Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II
- Thread starter Peabody-Martini
- Start date
Well, I know for a fact some wag is gonna put up a name plate saying the Tiger is named Katherine, or the masculine verison.
I mean, my local zoo has a jaguar exhibit. Sponsored by, you guessed it, the car company, Jaguar.
Part 89, Chapter 1390
Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety
15th August 1960
Chagang Province, Korea
As it grew increasingly clear that the Chinese were not going to be doing anything this year, the talk had turned to when the 3rd Marine Infantry Division was going to be returning to garrison in Pusan. The order to send them home should come at any time. Many of the Marines were talking about volunteering to join the Pacific Fleet to battle pirates and smugglers in the South Seas. That was always a desirable activity for those who were excepted for it. All the senior Noncoms had exciting stories about their adventures with the Fleet. It certainly sounded better than just waiting to see what would happen in the mountains of Northern Korea.
As Father Lehmann constantly reminded Kiki, war or no war, their battle never ended. Every day being exactly the same as the one that had preceded it, boredom, little things like the ability of the men to find alcohol in even the most unlikely places and the constant dangers that lurked all around them were things that the Medical Service had to contend with. That was why Kiki spent her days on call because at any second, a man who had been stupid, careless or pigheaded would be brought in and he would be their problem to sort out. A couple days earlier, three men had been brought in with shrapnel injuries because one of them had been juggling hand grenades. They refused to say which one of them it had been, so all three of them had been tossed in the brig.
The trips out to the “front lines” or to the nearby villages had become things that she was looking forward to just because it broke the monotony. Today, Kiki had looked at the calendar and had realized that the month of August was half over. She had less than two weeks until she would be going home. Then she had felt a bit guilty that she had been unconsciously counting down the days.
She had received a number of letters the day before and she was rereading them in the Mess Tent after breakfast with a cup of tea in front of her. Suga had sent her a box of tea, it was a particularly thoughtful gift, it was better than her other beverage choices and there was always hot water available in a hospital. Her father and Charlotte had sent her a heartfelt letter saying that they thought what she was doing was wonderful. Kat and Aurora had written letters supportive of what she was doing. A letter from Benjamin had arrived that had been addressed to the University but had been forwarded to the Medical Service, finally catching up with Kiki in Korea. He was starting University in the Autumn term and he apologized for being pushy months earlier and that he sort of understood what she had been trying to tell him when she had asked him to stop seeing her. Kiki was trying to figure out exactly what he was aiming for by writing that letter…
That was when she heard the Iltis pull into the compound. The gunning of the engine and the skid of the tires on the gravel as it came to an abrupt stop suggested that there was a great deal of urgency involved.
She was already on her feet, unaware of how that had become her reaction upon hearing certain sounds. Running towards the vehicle she saw that another Sani, this one attached to a forward artillery unit was in the bed with the patient, he was covered in blood. The driver of the Iltis had a dazed look on his face.
“Beat had the caisson roll over him” The driver said, “It came detached, I told them to secure it, but these hills…”
Kiki found a scene of horror in the bed of the Iltis. She had seen the field artillery. The “caisson” in this case was not of the two wheeled variety that had seen widespread use in the previous century, it was one of the specially designed trailers built to safely transport and store the shells and cased propellant charges. The patient, Beat, she presumed. He looked like he had nearly been cut in half. There in the bed of the Iltis, Kiki kept her focus on the extensive injuries and the attempts to treat them in field. Compound fractures in the legs, complex pattern injury to the pelvis, extensive bleeding, internal bleeding, the list ran on and on. She was trying to get as much information as she could while working with the other Medic. She was starting to wonder where the surgeons were when Father Lehmann appeared. He looked at the blood smeared tag that Kiki had been filling out, then tore it off at black. Both the driver and the medic looked like they were about to cry, that was when Kiki realized that they were only slightly older than she was.
“If we were in a Casualty Department in Berlin or Munich and had a team of Surgeons on standby, perhaps we could make a miracle happen” Lehmann said, as he took a look at the identification tag around the man’s neck. “By the time a helicopter got here to evacuate him to Seoul he will be gone. It says here he’s Catholic, so there is one thing I can do for him.”
Kiki was left feeling completely helpless in that moment.
15th August 1960
Chagang Province, Korea
As it grew increasingly clear that the Chinese were not going to be doing anything this year, the talk had turned to when the 3rd Marine Infantry Division was going to be returning to garrison in Pusan. The order to send them home should come at any time. Many of the Marines were talking about volunteering to join the Pacific Fleet to battle pirates and smugglers in the South Seas. That was always a desirable activity for those who were excepted for it. All the senior Noncoms had exciting stories about their adventures with the Fleet. It certainly sounded better than just waiting to see what would happen in the mountains of Northern Korea.
As Father Lehmann constantly reminded Kiki, war or no war, their battle never ended. Every day being exactly the same as the one that had preceded it, boredom, little things like the ability of the men to find alcohol in even the most unlikely places and the constant dangers that lurked all around them were things that the Medical Service had to contend with. That was why Kiki spent her days on call because at any second, a man who had been stupid, careless or pigheaded would be brought in and he would be their problem to sort out. A couple days earlier, three men had been brought in with shrapnel injuries because one of them had been juggling hand grenades. They refused to say which one of them it had been, so all three of them had been tossed in the brig.
The trips out to the “front lines” or to the nearby villages had become things that she was looking forward to just because it broke the monotony. Today, Kiki had looked at the calendar and had realized that the month of August was half over. She had less than two weeks until she would be going home. Then she had felt a bit guilty that she had been unconsciously counting down the days.
She had received a number of letters the day before and she was rereading them in the Mess Tent after breakfast with a cup of tea in front of her. Suga had sent her a box of tea, it was a particularly thoughtful gift, it was better than her other beverage choices and there was always hot water available in a hospital. Her father and Charlotte had sent her a heartfelt letter saying that they thought what she was doing was wonderful. Kat and Aurora had written letters supportive of what she was doing. A letter from Benjamin had arrived that had been addressed to the University but had been forwarded to the Medical Service, finally catching up with Kiki in Korea. He was starting University in the Autumn term and he apologized for being pushy months earlier and that he sort of understood what she had been trying to tell him when she had asked him to stop seeing her. Kiki was trying to figure out exactly what he was aiming for by writing that letter…
That was when she heard the Iltis pull into the compound. The gunning of the engine and the skid of the tires on the gravel as it came to an abrupt stop suggested that there was a great deal of urgency involved.
She was already on her feet, unaware of how that had become her reaction upon hearing certain sounds. Running towards the vehicle she saw that another Sani, this one attached to a forward artillery unit was in the bed with the patient, he was covered in blood. The driver of the Iltis had a dazed look on his face.
“Beat had the caisson roll over him” The driver said, “It came detached, I told them to secure it, but these hills…”
Kiki found a scene of horror in the bed of the Iltis. She had seen the field artillery. The “caisson” in this case was not of the two wheeled variety that had seen widespread use in the previous century, it was one of the specially designed trailers built to safely transport and store the shells and cased propellant charges. The patient, Beat, she presumed. He looked like he had nearly been cut in half. There in the bed of the Iltis, Kiki kept her focus on the extensive injuries and the attempts to treat them in field. Compound fractures in the legs, complex pattern injury to the pelvis, extensive bleeding, internal bleeding, the list ran on and on. She was trying to get as much information as she could while working with the other Medic. She was starting to wonder where the surgeons were when Father Lehmann appeared. He looked at the blood smeared tag that Kiki had been filling out, then tore it off at black. Both the driver and the medic looked like they were about to cry, that was when Kiki realized that they were only slightly older than she was.
“If we were in a Casualty Department in Berlin or Munich and had a team of Surgeons on standby, perhaps we could make a miracle happen” Lehmann said, as he took a look at the identification tag around the man’s neck. “By the time a helicopter got here to evacuate him to Seoul he will be gone. It says here he’s Catholic, so there is one thing I can do for him.”
Kiki was left feeling completely helpless in that moment.
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As things go, odds are that the London Zoo, the Tiger's cage, and specially German Redheads will figure in every single ribald and dark humour joke and sketch in the BBC for the next 50 years.
I can imagine a Monty Python joke with an exhibition of Dangerous beasts.... Passing for the "Maneater Tiger"... And ending in the "Jerry Ginger Soprano Maker"......
In the other, the Russians will be even more fanatically awed of Kat... Jehane may chuckle darkly in amusement while Gregory and her "fiance" blink to the rather... Russian viciousness in the retribution against the responsible for the Ridge massacre .
"Figures that Kat would go the extra mile to stick it to the traitorous bastard."
In the other foot, there may be an amusing gift for the London Zoo of a Siberian Tiger, courtesy of the Tsar Gregory...... A female... named Katrina......
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Actually I find it hard to see how the IRA would have much of a continued presence in an Ireland which has been 32 county with no British presence for the last 40 odd years. I can see a bit of residual presence in the six Northern counties where there is some disaffection as the TTL analogue of the UDA but the main raison d'etre would be gone. There aren't any German military bases and Britain has plenty of depressed rural areas of its own and won't be seriously contemplating a reconquista.
And I still don't buy how Ireland in any circumstance short of nuclear arms could be a 32 county due to the outcome of the WW1 that PM gave us. But I've just long learned to accept it and move on man.
It was implied that it exists mostly as a social club at this point. It also should be not surprise that many of the current members are little more than criminals.
Peabody-Martini has given you a United Ireland you ungrateful whelp! The least you can do is suspend disbelief and be properly appreciative
Grateful as I might be, it would butterfly my existence. With no Easter rising, my mother's side never flees Ireland.
The POD was a relatively minor event during the Battle of Verdun in February 1916, things didn't really start rolling until the following July. The Easter Rising occurred in April of that year, so events in Ireland would have remained close to OTL right up until the German Government secretly shipped several thousand tons of captured British arms to Ireland via Sweden and the Irish Question became a major bone of contention in the negotiations to formally end the First World War.
I thought I remembered it being butterflied, apparently I was wrong
Part 89, Chapter 1391
Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-One
16th August 1960
Babushkin, Buryatia, Russia
As Zella was sitting at the table of the galley kitchen of the caravan going over her notes and typing up the next dispatch to the Berliner. She knew that she was traveling through during the brief summertime, but what she had seen of Siberia had been breathtakingly beautiful. Deep forests, mountains, wide rivers most of it untouched and wild. She wrote about that. Her previous column about the comedy of errors that had led to them having dinner with the Russian Czar after getting caught up in Russian officialdom had been well received. Zella had realized that she had probably done Gia no favors by mentioning that the obvious chemistry between Gia and Fyodor Volkov. The Czar’s consort, Lidiya had mentioned that it was something that everyone was aware of but Gia.
Today, Zella was writing about how they had made good time from Moscow to the Urals, then across Siberia. The Urals had been unexpected. After the gritty industrial cities of European Russia, Zella had found herself surrounded by fields full of wildflowers. Once across the mountains, they had proceeded along the military highway that ran parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. That was when Zella had started to notice the wildness and beauty of the landscape. The people she had met were shaped by the land where they lived. Tough, hard people. They would have to be in order to live in places so isolated much of the year. They had laughed at Zella telling them what she thought of where they lived. Come back in December they said, she would need to trade her leather jacket for something far warmer.
Then they had reached Lake Baikal, the crossing between Siberia and the Russian Far East. They had spent the morning riding around the southern shore of the lake and Zella had been amazed at how vivid the blue of the water was. Then her father had insisted that they should stop in Babushkin for the rest of the day. A look at the map explained why. From here on the distances between settlements would grow longer. Most of the preparations they had made were for the next part of the journey. If anything went wrong, then they would have to be able to handle it themselves.
Washington D.C.
There were some days when he felt like he couldn’t pay for things to go well. You would think that as President, Averell Harriman would have more control than he did but he didn’t. He had just learned that the CIA had gone to absurd lengths to confirm that an eighteen-year-old girl was in Korea as a volunteer in a field hospital there. Even going so far as show him photographs of her interacting with U.S. Army soldiers who acting as Advisors to the Chinese Army. Apparently, she had taken one look at the Advisors who had been told to keep an eye out for her standing around and had done the most stereotypical “German” thing imaginable, she had ordered members of the Green Beret to help out or get lost. He had found himself asking what that had to do with the cost of tea in China before he had caught the irony of that comment.
Harriman had met Kristina von Preussen last year and she had seemed like a nice girl. Her being in Korea working as a Nurse or Medic was hardly a surprise, she had struck him as the sort who hungered to be a part of something larger, for her life to have a purpose. Was she there? Yes. Good for her. Did the CIA intend to tell their Chinese friends about her presence just across the Yalu River? Not just no, but Hell no. Good, then the matter was settled then.
The trouble was that for appearances sake, Harriman would need to call up Kaiser Louis Ferdinand and tell him how proud he should be of his civically minded daughter. It wasn’t that Louis was a bad guy, he was quite nice actually, it was that no part of his thinking seemed to include that any other country could or should be as well ordered as his own or run differently. Oddly, most Americans would be more than happy to have the benefits of the German style Welfare State for themselves or their children. But the thought that going to anyone different them, or worse, one of “those people” whose identities were too obvious to mention would be enough to have them howling in anger. And the mere mention that their taxes might go up would be enough to have them start yelling about taking up arms. Louis didn’t seem to grasp that aspect of America.
Now there was the Canadian mess that was a minor headache but was nevertheless an irritant. The Avro Arrow Mark 2, the Canadians had fielded a squadron of the powerful interceptors. That was expected, Harriman would have congratulated them on the technical achievement that airplane represented if it didn’t raise so many questions. Like how the Canadians had paid for it just for starters. And the technology that made the Arrow possible, where had it come from?
Over the last few days they had started to get answers and it was one more reason that talking with the German Kaiser would be awkward. The Canadians had been looking to develop their aerospace sector and Arado Aircraft Works had invested heavily in Avro Canada. The result had been a technology exchange. The Canadians had gotten the Arrow and in Germany, the prototype for the Arado Pfeil, the latest attack plane constructed by that company had just rolled out. The two aircraft looked remarkably similar.
16th August 1960
Babushkin, Buryatia, Russia
As Zella was sitting at the table of the galley kitchen of the caravan going over her notes and typing up the next dispatch to the Berliner. She knew that she was traveling through during the brief summertime, but what she had seen of Siberia had been breathtakingly beautiful. Deep forests, mountains, wide rivers most of it untouched and wild. She wrote about that. Her previous column about the comedy of errors that had led to them having dinner with the Russian Czar after getting caught up in Russian officialdom had been well received. Zella had realized that she had probably done Gia no favors by mentioning that the obvious chemistry between Gia and Fyodor Volkov. The Czar’s consort, Lidiya had mentioned that it was something that everyone was aware of but Gia.
Today, Zella was writing about how they had made good time from Moscow to the Urals, then across Siberia. The Urals had been unexpected. After the gritty industrial cities of European Russia, Zella had found herself surrounded by fields full of wildflowers. Once across the mountains, they had proceeded along the military highway that ran parallel to the Trans-Siberian Railroad. That was when Zella had started to notice the wildness and beauty of the landscape. The people she had met were shaped by the land where they lived. Tough, hard people. They would have to be in order to live in places so isolated much of the year. They had laughed at Zella telling them what she thought of where they lived. Come back in December they said, she would need to trade her leather jacket for something far warmer.
Then they had reached Lake Baikal, the crossing between Siberia and the Russian Far East. They had spent the morning riding around the southern shore of the lake and Zella had been amazed at how vivid the blue of the water was. Then her father had insisted that they should stop in Babushkin for the rest of the day. A look at the map explained why. From here on the distances between settlements would grow longer. Most of the preparations they had made were for the next part of the journey. If anything went wrong, then they would have to be able to handle it themselves.
Washington D.C.
There were some days when he felt like he couldn’t pay for things to go well. You would think that as President, Averell Harriman would have more control than he did but he didn’t. He had just learned that the CIA had gone to absurd lengths to confirm that an eighteen-year-old girl was in Korea as a volunteer in a field hospital there. Even going so far as show him photographs of her interacting with U.S. Army soldiers who acting as Advisors to the Chinese Army. Apparently, she had taken one look at the Advisors who had been told to keep an eye out for her standing around and had done the most stereotypical “German” thing imaginable, she had ordered members of the Green Beret to help out or get lost. He had found himself asking what that had to do with the cost of tea in China before he had caught the irony of that comment.
Harriman had met Kristina von Preussen last year and she had seemed like a nice girl. Her being in Korea working as a Nurse or Medic was hardly a surprise, she had struck him as the sort who hungered to be a part of something larger, for her life to have a purpose. Was she there? Yes. Good for her. Did the CIA intend to tell their Chinese friends about her presence just across the Yalu River? Not just no, but Hell no. Good, then the matter was settled then.
The trouble was that for appearances sake, Harriman would need to call up Kaiser Louis Ferdinand and tell him how proud he should be of his civically minded daughter. It wasn’t that Louis was a bad guy, he was quite nice actually, it was that no part of his thinking seemed to include that any other country could or should be as well ordered as his own or run differently. Oddly, most Americans would be more than happy to have the benefits of the German style Welfare State for themselves or their children. But the thought that going to anyone different them, or worse, one of “those people” whose identities were too obvious to mention would be enough to have them howling in anger. And the mere mention that their taxes might go up would be enough to have them start yelling about taking up arms. Louis didn’t seem to grasp that aspect of America.
Now there was the Canadian mess that was a minor headache but was nevertheless an irritant. The Avro Arrow Mark 2, the Canadians had fielded a squadron of the powerful interceptors. That was expected, Harriman would have congratulated them on the technical achievement that airplane represented if it didn’t raise so many questions. Like how the Canadians had paid for it just for starters. And the technology that made the Arrow possible, where had it come from?
Over the last few days they had started to get answers and it was one more reason that talking with the German Kaiser would be awkward. The Canadians had been looking to develop their aerospace sector and Arado Aircraft Works had invested heavily in Avro Canada. The result had been a technology exchange. The Canadians had gotten the Arrow and in Germany, the prototype for the Arado Pfeil, the latest attack plane constructed by that company had just rolled out. The two aircraft looked remarkably similar.
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Never ever a good combination. Young men, bored careless and or unlucky. A myriad of funny stories start with that. Only sometimes it isn't remotely funny.
Harriman has a better take on the Kaiser then Truman did and that is a good thing.
If he calls the Kaiser about his daughter, he should also throw in something like the Army Commendation Medal for the medical team that went to China as a good will gesture.
There is probably a growing faction of the Democratic Party that sees the future of the party in Langism but it will be called something else like "Free Market Welfare State" or "Human Capitalism" and it will set the party up for a bit fight in 1964 No matters who wins this year.
Is there a chance that Emil and Zella can get to Korea before Kiki leaves because that will be a great story to tell.
If he calls the Kaiser about his daughter, he should also throw in something like the Army Commendation Medal for the medical team that went to China as a good will gesture.
There is probably a growing faction of the Democratic Party that sees the future of the party in Langism but it will be called something else like "Free Market Welfare State" or "Human Capitalism" and it will set the party up for a bit fight in 1964 No matters who wins this year.
Is there a chance that Emil and Zella can get to Korea before Kiki leaves because that will be a great story to tell.
FBKampfer
Banned
From all that I've met, you Irish seem to be a rather ungrateful lot by natural disposition.
There are some few advantages of having an autocratic monarch: the Kaiser says "we will have universal health care" and Germany has universal health care. Dunno the details of how the Brits came up with their NHS or the French with their version (probably something during their Revolution.)
On SB, there is this guy who tells his stories of his time in the UK(/English) army. He was called Gravitas or something similar. If you can handle a bit of horrible grammar, syntax and punctuation, you'll definitely have a good laugh with those.