George: "If we do happen to step on a mine, Sir, what do we do?"

Blackadder: "Normal procedure, Lieutenant, is to jump 200 feet in the air and scatter oneself over a wide area."

(Black Adder 4)

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USMC

1. Bring a weapon. Preferably, bring at least two. Bring all of your friends who have weapons. Bring their friends who have weapons.

2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.

3. Only hits count. Close doesn't count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.

4. If your shooting stance is good, you're probably not moving fast enough, nor using cover correctly.

5. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral and diagonal movement are preferred.) more...

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Russian Amerika; Stoney Compton (Baen Books, ISBN 1-4165-2116, April 2007. Cover art by Kurt Miller).

Sample chapters (24!!!) here.

Review can now be found here.

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The list can now be viewed here.

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(2005 repost...)

The problem with a lot of military-oriented fiction (science fiction, technothrillers, mystery novels, etc.) is that it is written by people who have no experience in the military and are too lazy to do the basic research. (This is especially true of television!)

Luckily, there are some ways of correcting this!

(With thanks to Winchell Chung for passing this and many other interesting odds and ends along!)

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The list can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:44 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The list can now be found here.

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(2004 staggers to an end...)

Mark Whittington: Children of Apollo (Xlibris Corporation, 2001)

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:04 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The Military Dimension and The Military Dimension Mark II; by David Drake (Baen Books. 07/91 for Mark I; 12/95 for Mark II. Cover artist John Rheaume for Mark I and Newell Covers and John Pierrard for Mark II. ISBN 0-671-72054-6 for Mark I and 0-671-87697-X for Mark II).

The review can now be found here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 11:18 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Future Weapons of War; edited by Joe Haldeman and Martin H. Greenberg (Baen Books, 03/07. Cover art by David Mattingly. ISBN 978-1-4165-2112-9.).

The review can now be found here.

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The list can now be seen here.

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 06:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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(Halfway through 2004!)

I've been reading Isaac Asimov's massive two-volume original autobiography (In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt). Yesterday I picked up Foundation, the first of the original Foundation novels, and finished most of it while traveling to and from a picnic. Between the autobiography and the novel, I was curious to see what the names of the original stories were. A query to a list I run (Space Opera, on Yahoo) turned up a link to this page by Raja Thiagarajan, who has done an excellent job of pulling together original art, changes in titles, and changes between magazine and book versions.

Interjection (May 23, 2007): This next section was posted as three separate items few days later at the Late, Great Planet Blog, so I'll post it here insrtead of as another item triplet.

more...

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"All that ammo and they didn't kill a thing. No wonder we lost the Vietnam War."

(Comment made by a parent, watching the debut of The A-Team.)

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No soldier ever dies in vain. They have chosen to stand between their country and the barbarians. There is no greater position of honor than this. Politicians sometime do not use the sacrifice correctly; however, that sacrifice is never ever in vain.

(Source Unknown.)

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We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.
And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

(William Shakespeare, Henry V)

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When you send a man out with a gun, you create a policymaker. When his ass is on the line, he will do whatever he needs to do.

And if the implications of that bothers you, the time to do something about it is before you decide to send him out.

(David Drake, "Afterword to Counting the Cost", Caught in the Crossfire)

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An elderly gentleman of 83 arrived in Paris by plane. At the French customs desk, the man took a few minutes to locate his passport in his carry-on bag. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked, sarcastically. The elderly gentleman admitted he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready." more...

Posted by: Fred Kiesche at 07:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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A profile of one of the real-life models for Patrick O'Brians Captain "Lucky Jack" Aubrey. I recently bought a biography of Cochrane and will post a review when I have a chance to read it.

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The list can now be viewed here.

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I went into a public-'ouse to get a pint o' beer,
The publican 'e up an' sez, "We serve no red-coats here."
The girls be'ind the bar they laughed an' giggled fit to die,
I outs into the street again an' to myself sez I:
O it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, go away";
But it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it's "Thank you, Mister Atkins", when the band begins to play. more...

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