*** Youtube/Video thread ***

Evangelion said:
Absolute mad lad! Proper chap! [..]
Click to expand...

Ah, lovely! The video accurately describes his sword, which is rare. It does, however, fall into the usual trap of implying that only used a sword and bow. In reality, of course, he mainly used modern (for the time) weapons. His uses of bow and sword weren't weirdly eccentric and rather foolish anachronisms. They were appropriate, if unorthodox, and served practical and psychological purposes. Guns are noisy. Bows aren't. Arrows in war were brutally unexpected in WW2 and thus had a peculiar psychological impact. A silent killer is somewhere nearby, no way of telling where, and people near you are dying with arrows stuck in them. Arrows! In 1940! WTF? Or it's a bit later in the war and you're on guard duty and suddenly a figure appears apparently from nowhere with a sword at your throat demanding your surrender. A sword? WTF? It's the 1940s, not the 1490s! But the important thing is that a lot of sharp thing is saying "surrender" to the more primitive parts of your brain, the parts below thinking.

Ah bugger! The narrator later refers to the sword as "a claybeg", which is a modern neologism that's fictional, an anachronism and simply wrong. "claybeg" is an Anglicised version of two Scottish Gaelic words which would translate into English as "smallsword". But those Gaelic words were not used to describe a sword, the Anglicised version is a modern made-up word and a basket-hilted broadsword is most definitely not a smallsword.
 
On the subject of "mad lads", anyone not familiar with Paddy Mayne should look him up.

He did an awful lot, much of it truly incredible, all of it verified. Here's a snippet (part2 also worth a watch):


Edit:
Here's an hour-long documentary on the SAS during the war, including Paddy and his men.

 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom