rthstewart | Help I've fallen and I can't get out!

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Help I've fallen and I can't get out!

Thank to those who weighed in on AW 13 and 14 and Happy New Year. I've now thrown myself into in the Big Bang (oh god, what have I done? A War story. WAR, I tell you. From she who has never fired a gun and flinches from first person shooting games). Work proceeds. I'm currently writing about Peter not vomiting.

But this lead me to the realization that it was all exposition and so I should write, you know, real time vomiting and why Peter was pretty much inured to the smell of it being accustomed as he was to the stench of giants, wet sheep, and stewing offal meats. Which meant he had something to fix his gaze on which meant I needed to know what was inside a Waco CG-4 glider. (Yes, I will explain why everyone is sick in the first place). 15 minutes of google-fu later and I hit the jackpot.
138 years of Popular Science available on line. For free. This is from the February 1944 issue. On page 94 is the article about the gliders. Also on page 104, Daily Workouts Guard Your Health is the 1944 version of softcore porn in a science magazine. What is cool is that these are the actual scanned magazines so you get the ads and diagrams and it's a wonderful slice of history. And science! [edit -- RAWRR it won't let me link to the pages directly so you'll have to go to the table of contents and link to pages 94 and 104 or scroll through it or search "glider" and "workout."]

An hour later, I've been skimming science articles about Darwin from 1894 and a long discussion about kangaroo like dinosaurs from the 1920s and the history of how mental illness was assumed to be the result of demonic possession. It's time to shut the browser.

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Not helping at all here but...

... a long discussion about kangaroo like dinosaurs from the 1920s

What would Mary think of such things? Or would they not be as remarkable as her search for gryphons?

(By the way, all your links above go to the same page. Not sure if that was your intention.)

RAWRR. So frustrating with the links. As for the hadrosaur standing on its tail, Peter would make this offhand comment. "It's silly, isn't it? How that model is still mounted standing on its tail as if it hopped around like a swamp kangaroo."

"Why's that silly?" Eustace asked, absorbed in his sketch book.

"Well, they had to break the tail to get it to stand like that. I doubt it's correct."

Mary and Eustace look at each other.

"What?"

"They broke the tail. I noticed it years ago, in 42, when I was here with Richard."

"And you never thought to mention this?" Mary asked. "EVER?!"

"No?" Peter said, cowering a little under their combined and contemptuous glares.

Hah. This would be great in one of those LB AU fics. *files away for future reference*

alskdgd YOUR RESEARCH SKILLS

I am so envious.

I wish I could take credit, but it's all google fu. Did you get sugar? And sleep?

I HAVE NO GOOGLE FU

uhh, a little sleep. cheese and crackers mostly, I may go to the grocery store and buy them out or chocolate-based products or something. :P

Erm, did you mean schillings, or is that a typo for shillings?

The break in the hadrosaur's tail isn't at all obvious. Knowing it was there, I went to look for it, saw an obvious disjoint, then read the attached blurb and realised I was looking at something else completely, and the infamous break was further down. So much for extreme personal cleverness :-)

That was a typo, which I saw after already editing the post once and decide to just leave there rather than annoy people with my re-edits. I had been so busy researching how much an average ORs weekly pay would be and what would be a reasonable, company-wide wager, and where the door was on a Waco glider that basic spelling defeated me. This happens a lot -- forest, trees, tripping over a branch, and getting lost in the woods. This was how I also ended up reading old Popular Science magazine articles and ended up back at the Oceans of Kansas website looking at pretty pictures of mosasaurs.

As for the poor kangaroo Iguanadon, there's no way I'd ever find that tail break. I don't have an eye for that at all. I knew it was there from the research but I'd never be able to spot it on my own unless someone drew a big circle around it.

A fanfic writer who takes the time to do RESEARCH. I think I'm in love. :)

Ahem. Better not click on that Tag that says Research Notes

It's a disease.

*Lol* This is what happens with online research. You can spend hours and hours at it, find things you never thought existed, and read things you never thought you'd be interested in. It is a disease. :)

This morning it has been lower class, 1942 British cant and swearing. Also, how many men in a company vs platoon and appropriate waterways in Wiltshire.

All highly useful facts to know. . . at least if you're writing World War II fic. :)

Oooh, snippets, references and google-fu. I like this game : )

Mispellings notwithstanding. We've just gotten an extension on the NBB, which means I keep thinking, you know, I wonder if I could squeeze in some H&M by Valentine's Day and then go back to NBB? Oi.

Well, the only answer to that has to be 'yes, please' .

Yeah, yeah. If I can just stay awake long enough to write...

lkdsjslakdjaslkdjasldkasjl SCIENCEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, HISTORYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Also, Peter and battles and RIDIC EXCITED jsyk.

It's so geeky, I know. and the ads and that woman doing all the contortions for fitness when you know the nerdy science guys are all just looking at her legs and ass. Hilarious. I mean, REALLY.... I love the ads as much as the content. It's hard to find things like this -- full color scans of original content with the ads.

And to that end (and this is the sort of thing, I'd need help with),

“Everybody dried out from the exercise?” Brotheridge asked. “Word is Generals Poett and Kindersely were just cock-a-hoop about it. General Gale commended D Company for our…” Brotheridge cleared his throat.

“Good looks?”

“Drinking, smoking, and chasing girls?”

“Tossing paras into canals?”

“For our dash and verve,” Brotheridge said, affecting a posh accent.

They all laughed. Except…

“That’s all to the good, isn’t it, sir?” Gray asked.

Brotheridge nodded. “The best. General Gale set out the exercise himself and the Commander of the 6th Airbourne didn’t do that for just one Company for the hell of it.”

They hadn’t even been made to march to the site. They were driven to three bridges over two canals about thirty miles from the Bulford Camp. The umpires made them wait until 2300 and then they pranged. There were paras defending the bridges but they’d managed to capture the bridges before the umpires declared them blown.

It had been a first class firefight and a cracking good time, even if they hadn’t been shooting with live. When it was all blanks, flashes, and bangs, fists were better. Peter had gotten a reputation in D Company over the last year as a man who never threw the first punch, but could be counted on to throw the last. He’d pitched three of the “enemies,” regular paras from the 6th Airborne, into the canals during the firefight.

Edited 2012-01-07 21:14 (UTC)

All those things sound like things we'd say in Night Exs xDD

Sounds good! (just wondering, is Peter one of the people who says any of the lines?) Sounds rather like a story from "The Eagle" or Boys Own when you describe the actual exercise :) Is that the sort of feel you want for it?

I've not read The Eagle or Boys Own, but yes, I think it is clearer in context but Peter is there, sitting in the barracks -- a Private in Lt. Brotheridge's platoon. (He was busted from Lance Corporal to Private for an Incident). They are all smoking and polishing boots after having gone through the exercise that General Gale gave them. This is right before their CO gets the - partial- D-Day orders. I wish I knew when they started describing it as THE D-Day -- since all operations have a D-Day -- when did Normandy become THE D-Day because I was wondering if before they knew of it -- knew that 160,000 men would be storming 5 beaches and gliding and dropping behind lines -- if they referred to it as D-Day then.

Also, something that has ended up working well -- several people have told me that Peter as written (public school, the Professor, Oxbridge) would/should be in OTC. I took him out of that, in part because of the timing -- it's all taking so long. Also I didn't want to insert another officer into the Ox & Bucks D Company since, you know, they're all FAMOUS. It would be too much like adding a 10th member of the Fellowship, but IN REAL LIFE. So, I decided to push him in with the NCOs (ROs?) -- enlisted men. And actually, that's working very well. They are very colorful characters, they DO lots of cool stuff, and it's very much where I wanted his character to go anyway -- the High King become the "man of the people." It's really working. What that means though is that I'm trying to make it rougher the longer he is with D Company. This point quoted above is a year in and I want Peter to come across as less of the "public school girl" (or some other effeminate, high class epithets that the Cockneys and working class Londoners would level at him). It's not that he was much of that way before but he comes as High King and Oxbridge-bound and now he's in with the commoners. There's a class and language thing going on here that I want to get across that, as an American, is really foreign. Anyway, when I'm ready for a beta, I'll be looking for help to make sure I've got this.

Ahhhhhhhhh that makes more sense, and yes that works much better! Even in High King mode, I always thought of Peter as more willing to be an NCO than an officer :)))

(And I love the analogy there!)

Well you're definetly getting it across so far, dfskljhdsk This is so exciting to read in stages :DDDDDDDD

(Erm Normandy becoming the D-Day I'm afraid I don't know off the top of my head sorry! HOWEVER I have just glanced behind me to my bookshelf and turns out one of the books I got for Christmas was on D-Day, so I shall just check now and see if it says! :D)

There's been no real mention of it so far in this book ( "D-Day 1944: Voices from Normandy" by Robin Neillands and Roderick De Normain), but there's been a couple of things - first, there's an air gunner who says that they didn't really have any 'This day will be D-Day' briefings, but they knew as they "did more and more raids on targets 'nearer home' the Second Front was in the offing" and he then gives a list of raids he took part in (p37), and one of the crew for the diversion missions says "we had been given no inkling of the nature of the mission, but as an experienced crew we suspected something special by virtue of the fact we had an extra briefing prior to take-off. Even at the second briefing we were not told that this was the day we had all been waiting for, and the only luxury the Intelligence Officer premitted himself was to announce, with typical British irony, 'If you have to jettison any bombs please don't do it in the Channel as there will probably be a few extra ships around!'" (p84)

That's all I found so far, as then the book moves into the actual operation, but hopefully it might help :)

Thanks so much!!! That's really interesting about the air gunner and how they didn't know the scope and size. From Ambrose's book, I learned that Howard wasn't brought in on the outlines of what they were doing until April 18. He doesn't learn the actual targets until May 2 and can't tell anyone except his 2IC (or is it S I/C in Brit speak?) who doesn't learn until May 21. Sometime right after that they move Company D to Tarrant Rushton and only then do the officers and then the NCOs get briefed. But here the briefing is very, very extensive -- they threw a lot of resources into the 6th's Operation Tonga and even more into Deadstick. When you are paras landing and gliding into Nazi-controlled Normandy they are obviously wondering "Us and what Army behind us?" and their strategic targets all involved eliminating or holding things to allow for the advance up from the beaches. So they knew the size and scope -- though I am wondering if they knew about the Yanks? Shrug. I'll just assume they did but you can bet a reader will call me on it if I get it wrong.

That about about try not to hit anything is SO hilariously British. Amazing. Being from where you are, I assume you know about Lord Lovatt, Billy Mullin, and the commandos march across Pegasus bridge? "But those are British orders. We're Scottish!"

I'm concluding that some got lots of briefing, some got a little, but that in a lot of instances, the briefing was really, REALLY late. The glider pilots, for instances, knew the targets and trained for months since they were supposed to you know land the gliders on top of the bridges.

There are plenty of speeches that indicate the scope and the "give em hell" which leads me to conclude that not everyone was as in the dark for as long as the air gunner. Bu, including Patton's infamous speech,

I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'. We want to get the hell over there.' The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.

Charming. I actually used that speech to figure out what swear words Tebbitt would use back in TQSiT. So, some men undoubtedly knew they were part of something huge. I mean, when suddenly command gives you 30 sappers, 2 additional platoons, your CO starts disappearing, the General draws up your own exercises himself, and then the whole 5th Airborne does an exercise involving 700 planes and landing all over 3 counties, yeah, the assault on Fortress Europe is in the offing.

By the by, if you know the story, then you know who Billy Gray, Wally Parr, and Den Brotheridge were.... hence my periodic OMG what the hell am I doing???

See, this is why I love reading your stuff, all this research is SO AWESOME :DDDDDDDDDDDd

They did know about the Yanks, there was no way they couldn't what with them being all over the place, and I assume they knew that something big was happening what with the exercises and the mass deceptions and the entire coast from the Wash to Land's End being locked down that year, but then they probably wouldn't know the entire scope - certainly Peter wouldn't, but with his experience in warfare he could certainly make a damn good guess :)

And oh my god that speech is amazing :'D I certainly see why you used it :'D Yes, some men certainly knew what was happening :D

*pats* YOU ARE MAKING AWESOME AND I LOVE IT. I know the rough story but not the details, so am reading up on it at the moment (and flailing. Lots. All the flails.) so I will be better able to help :D

Thanks! Awww, back to it!

re: when did Normandy become THE D-Day because I was wondering if before they knew of it

Have you tried looking here for more info? There's also a Countdown to D-Day timeline on the same site.

Pretty much, they had decided D-Day would be June 5 in May 1944 but with the unpredictable weather, they changed the date on June 4 (confirmed June 5). There's also a small item about a coded message to the French Resistance on June 5, at the bottom of the page if you want to use it for part of Susan's story.

Also, looking through Time magazine's online archive... the first D-Day mention I could find associated with Normandy is in their June 12, 1944 issue. One is a mention in a question to the magazine by a reader here and another about how it affects Wall Street here. From the abstracts, it does seem like it has already become THE D-Day a week after the landings.

Thanks so much!! The line "Bercent mon coeur/D’une langeur monotone" is in the movie The Longest Day, which was on TV recently and I've watched it through the landing of the 6th Airborne. I saw Susan in it -- she's a brunette French resistance fighter and there is a passionate neck kiss and then she runs off with the other fighters to meet paras and blow up a railway.

Thank you for that info on the D-Day. When I used a quote in an earlier chapter with Patton talking about D-Day, I worried it would confuse readers as he was referring to Operation Torch's D-Day.

This is all SO huge I'm just amazed that the military planners were able to keep all of this War in their heads.

Do we get to see the "Incident" that gets Peter busted?
Please, sometime?

Thanks

ClaireI

I am working on it, Clariel! I think there's something in comments around here somewhere, too about the Incident that gets Peter busted back to Private and in jail! I'm trying! I just tossed the last 2,000 words I wrote, so I'm behind again. I liked what I'd written, a lot, with some nicer conversations that Peter has with Helen, Edmund, and Lucy. But I will just put it to the side for now.

This is fascinating - but then, I'm always fascinated by British class differences and how they're acted out socially.
You're right, this seems to be the absolutely perfect situation for Peter, as odd as it might be for him at first, and I love that. I know I'm going to be fascinated by how he develops throughout AW. LOVED the first chapter! :)

And thank you for reviewing AW! I'm glad you liked it! I'll write more later. I was feeling a little stung by what was just underneath your review. The usual, loved it, BUT, and I don't mind the buts, really I don't. But... oh well. press on. The whole Peter as NCO vs officer isn't something I'd anticipated -- shocking that -- well, not really, but it's working. Someone had mentioned earlier in comments the sports that one class would play vs another (football vs rugger/rowing/cricket) and I'm seeing that as I tease this out. We have the fact that the Pevensies are in public schools, that Peter is studying with the Professor, and that Edmund injures himself in rugger -- all indicia of a middle/upper middle class background. The NCOs are all playing football and are described as being these Cockneys, Londoners, police officers, and "scallywags." There is a class thing going on and their nuances that Americans just don't understand. The whole concept of the "batman" is probably more familiar to Americans through literature (Frodo and Sam, or Peter Whimsey and Bunter).

You're welcome! I'll look forward to the "more later" and reading more as well; I think the class developments will be fascinating.

I can't wait to read this chapter. Beside several other aspects, I think that's the time when we'll finally see Peter in more or less proper environment. When reading your FFs I had more and more feeling, that - in the light of what you've written - there is little explanation (or even excuse) for appointing Peter as High King. From England-parts we know that he's too stupid to even learn Latin, not to mention science, from Narnia-parts we know that he tends to leave all the work to his siblings and disappear somewhere in the countryside. Yes, I can see that you simply like Edmund and work hard not to have him dominated by his brother but by now there is little explanation why everybody treats Peter so seriously.
As to the last chapters - before Christmas I was extremely busy, during Christmas I had Christmas. In other words: I was reading, but I had no time to write comments. Therefore - beside what I've written above and what can be easily implied from that - I'll give you some now:
- I like Lucy's relationship with Aidan (despite the fact that - as you may remember from my comments long time ago - I'm not the greatest fan of Lucy being married); I agree with you that she could not have some unhealthy relationship and that putting her into one just for the sake of dramatic action would be absurd.
Not to mention that seeing Edmund and Morgan as stable and mature couple is a good joke itself.
- Peter and Mary managed to talk normally with each other; why am I not surprised that it happened at night, when they were alone? Clearly when they are alone Mary’s competitive paranoia is switched off. If they had more chances for spending time alone they could even become friends.
- thank you for showing us British war-time Christmas. It never crossed my mind to do the relevant research myself, so I’m grateful for yours. And for pointing out this charming book Instructions for American Servicemen... I bought it together with instructions for British soldiers in France and in Germany. Fascinating lecture, I’m quite sure that none of the soldiers for which it was written had read it with such an interest as I did.

All the best in new year,
Krystyna

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Help I've fallen and I can't get out!

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