union sharpshooters and artillery fire. One of the dead Rebel snipers was discovered with a Leonard target rifle in his hands. A 36-pound match rifle made in New Hampshire, the Leonard had hairsplitting accuracy up to 1,000 yards. “From a distance of nearly half a mile, the Rebel sharpshooters drew a bead on us with a precision that deserved the highest commendation of their officers, but that made us curse the day they were born,” a Union veteran recalled bitterly. On Little Round Top, anxious Union officers scanned the Devil’s Den with field glasses to locate the muzzle flashes and smoke puffs from the Confederate rifles. When a sniper was detected, a percussion shell would be fired into his lair. Several Confederate sharpshooters were killed in this way. Gardener photographed one of them; the corpse—killed by concussion—was unscathed, and its trigger finger was crooked to fire.

Piling up casualties
This vulnerability in fixed positions—invisible, smokeless powder would not be introduced until the 1890s—explained the Civil War sniper’s preference for trees, which concealed the muzzle flash better, waved away the charcoal smoke, and offered a less obvious target to frustrated gunners. One of Winslow Homer’s best-known Civil War illustrations was The Sharpshooter, published in Harper’s Weekly in 1862. It depicts a Yankee sniper in a tree near Yorktown during the Peninsula Campaign. The sniper, one of Berdan’s Sharpshooters, is sitting on a tree branch and squinting through the sights of a James target rifle. The .45-caliber, muzzle-loading James, with its four-power telescopic sight, was a relatively light sniper rifle—just 14 pounds—yet in Homer’s drawing the shooter is bracing the rifle on a branch to improve his aim. Two companies of Berdan’s Sharpshooters used the James target rifle to pick off Confederate defenders during the siege of Yorktown in the spring of 1862.
Winslow Homer was appalled by the impressions he gathered during his sittings with the sharpshooter. At one point, he peered through the telescopic sight at an unsuspecting enemy. In a letter to a friend, Homer crudely sketched what he had seen: a Confederate officer striding through tall grass, the sniper’s crosshairs on his chest. “The above impression,” he wrote, “struck me as being as near murder as anything I could think of in connection with the army.”
Modern warfare had not yet evolved the dreadfully efficient two-man sniper teams of World War II or their dedicated rifle and ammunition designs. But already in the 1860s, with opposing armies sinking into trenches and battery positions to fight multiday battles along long, fortified lines, the sniper was being born as a force multiplier. First developed as a scout and a picket, the sniper came in the course of the American Civil War to be valued as a low-cost, high-impact weapon, capable of demoralizing an entire battalion of field artillery or knocking a good general out of the saddle. (The loss of Gen. John Sedgwick to a sniper at Spotsylvania, Ulysses S. Grant famously said, “is greater than the loss of a whole division of troops.”)
Nevertheless, light infantry advocates like Hiram Berdan preferred to concentrate their sharpshooters as skirmishers. Sniping therefore continued as a haphazard arrangement until 1914, when, with million-man armies deployed within bullet range of each other, snipers would finally begin to be developed as dedicated “special operations forces.”

the first indian war in the west

2013-01-29T03:03:00.000-08:00

The series of conflicts in the western United States between Native Americans, American settlers, and the United States Army are generally known as the Indian Wars. Many of the most well-known of these conflicts occurred during and after the Civil War until the closing of the frontier in about 1890. However regions of the West that were settled before the Civil War, such as Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, California and Washington, saw significant conflicts prior to 1860.
Various statistics have been developed concerning the devastation of these wars on the peoples involved. One notable study by Gregory Michno used records dealing with figures "as a direct result of" engagements and concluded that "of the 21,586 total casualties tabulated in this survey, military personnel and civilians accounted for 6,596 (31%), while Indian casualties totaled about 14,990 (69%)." for the period of 1850–90. However, Michno says he "used the army's estimates in almost every case" & "the number of casualties in this study are inherently biased toward army estimations". His work includes almost nothing on "Indian war parties", and that "army records are often incomplete"; his work is a "workable" number, not a definitive account of events, since it excluded other figures.
According to Michno, more conflicts with native Americans occurred in the states bordering Mexico than in the interior states. Arizona ranked highest, with 310 known battles fought within the state's boundaries between Americans and the natives. Also, when determining how many deaths resulted from the wars, in each of the American states, Arizona again ranked highest. At least 4,340 people were killed, including both the settlers and the Indians, over twice as many as occurred in Texas, the second highest-ranking state. Most of the deaths in Arizona were caused by the Apache. Michno also says that fifty-one percent of the Indian war battles between 1850 and 1890 took place in Arizona, Texas and New Mexico, as well as thirty-seven percent of the casualties in the county west of the Mississippi River.

The western United States had been penetrated by United States forces and settlers before this period, notably by fur trappers, the Santa Fe Trail, the Oregon Trail and the Mormon emigration to Utah, as well as by settlement of California and Oregon. Relations between American Immigrants and Native Americans were generally peaceful. In the case of the Santa Fe Trail, this was due to the friendly relationship of the Bents of Bent's Fortwith the Cheyenne and Arapaho, and in the case of the Oregon Trail, to the peace established by the Treaty of Fort Laramie. Signed in 1851 between the United States and the plains Indians and the Indians of the northern Rocky Mountains, the treaty allowed passage by immigrants and the building of roads and the stationing of troops along the Oregon Trail.
The Pike's Peak Gold Rush of 1859 introduced a substantial white population into the Front Range of the Rockies supported by a trading lifeline that crossed the central Great Plains. Advancing settlement following the passage of the Homestead Act and the building of the transcontinental railwaysfollowing the Civil War further destabilized the situation, placing white settlers into direct competition for the land and resources of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountain West. Further factors included discovery of gold in the Black Hills, resulting in the gold rush of 1875–1878, and, earlier, in Montana during the Montana Gold Rush of 1862–1863 and the opening of the Bozeman Trail, which led to Red Cloud's War and later the Great Sioux War of 1876–77.
As in the East, expansion into the plains and mountains by miners, ranchers and settlers led to increasing conflicts with the indigenous population of the West. Many tribes-—from the Utes of the Great Basinto the Nez Perces Idaho-—fought Americans at one time or another. But the Sioux of the Northern Plains and the Apache of the Southwest provided the most celebrated opposition to encroachment on tribal lands. Led by resolute, militant leaders, such as Red Cloud and Crazy Horse, the Sioux were skilled at high-speed mounted warfare. The Sioux were relatively new arrivals on the Plains, as, previously, they had been sedentary farmers in the Great Lakes region. Once they learned to capture and ride horses, they moved west, displacing other Indian tribes and became feared warriors. Historically the Apache bands supplemented their economy by raiding others and practiced warfare to avenge a death of a kinsman. The Apache bands were adept at fighting and highly elusive in the environments of desert and canyons.
During the American Civil War U.S. Army units were withdrawn to fight the war in the east. They were replaced by the volunteer infantry and cavalry raised by the states of California and Oregon, by the western territorial governments or the local militias. These units fought the Indians besides keeping open communications with the east, holding the west for the Union and defeating the Confederate attempt to capture the New Mexico Territory.

dimestore

2013-01-27T08:33:00.002-08:00

germans at verdun

2013-01-23T09:20:00.001-08:00

The Battle of Verdun in 1916 was the longest single battle of World War One. The casualties from Verdun and the impact the battle had on the French Army was a primary reason for the British starting the Battle of the Somme in July 1916 in an effort to take German pressure off of the French at Verdun. The Battle of Verdun started on February 21st 1916 and ended on December 16th in 1916. It was to make General Philippe Pétain a hero in France.

searchlight

2013-01-10T14:09:00.003-08:00

dublin fusiliers by unknown

2013-01-10T14:09:00.002-08:00

Cardington and beyond

2013-01-03T06:19:00.000-08:00










	To the South-east of Bedford lie several historic villages. Most of these villages were once part of the “Wixamtree Hundred” (the administrative unit into which shires were divided in late Anglo-Saxon times). The area is well worth visiting because, as well as containing some picturesque villages,Wixamtree is the birthplace of one of the world’s best-known authors, Cannot appreciate the size of these buidling from this shot, however, they are huge!. Built to construct airships, the first shed was erected in 1915, with shed 2 following in the 1920's. The internal floor area is some 5 acres (2.02 hectares or 223,300 sq ft) and some 3,700 tonnes of steel has gone into the framework alone. The buildings in terms of airships fell into disuse in 1930 following the fatal crash of the R101 Airship nr Paris. Shed two is now used/rented by Warner Bros and a number of scenes from recent movies such as Batman and Inception have been shot inside.raf cardington the home of a prison reformer, two of the most unusual huge buildings in England and several interesting medieval sites. Wixamtree today consists of seven villages and hamlets; Cardington, Cople, Cotton End, Eastcotts, Harrowden, Shortstown and RAF Cardington, Elstow, Willington, Wilstead and Wixams. Cardington was the home of John Howard, the prison reformer. The churchyard of the parish church holds the graves of 48 of the officers and men who died in the R101 airship crash and there is a memorial in the church itself. Cardington has a history of being used for filming movies. Some scenes for "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" were filmed at the sheds, some flying sequences for "Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines" were filmed along the old railway line between Cardington and Old Warden and, more recently, since 2005, shed two has become a film studio, housing the set of Gotham City for the "Batman" films. Cardington in film and television. Shortstown was built by the Shorts brothers to house their airship-building workers. It is best known for the two massive airship sheds where the R100 and the ill-fated R101were built. RAF Cardington is just as well known by many as the place where they underwent their basic National Service RAF training. A personal record of one serviceman’s time there can be found here. There are two pubs in Harrowden, one which was used by the RAF officers, one by the enlisted men. The Gate pub has a collection of airship photographs on permanent display. Willington is recorded in the Doomsday Book as Welitone. In addition to some charming cottages and impressive old houses, Willington boasts a wonderful medieval dovecote and stables. The Greensand Ridge walk runs through Willington. Elstow is perhaps best know as the birthplace of the author John Bunyan, but it has several other claims to fame. Elstow was the home of one of England’s largest and richest Abbeys. Many of the timber framed houses built by the Abbey still stand, together with Elstow Moot Hall – a most unusual medieval building, being a combined market house and meeting hall. Two thirds of the old Abbey church still stands and is used as Elstow’s parish church. Now a conservation area, containing medieval and several other listed buildings, Elstow is one of England’s ’must see’ villages. You can pre-book to visit both Moot Hall and the Abbey church. The Grade II listed Red Lion pub in Elstow dates back to at least the 17th Century. Wixams is a new village, currently being built south west of Elstow. It will be one one of the largest new communities built in the UK in recent times. Places to Visit Elstow Abbey Elstow Abbey was founded in 1078 by the Countess Judith, niece of William the Conqueror. It became one of the richest of the 106 Benedictine nunneries existing at the time and in its hey-day, in the fourteenth century, the building was twice its present size. The end of the Abbey came in 1539, as part of the dissolution of the monasteries. By the time of Elizabeth I, the church itself had been reduced to its present dimensions, becoming the parish church of the village. The six Norman arches that still remain from the original building remind us of the Abbeys long history of Christian worship. Elstow is famous as the home of John Bunyan . He was baptised in here in 1628 and as a child and young man he worshipped regularly in this abbey church. Elstow Moot Hall Step into the world of John Bunyan when you visit this delightful timber-framed market hall set on the village green at Elstow. Elstow Moot Hall was originally built to serve Elstow Abbey as a market house. Now a museum containing beautiful period furniture, it illustrates the life and traditions of 17th century England. The Stables Equestrian Centre The yard has facilities for 34 horses and ponies, currently some 16 animals in livery and the remainder owned by the school. All the animals used for tuition have been carefully developed and are safe and sound rides. The Centre’s objective is to provide an environment which is professional but friendly with tuition and riding for children from 3 years old to adults well into their retirement There is a 50m x 20m indoor school and a large outdoor mnage, both floodlit and usable at all hours. 15 acres of grazing incorporating a mini cross country course and access to several off road hacking rides. Willington Dovecote and Stables Enjoy the tranquil setting of this outstanding 16th-century stone-built dovecote and stable buildings, which nestles alongside Willington church. Home to over 1,500 resident pigeons, a nesting site for barn owls and kestrels, the dovecote is a great spot for bird-watching.

Cardington is a village and civil parish in the Borough of Bedford in Bedfordshire, England Part of the ancient hundred of Wixamtree, the settlement is best known in connection with the Cardington airship works founded by Short Brothers during World War I, which later became an RAF training station. However most of the former RAF station is actually in the parish of Eastcotts, as is the settlement of Shortstown, which was originally built by Short Brothers for its workers.^[1] The old village of Cardington is located to the north east of Shortstown and the RAF station, and houses most of the population of the parish, which was 270 in 2005, making it one of the least populated parishes in Bedfordshire

warwick miniatures

2012-12-29T12:44:00.001-08:00

gun boats

2012-12-25T18:24:00.003-08:00

I first saw "The Sand Pebbles" on television in 1976, and although in time I forgot the detail of the storyline, I remember well the emotional impact the film had on me.

I recently discovered an excellent site devoted to the film and this caused me to revisit it. It had lost none of its appeal, indeed I found it all the more interesting and thought provoking.

I consider it a gripping and important film with challenging ideas and observations, and in order to clarify my own thoughts, I wrote the following essay. I thought other fans of the film might find it interesting, though I am aware these are only my thoughts, and I have not sought to discuss aspects of the production of the film - I have limited myself to discussing what I see as its major themes.

I would be delighted to hear from anyone who would care to comment on the film or my ideas about it.

A river gunboat is a type of gunboat adapted for river operations. River gunboats required shallow draft for river navigation. They would be armed with relatively small caliber cannons, or a mix of cannons and machine guns. If they carried more than one cannon, one might be a howitzer, for shore bombardment. They were usually not armoured. The USS San Pablo described in Richard McKenna's The Sand Pebbles is an example of this class of vessel, serving on the US Navy's Yangtze Patrol. Stronger river warships were river monitors
Various European powers, the USA, and Japan, maintained flotillas of these shallow draft gunboats patrolling Chinese rivers. These gunboats were enforcing those nations' treaty rights under the unequal treaties that China had started to sign following her defeat during the first Opium War with Britain.
Foreign powers had coerced concessions from China, like extraterritoriality for their citizens in China, and the gunboats policed these rights.
Royal Navy gunboats, numbering on average 15 a year in Chinese waters, served as "station ships", assigned to specific ports, and were designed for river functions.
U.S. Navy craft were of varying age, design, size, and utility. The earliest craft made brief excursions upriver between 1861 and 1901, but were rarely assigned on permanent patrol. In 1901 two large gunboats, USS Helena (1290 tons and crew of 170) and Wilmington (1570 tons and 212), were assigned to the Asiatic Squadron's "Second Division" as permanent river patrol, although too large to patrol deep inland, until 1932 and 1923 respectively. In 1903 converted gunboats of the Spanish Navy captured in 1898, began patrols designed to take them further upriver toward Chungking. USS Elcano, a 620-ton craft with a crew of 103, and USS Villalobos, a 350-ton ship with 50 men, served until 1928, when they were decommissioned and sunk. USS Callao (240 tons) and Quiros (sister ship to Villalobos) served until 1916 and 1923.
In 1914 two 204-ton, 50-man patrol craft of British design and built at Mare Island Naval Shipyard were disassembled, shipped to China, and reassembled in Shanghai. USS Palos patrolled until 1934, when she became the station boat at Chungking, and Monocacy until 1939. The Yangtze Patrol was formally established in 1922 as a component of the Asiatic Fleet. Six new craft were designed and built in 1928 in Shanghai, of three differing sizes. USS Guam and Tutuilla, 380 tons and a crew of 60, were able to ply the entire river year round. USS Panay and Oahu, 450 tons and a complement of 65; and Luzon, 560 tons and 82 men, were "May-September" gunboats, able to patrol completely upriver only during high water months. (Luzon's sister ship, USS Mindanao served on the China coast but not in the river patrol.) Except for Panay, sunk by Japanese aircraft in December 1937, the newer ships served in China until l940

reka or not

2012-12-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

authenticast

2012-12-01T14:29:00.000-08:00

REKA

2012-11-24T08:27:00.001-08:00

heyde

2012-11-14T08:47:00.000-08:00

the ol barbed wire

2012-11-09T15:30:00.003-08:00

If you want to find the Sergeant,

I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.

If you want to find the Sergeant, I know where he is,

He's lying on the canteen floor.

I've seen him, I've seen him, lying on the canteen floor,

I've seen him, I've seen him, lying on the canteen floor.

If you want to find the Quarter-bloke

I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.

If you want to find the Quarter-bloke, I know where he is,

He's miles and miles behind the line.

I've seen him, I've seen him, miles and miles and miles behind the line.

If you want the Sergeant-major,

I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.

If you want the Sergeant-major, I know where he is.

He's tossing off the privates' rum.

I've seen him, I've seen him, tossing off the privates' rum.

If you want the C.O.,

I know where he is, I know where he is, I know where he is.

If you want the C.O., I know where he is

He is down in a deep dug-out,

I've seen him, I've seen him, down in a deep dug-out,

I've seen him, I've seen him, down in a deep dug-out.

If you want to find the old battalion,

I know where they are, I know where they are, I know where they are

If you want to find the old battalion, I know where they are,

They're hanging on the old barbed wire,

I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire.

I've seen 'em, I've seen 'em, hanging on the old barbed wire

rose gun crew

2012-11-04T07:37:00.000-08:00

vintageleadsoldiers

ACW

unicorn miniatures

hill stagecoach

rare hill flagbearer

undiscovered hill acw

britains us infantry

original uniform

say Cheese

tru kraft

authenticast

snipers in the acw

the first indian war in the west

dimestore

germans at verdun

searchlight

dublin fusiliers by unknown

Cardington and beyond

Places to Visit

warwick miniatures

gun boats

reka or not

authenticast

REKA

heyde

the ol barbed wire

rose gun crew