Random Musings and Bridge Building

Years ago, when I was young and foolish (some would say I still possess one of those traits, and at 68, it's not "young"), there was a commercial radio station in Boston, WCRB, that had a 24 hour classical music format. My tastes in music at that time were, and as they are now, somewhat eclectic. One of the announcers, actually the general manager, presented a program called "WCRB Saturday Night". Much of the material used was from BBC comedy programs. My favorite was a long-running program called "The Goon Show", presented by several master British comedians: Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, and Spike Milligan. This was, to me anyway, radio comedy at its best.

 So what does that have to do with war gaming or playing with toy soldiers? Nothing really.

But it did inspire me to give persona to several plastic generals, aides-de-camp, and faithful servants to those august albeit imaginary characters that haunt my games and in the future, this blog.

Since the last couple of entries have dealt with the Hessians, we'll begin here with their commander, "Graf Ernst von Bloodnoch". The Graf's character was inspired by Peter Sellers character on The Goon Show, Sir Denis Bloodnok, a dashing, somewhat bumbling, and perhaps prototypical Harry Flashman.

The Graf

Finally, I was asked about the bridge. It's made of wooden coffee stirrers, basswood strips, a few twigs from a white pine tree in my yard, and brass nails.