New look for an old friend
Don McArthur used to write at Misanthropist. That site was down for a few weeks but it's back up at the same URL as
mcarthurweb running some home-brew software.
Good posts as always -- a sample:
You get one life, and you should be careful to do something memorable with it. Maybe not this memorable, but memorable.
Richard Prendergast Raikes was born on January 21 1912, the son of an Indian Army major. Until his parents came home when he was 10, he was brought up in Wales and London by his grandparents and by three aunts, who hero-worshipped their seven brothers for having earned eight DSOs and four MCs in the First World War: two of them had died, one became a general, another an admiral. With the burden of family expectation on his shoulders, young Dick entered Dartmouth in 1925 to become Chief Cadet Captain and to be awarded the King's Dirk.
...In 1935 Clyde was sent to Palestine during the Arab general strike. Raikes spent several weeks fighting fires, evacuating a maternity home by a burning timber yard, and building an armoured train which, after two hours' shunting practice at Haifa station, he took over the railway system of north Palestine.
On several nights Raikes took this train to Samakh, near the Sea of Galilee, to keep open the line despite ambushes and derailments - "an enjoyable game of cowboys and Indians", he recalled. One night Raikes joined up with the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force and enjoyed riding on horseback at full gallop across boulder-strewn country by the light of a burning oil pipeline...
...Back on Malta as first lieutenant of the submarine Severn, Raikes's last years of peace were filled with dances, parties, moonlit picnics and running a stable of 11 horses for a Maltese friend, Mr Schembri. He also took part in trials to enter an enemy harbour at night while conning his submerged submarine from a tiny platform built around the periscope. In the warm Mediterranean, Raikes wore only a bathing costume, but the experiment was abandoned when, on entering St Paul's Bay, the sight of him apparently walking on water caused several local fishermen to cross themselves and jump into the sea...
Heh -- reminds me of Lawrence or the Swedish guy who was kidnapped and hired a bounty hunter to take out his kidnappers. I love that last bit with the submarine. That would be cool to ghost quietly through the water with the sub just at sealevel.
Posted by DaveH at July 2, 2005 11:36 PM