AAR - Before there were Fighters-WW1 Prequel Scenario #1 (WWIflyingace - Entente)

**WWIflyingace** · 04-04-2014 17:42

Artillery spotting wasn't my favorite kind of mission, but there I was approaching No-Man's-Land. My heart went out to the poor blokes below. I laughed at myself the way I was starting to pick up British slang. I hoped I was using it correctly!

I'd flown this kind of duty since February. I didn't appreciate the flack or being without a weapon. The German's had started arming their 2-seaters with an observers gun. Our side did two. But I was flying a single-seat Scout. And for months I was helpless.

But that was all changed now. Hawker had down a plane just the previous month in a Bristol with a Lewis Machine gun bolted to its side. My mechanic and I figured out a way to mount such a gun on top of the wing. If the Hun came calling I would be able to answer this time.

Then I saw it. A slow moving plane flying directly at me. Looked to be an Albatros; soon to be a dead duck!

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She came straight on; I guess she had nothing to fear from an unarmed scout. I went low she went high. We exchanged fire during the pass and the sputtering of her engine indicated my kite got the better end of it.

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She tried a lazy turn to the right as I did a half loop.

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I turned in for another pass at her. My bullets punched holes in her side from just behind the pilot to the tail; the Albatros' rudder looked to be jammed.

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I then settled in behind and slightly below her popping her the past I could. Soon fire erupted from her engine.

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She was trying to get back to her lines, but I stayed with her. Flames continued to eat their way along the fuselage towards the crew. Then an explosion and debris rained down dead center between the lines. I circled over the smoldering heap knowing nothing could have survived.

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Slowly to turned back to my original course. Maybe artillery spotting wasn't so bad after all?

**WWIflyingace** · 04-04-2014 17:44

Butcher's Bill

Lt. Charles Lewis Diamond / RTB / - / 1 victory (mission successful)

Thanks for the prequel scenarios!

Hun crew

Heinrich Walderhauser / SD NML / KIA
Rudolf Oberfander / SD NML / KIA

**gully_raker** · 04-04-2014 23:07

Well done Chuck!
You must have been mixing with the Aussie forces cause "Blokes" is our slang. Mostly the British use Lads or Chaps!

**flash** · 04-05-2014 01:34

Originally Posted by WWIflyingace

Butcher's Bill: Lt. Charles Lewis Diamond / RTB / - / 2 victory (mission successful)

Another quick victory Chuck - well done - Cowboy only gets one kill for this mission though !

When you get a chance let me have your two-seater crews for the roster please.

**WWIflyingace** · 04-05-2014 03:07

My mistake on the 2 victory; should have been 1 victory.

**Nightbomber** · 04-05-2014 04:02

Congrats Chuck

Thanks Barry for the language lesson

**fast.git** · 04-05-2014 04:26

Originally Posted by gully_raker

Well done Chuck!
You must have been mixing with the Aussie forces cause "Blokes" is our slang. Mostly the British use Lads or Chaps!

Another interesting turn in the "English" language. I had no idea...

**Lt. S.Kafloc** · 04-05-2014 08:29

Just to put it historically ( Sorry Baz old Chap)
Originally bloke was criminal jargon (or cant) for a man of superior station, someone who was not a criminal, as in: "I stole the bloke's watch right off em."

The earliest found usage, according to Quinion, is from 9 April 1829 in the court papers of the Old Bailey in the trial of 17-year old John Daly who was charged with housebreaking. It appears in the transcript once as blake and once as bloke. In 1839, H. Brandon included it in his book Poverty, Mendacity and Crime but spelled it bloak and defined it as "a gentleman". After the early 1850s, the term becomes more widely used in literature including by Henry Mayhew and George Augustus Sala to mean a man of any class, which is the meaning most popular today. The OED adds a specialist usage in naval slang from 1914 onwards for the commander of a warship, shown as "the Bloke" with a capital "B" in its examples.

In Australia, where it was used early on, the term meant "the boss" or someone of status. In the US the term was in use by the late 19th century and is still not entirely extinct. Some Americans used it in the sense of a stupid or worthless person. The stupid person sense may originate with the Dutch blok, a fool, which is where blockhead comes from.

According to the Google Ngram culturomics project, which examines the popularity of words in published sources over time, bloke increased in popularity starting around the turn of the century and reached a peak around 1950 before levelling off around 1960 at a flat level up to 1999.

Australian bloke

Arthur Tauchert, in The Sentimental Bloke (1918), portrayed an Aussie bloke of the period. He undergoes a change in what it means to be a man.

A bloke, or "Aussie bloke", is a masculine archetype unique to Australia. Sociologist Catrino Elder says in Being Australian (2008) that the 'Aussie bloke' is part of the Australian national identity:

..it is often suggested that nations are made up of 'types' of people. National identity is seen to be based on what are considered shared character traits often deriving from history. A good Australian example is the idea of the 'Aussie bloke' and the belief that this type of person is unique to Australia.
Australian historian Russel Ward in The Australian Legend (1958) "famously described" the mythical "Aussie bloke" as:

..a practical man, rough and ready in his manners and quick to decry any appearance of affection in others... Though capable of great exertion in an emergency, he normally feels no impulse to work hard without good cause. He swears hard and consistently, gambles heavily and often, and drinks deeply on occasion... he is a greater knocker of eminent people unless, as is in the case of his sporting heroes, they are distinguished by physical prowess. He is fiercely independent... above all he will stick to his mates though thick and thin, even if he thinks they may be wrong... He tends to be a rolling stone, highly suspect if he should chance to gather much moss.
Ward's archetypal "bush bloke" was outdated even when he wrote about it, yet as Elder goes on to say:

..the power of this national type — the bush bloke — comes not from the fact that all Australians or even a majority of Australians live this life, but from an acceptance of it as a pleasureable and meaningful story that describes who Australians are. The image supposedly reflects a national character — that is, if you are Australian, some of these characteristics make up your identity. Many people argue that this image is outdated and inaccurate. In fact, Russel Ward (1958) argues that the image should be understood as typical, not common.
Many Australians today would no longer associate with Ward's archetypal bloke without some irony, yet it still lives on outside Australia. For example, in a 2000 Time magazine article published in the United States, Belinda Luscombe said "'The Bloke' is a certain kind of Australian or New Zealand male" and goes on to describe the "Classic Bloke" as "not a voluble beast. His speech patterns are best described as infrequent but colorful." He is "pragmatic rather than classy....does not whinge" and "knows how to take a beating". When Steve Irwin died, many Australians were embarrassed that he was portrayed as a typical Australian derived from Ward's "laconic bush bloke", but as Elder says, "Ward's Aussie bloke may be out of date.. but the endeavor of creating stories about being Australian is still a central way in which being Australian is reinforced."

A more contemporary vision of the bloke can be seen in Richard Walsh's essay "Australia Observed" (1985), "The ultimate accolade in Australia is to be a "good bloke", meaning someone who is gregarious, hospitable, generous, warm hearted, and with a good sense of humour. In Australia it availeth a man nothing if he makes himself a fortune and is not a good bloke!" Dennis Carroll (1982) associates the "ordinary bloke" with a form of masculine individualism unique to Australia: "An individual who does not conform to the Australianist-related patterns of male behavior will be dismissed as an outsider.. the kind of individualism based on too much success, wealth or power will take him beyond the valued reciprocates of egalitarian mateship. A man should be reasonably successful in areas which are not too threatening to others and remain an 'ordinary bloke', accessible, easy-going and sociable. Individualism is thus always.. couched in terms of some approved, Australianist-related image of masculinity."

During World War I, one of the most popular Australian books of the era was written about a man who transforms himself into a domesticated, urbane and "sentimental bloke". C.J. Dennis's popular book of poems, Songs of a Sentimental Bloke (1915), is about a roughneck larrikin named Bill, a typical bloke who — uncharacteristically for a bloke — spends time in the city, finds love with a woman, settles down and is exposed to high culture. As the title suggests, the narrative revolves around questions of masculinity. It showed "that masculinist men can choose love and domesticity," and uses coarse language "to prove — amongst other things — that life and love can be just as real and splendid to the 'common' bloke as to the 'cultured'". The book was influential in Australian culture, it "sold an extraordinary 100,000 copies in four years", it "attained the status of cultural treasure" and remains the best-selling volume of Australian verse. Dennis's book was adapted to film, stage, ballet, musical and many gramophone recordings and radio and television programmes throughout the 20th century; however, it was most famously produced as a silent film, The Sentimental Bloke in 1918, starring Arthur Tauchert cast as the 'bloke' of the title. The film portrays Bill going through a transformation becoming a gentrified household breadwinner, yet also retaining his manly characteristics, the bloke who is more than a "careful little housewife". It is now considered one of the most important films in the Australian Film Commission's archives and called by them "Australia's finest film from the silent era".

Some famous Australians have been identified as blokes. Songs of a Sentimental Bloke includes illustrations of "bloke cupids" by the artist Hal Gye, which were said to resemble the politician Bert Edwards. In 1963, Australian politician Arthur Calwell (1896–1973) told the Australian House of Representatives that he was "an ordinary Australian bloke" in a rhetorical contrast with political opponent Robert Menzies. The aphorist William George Plunkett (1910–1975) described himself as an 'ordinary bloke' who liked to 'play around with words'. John Simpson Kirkpatrick (1892–1915) was known as 'the bloke with the donk' (donkey) for his work as a stretcher bearer during the Gallipoli Campaign. Examples of famous contemporary Australians associated with the bloke image include Bill Hunter, Paul Hogan and his fictitious movie character Crocodile Dundee, and Steve Irwin. Following the Australian leadership spill which installed Julia Gillard as the first female Prime Minister of Australia on 24 June 2010, media outlets began to focus on her de facto partner, Tim Mathieson, who was called "First Bloke" instead of "First Lady".

The word "bloke" does not always mean exclusively male. The term "blokey" was added in 1997 to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. It is a variation on the noun "bloke" and means exclusively male

**Flying Officer Kyte** · 04-05-2014 12:13

Thanks for the AAR Chuck. Your Lt. Lewis Diamond seems to be a real gen bloke after all.

Rob.

**gully_raker** · 04-05-2014 14:24

Originally Posted by Skafloc

Just to put it historically ( Sorry Baz old Chap)
Originally bloke was criminal jargon (or cant) for a man of superior station, someone who was not a criminal, as in: "I stole the bloke's watch right off em."

******Much snipping**********************

The word "bloke" does not always mean exclusively male. The term "blokey" was added in 1997 to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary. It is a variation on the noun "bloke" and means exclusively male

Well there you go!
Just shows how much you can learn from "blokes" here on the forum.

Thanks Neil!

Interestingly my dad who was an original ANZAC always called me "little blokey" when I was a child.

**WWIflyingace** · 04-06-2014 07:57

If you have read any of my dawn of the Fighters scenarios you'll find that I often have Australian troops mentioned. I think I mention Indian troops as well. The section of the front I have the scenarios taking place over was manned by troops from these two regions of the British Empire along with UK troops. Being a yank Lt. Diamond would assume they're all Brits...

And yes, I took a bit of liberty with the scenario putting a newly armed Scout Fast Reconnaissance plane in place of the British 2-seater. It wasn't intentional. I just thought recon versus recon and the Scout's first role was as a "fast recon scout" so I played it as it were a newly armed "fast recon scout." After I played the scenario I realized I should have played a 2-seater. Hope this doesn't invalidate the AAR!

**flash** · 04-06-2014 09:08

Originally Posted by WWIflyingace

...After I played the scenario I realized I should have played a 2-seater. Hope this doesn't invalidate the AAR!

No but I feel it is sufficient to make the kill an unconfirmed probable !

**WWIflyingace** · 04-06-2014 12:29

I guess it does invalidate the AAR then as I would rather get credit for the kill. When I find time I'll replay the scenario. In the mean time you can go with the u/c designation as I will have to buy the appropriate British 2-seater to play the scenario. As a side note I would be using a FE2. It's maneuver deck is similar to the Scouts, but it is much faster and should make shorter work of the Albatros...