E House <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Thanks, Julian! Mine were just semi-educated guesses--it's nice to see them confirmed.
-E House (certifiable gun & obsolete technology nut) COMMENT Well, back when rocks were soft, I fired a LOT of infantry weapons on Courses at the Small Arms Wing of the School of Infantry, - at Hythe. The Museum there had the most complete collection of "small arms of the world" in the entire UK; but it was a museum which was a "working" part of the School, and the weapons were there to be used, in the lecture theatres [to study design, engineering, stripping, cleaning, repiar, adjustm,net, &c, &c.], - and on the Hythe ranges in "comparative shoots". There, the Instructors used to teach us to be able to make effective combat use of any foreign weapon we might find "in the field", - should we be denied the use of our own personal weapons for some reason, when "on Ops". [If you kept yourself busy, going on Courses, you got a reputation for "being keen"; and your CO was less likely to find you unpleasant or boring jobs to do!] Contacting Major Gales, then the Adjutant and Curator at Hythe, to sign a "bloodchit" and take-up a place on a Comparative Weapons Course was quite highly-regarded as an interesting "get-out", from exercises on Dartmoor or in the Brecon Beacons. So, many of the bright chaps in my generation did courses on Allied and captured enemy weapons and other equipment. Which included many weapons supposedly obsolete for frontline Units in their countries of origin, but handed over to allied Satellites, or issued to Reserve formations, or ""home defence" units; or air-dropped to guerilla/partisan units, In my time, I had the opportunity to fire everything from16th C bronze cannon, Tower Muskets, Baker Rifles, and Napoleon's Daughters, - up to the first Avtomat Kalashnikovs [captured during the Suez Affair]. And I hasten to point out that this wasn't a question of being "gun-nuts" - this was about personal survival, considering where some of us were being Posted, and what our Opposition might well have in their weapons caches, left-over from previous wars. Fledgling Independance Movements bought whatever weapons they could afford from Arms Dealers. And sometimes this meant- for the poorest - weapons which had last seen service in the Crimean or Franco-Prussian Wars of the 19th C. Back to the Cossack Male - All the tunics have those breast pockets for 12 rounds of ammunition. And his edged weapons are as much a part of his traditional dress as his clothing, his riding boots, baggy trousers, and his hat. If you do a Google Search for "Cossack weapons" - you'll get a selection of websites containing nice pictures released from the ex-Soviet Archives - and you'll see that all Cossacks, of all the Hosts, carried the same designs of traditional long knives or short swords [whichever!]. Wikpedia has a mass of cross-refernced data about the various Cossack Hosts - lifestyle, ancient and modern history, &c, &c. Regards, J.W. _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
