Gunner, HEAT, PC!

Touring a Gunner, HEAT, PC! battlefield post-bellum is like wandering around a sculpture park filled with artworks made by an affluent anti-war conceptual artist. In order to bring home the reality of modern armoured warfare, the artist has replaced sections of real AFVs with perspex panels, then used miles of multi-coloured ribbons to illustrate the firework-like trajectories of the shrapnel, spall, and jets of liquefied steel produced by shell impacts. Sometimes the gaudy traceries miss the blue mannequins that represent crewmen. Often they do not.

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Friday Foxer #16

Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.

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Solo Foxer #16

Unlike the formidable Friday foxers, the Monday kind are designed with lone truth sleuths in mind. Roman, my Chief Foxer Setter, assures me the following brainteaser can be solved single-handedly. Crow all you like in the comments section, but please don’t spoil the puzzle for others by sharing solutions or dropping hints.

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Brinkmann’s Bridge: Turn 20

The sight of Belin’s halftrack burning merrily in the road beside the cafe is the final straw for our restless air ace. Oberst Bernhard “Der Sperber” Brinkmann contemplates opening fire on the enemy mortar in the monastery courtyard, before deciding the PIAT team in the white house next-door is the more pressing problem. Rifle in hand he slips out of the Koffiehuis de Onionmancer unobserved, and darts across the alley.

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Crash Dive 2

The USS Tally-Ho is waiting for trade off the northern coast of Bougainville when it receives the radio message about a damaged IJN carrier in the Solomon Sea. It hastens to the area, arriving just before dusk. The flat top is exactly where COMSUBPAC said it would be. What the communication failed to mention was the sizeable bodyguard of anxious escorts and the pair of spotter planes circling overhead.

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Friday Foxer #15

Every Friday at 1300 hours, Tally-Ho Corner’s cleverest clogs come together to solve a ‘foxer’ handcrafted by my sadistic chum and colleague, Roman. A complete ‘defoxing’ sometimes takes several days and usually involves the little grey cells of many readers. Don’t be shy. All are welcome to participate.

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Brinkmann’s Bridge: Turn 19

Over 7000 Knight’s Crosses were awarded during WW2. Major Belin’s, I’ve just discovered, was one of the 692 awarded posthumously. The three-man HQ team led by our gung-ho gong hunter is one of two German units completely wiped out this turn.

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