Hello /k I was browsing old WW1 era editions of popuar mechanics, actually reading up on case brittleness and annealing an found pic related...and it reminded me. I am a late old war combat vet (Yugo breakup) and am a gunz and military history addict.
I have often found it pretty amazing how things have chainged, toy gunz are banned in many places and considered socially unacceptable by others. Yet when I was a child WE WERE MADE. What do I mean by this, well action man as an example, yes they were toys but the 'loadout' was precise and the comics, warlord,commando etc complete for schematics of correct bunker and trech construction, charateristis and features of ombat aircraft and vechicles. The stories were remarkable compared to modern children's material, bayonetting, frozen bodies, execution were themes along with engaging instruction in flanking, anti-tank warfare. I think this was most common in the UK, air-fix plastic soldiers, military vechicle kits etc. I though for a long time...well that's just me all boys like this stuff and then I happened to read "when the comics went to war" and Al Murrays watching war films with my Dad. I think we were pretty much being manufactured to fight and die in the cold war. I know it sounds weird but really the material was so focused. I kept my old 'annuals' these were Christmas edition hardbacks where were big present (along with airfix kits of tanks and plastic SLRs that had loadable mags firing plastic bullets, complete with bayonets and cleaning instructions) . When comics went to war made me realise that this was a regular historical event, from the advent of cheap paper, another generation was made ready to fight WW1. Anyway I found this interesting.
It is very much war and weapons related. We all like to think we are unique and special snowflakes but we are not. Our governments clearly make deliberate decisions to form generations for war and then occasionally 'turn the tap off'. A very common theme was the outsider in a unit rising to become an effective NCO via application of tactics and leadership in combat. I don't whinge about things I did as an adult as is the fashion....one person said to me 'well you put yourself there, you should not have been there, you put yourself there, its your own fault' as I used to use booze to sleep due to nightmares. The thing is, I'm not sure I did put myself there. I think a generation were formed for war from a very young age. Any thoughts anons?
Connor Rodriguez
unfortunately i don't know very much military history, but it's an interesting line of thought. trust your instincts.
it does make me wonder what my generation was programmed for though.
'Warlord for boys' was one of my childhood favourites. It had regular feature cartoon set during ww2 mostly but also cold war scenarios (occupation of the UK and guerrilla warfare). In between the cartoon stories were photo features on weapons and vehicles with schematics and tactical use. Its funny because in the US people seemed to have different comics featuring super heros in latex and shit like that, that did not exist here
'Harrier squadron' was set during a cold war invasion of the UK where soviet forces brutalised the population and were fought from underground bases backed by resistance fighters. The photo pictorials would explain how to use motorway bridges as hangers and how NBC suits could be used by aircrew to reload them during nuclear engagements. Made it all seem quite normal and cheery and fun.
You could join a club notionally run by one of the lead characters a WW2 commando who spent most of his time knifing sentries called Lord Peter flint. The reward was a code book which allowed you to decode secret messages published in the comics.
Themes like executing captives, not sparing prisoners, unburied dead, lose quarter fighting with knives and shovels and grenades, anti tank warfare and small unit action were the majority, little stories that were basically tactical response to ambush, flanking, counter attack, anti-tank action etc I remember one set in Stalingrad where the main characters survive an attack and then prosecute a counter attack successfully when they discover that frozen bodies are great at stopping bullets and use them to rebuild a defensive position ruined by artillery. I mean sure but do you really give this to kids who are still teddy bear age 6/7?
When I read'when comics went to war' I realised that this was not my generation in articular, in 1910 kids were being steadily fed diets of stories about preventing German airship invasions and boys being executed fighting Prussians in 1870.
Connor White
Action man by palitoy. Yes a fucking doll where you (if you were lucky) got loadouts including grenades. I remember having this one.
Anyway hitting that note in the popular mechanics article reminded me of the thoughts I had on this before. Here's the interesting bit. This HAS to be a government level 'lets make soldiers' initiative because they were the toys available, advertised, my father was not some kind of war junkie If you had something like a nerf gun when I was a kid you would have been called a faggot and got beaten up. All games were about war and building forts and bunkers. I remember playing in woos and we would have two kids inside cardboard boxes being the tank so we would ambush it using Molotov cocktails of old coke bottles filled with water and then demolish the dead tank using pasticine (what you all play dough) as plastic explosive and some petrol to burn it while one side bayonet charged the other over the burning boxes. So yeah. It had an effect, I guess we were about 8/9. Monkey see monkey do
And I see that and realise....I was manufactured...like a fucking plastic soldier...weird feeling
Jason Hill
The situation in the US and Canada was different. There's no realistic prospect of either country being invaded. Nuked? Yes. Occupied, not so much.
What you want is two things: People to think nuclear war is inevitable, and people to think that nuclear war is survivable. Thinking it's inevitable is more important. Because if it's inevitable, you don't do anything about it.
Ryan Flores
I have kids of my own. Looking back now its just seems fucking weird. Interrogation techniques and three mile punishment runs as normalised social behaviour for prepubescent kids.
No most of it was focused on quite grim lose quarter fighting, small unit engagements, how to kill using a knife, moral lessons about what happens when you don't look after your rifle, aggression wins the day so counterattack, that kind of stuff
I may not have been clear. There was nothing equivalent in the US and Canada because the needs were different. They didn't need to program a generation for a hypothetical Stalingrad-on-Thames. They just needed people not to freak out about the prospect of nuclear war.
Although you are making me think of a game I remember playing in Scouts at night. "German Border Patrol". The "sentries" got a flashlight that they were allowed to blink on and off once. Everyone else had to crawl up to the sentries without making nose. If you got close you won.
But yeah. Scouts at that point was basically a "if you stick with this you're probably going to wind up in the army" type deal.
Landon Williams
Execution and close contact killing was a very common theme, knifing sentries in particular but also bayonet charges, strangulation and formal execution. I remember a pictorial series on how to knife a sentry with photos of royal marine commandos during knife fighting drills. This would have been for like I say kids about 7/8/9/10/11
I'm not bothered. I'm alive. I just find it weird to realised that I was mass produced and I'm still compulsively collecting milsurp guns and get a lovely sense of calm and wellbeing cleaning them. Got to hand it to our makers, they knew what they were at.
Thomas Turner
The problem now is that they've decided to discontinue the line. They can't admit to themselves what they were doing, so they try to make it the fault of the product.
Asher Flores
Look at that. Fucking look at it. Urban warfare toys, complete with AT support. Make sure your belt is feeding correctly kid.
>The problem now is that they've decided to discontinue the line. They can't admit to themselves what they were doing, so they try to make it the fault of the product.
There was no accident in this stuff...it was to consistent and universal. A whole generation was manufactured and then dispensed with
>and people to think that nuclear war is survivable.
So that's why all the US stuff at the time features people getting super powers via radiation . Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Light bulb moment
Jacob Sullivan
>discontinue the line
t. discontinued.
Lincoln Johnson
>they try to make it the fault of the product.
We were a top class product. Just obsolete clearly
Tyler Cook
... Fuck me.
I recognize a DPM, an M1 Carbine, a folding stock MP-40, an M1911, 9mm luger, what could be a Sterling Submachine gun, and what I'm pretty sure is an MP-18 with a fucking trench knife.
That is a scary level attention to detail.
Anthony Cox
My hull, my proud hull of chrome-duralloy, is pitted, coated with a crumbling layer of dull black paint, bubbled by corrosion. My main emplacements gape, black, empty. Rusting protuberances mar the once-smooth contour of my fighting turret. Streaks run down from them, down to loose treads, unshod, bare plates exposed. Small wonder that I have been troubled by a clatter each time I moved.
Noah Clark
It is different now; I grope my way in gloom, feeling along numbed circuits, test-pulsing cautiously until I feel contact with my transmitting unit. I have not used it since . . . I cannot remember. My memory banks lie black and inert.
"Command Unit," I transmit, "Combat Unit requests permission to file VSR."
I wait, receptors alert. I do not like waiting blindly, for the quarter-second my sluggish action/reaction cycle requires. I wish that my Brigade comrades were at my side.
I call again, wait, then go ahead with my VSR. "This position heavily shielded, mounting apparatus of offensive capability. No withdrawal route. Advise."
I wait, repeat my transmission; nothing. I am cut off from Command Unit, from my comrades of the Dinochrome Brigade. Within me, pressure builds.
I feel a deep-seated click and a small but reassuring surge of power brightens the murk of the cavern to a dim glow, burning forgotten components to feeble life. An emergency pile has come into action automatically.
I realize that I am experiencing a serious equipment failure. I will devote another few seconds to troubleshooting, repairing what I can. I do not understand what accident can have occurred to damage me thus. I cannot remember . . .
I am aware abruptly that changes are occurring within my introspection complex. As the level of stored power rises rapidly, I am conscious of new circuits joining my control network. Within the dim-glowing cavern the lights come up; I sense latent capabilities which before had lain idle now coming onto action level. A thousand brilliant lines glitter where before one feeble thread burned; and I feel my self-awareness expand in a myriad glowing centers of reserve computing, integrating, sensory capacity. I am at last coming fully alive.
I send out a call on the Brigade band, meet blankness. I wait, accumulate power, try again. I know triumph as from an infinite distance a faint acknowledgment comes. It is a comrade, sunk deep in a comatose state, sealed in his survival center. I call again, sounding the signal of ultimate distress; and now I sense two responses, both faint, both from survival centers, but it heartens me to know that now, whatever befalls, I am not alone.
I consider, then send again; I request my brothers to join forces, combine their remaining field generating capabilities to set up a range-and-distance pulse. They agree and faintly I sense its almost undetectable touch. I lock to it, compute its point of origin. Only 224.9 meters! It is incredible. By the strength of the signal, I had assumed a distance of at least two thousand kilometers. My brothers are on the brink of extinction.
Luke Walker
"There have been many changes in the situation since your last action. Our records show that your Brigade was surprised while in a maintenance depot for basic overhaul and neutralized in toto. Our forces since that time have suffered serious reverses. We have now, however, fought the Enemy to a standstill. The present stalemate has prevailed for over two centuries.
"You have been inactive for three hundred years. The other Brigades have suffered extinction gallantly in action against the Enemy. Only you survive.
"Your reactivation now could turn the tide. Both we and the Enemy have been reduced to a preatomic technological level in almost every respect. We are still able to maintain the trans-light monitor, which detected your signal. However, we no longer have FTL capability in transport.
"You are therefore requested and required to consolidate and hold your present position pending the arrival of relief forces, against all assault or negotiation whatsoever, to destruction if required."
I reply, confirming the instructions. I am shaken by the news I have received, but reassured by contact with Command Unit. I send the galactic coordinates of our position based on a star scan corrected for three hundred years elapsed time. It is good to be again on duty, performing my assigned function.
Josiah Hall
Obsolete? Or too dangerous? They will let us wither, like an old lion cast from his pride. Except there is no younger lion to take our place, nobody to guard the pride. What will happen then? When the alpha has died and no alpha stands to replace him?
I withdraw from personality center. I am consuming too much time. I understand well enough now that I am in the stronghold of the Enemy, that I have been trapped, crippled. My corroded hull tells me that much time has passed. I know that after each campaign I am given depot maintenance, restored to full fighting efficiency, my original glittering beauty. Years of neglect would be required to pit my hull so. I wonder how long I have been in the hands of the Enemy, how I came to be here.
Xavier Stewart
>Obsolete? Or too dangerous?
Too dangerous. They took it too far. This is why they stopped producing us. Too much risk attached.
Jordan Kelly
I'm bothered by it how could you not be? I'm sitting in a factory right now about to punch out my body is to beat up to do any other work. Our collective purpose has been fulfilled now we are merely going thru the motions surrounded by people who do not understand
They looked at their creation and realized in horror that it could one day turn on them, and they would not survive. So they attempted to destroy it, ripping it apart violently as Doctor Frankenstein ripped apart the bride he made for the monster. But they fail to remember that the monster got his revenge.
David Morris
Maybe we will be reactivated. I can still shoot a 20 inch group at 1000 yards, I am still serviceable and can walk 15K with ease. I will stay in this place and wait for the flickering radio signal.
Anthony King
A small subset of generation voluntarily recruited as children produced by the classified portions of the Northfield experiments.
330.Awake, arise, or be for ever fall'n. 331. They heard, and were abasht, and up they sprung 332.Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch 333.On duty, sleeping found by whom they dread, 334.Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 335.Nor did they not perceave the evil plight 336.In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel;
The 70/80's were a weird period to be a kid I realised a while ago while talking to my nephews I picked more NBC training in primary school than they did in the current army curriculum.
I'm with you brothers, it's a sad crazy old story that this serb has verbalized beautifully in broken english. I sometimes think of Patton gunning down ww1 vets on the national mall, it's all a circle
>be girl >dad raised me on this kind of shit from when he was a kid >grow up Jow Forums as fuck >one Christmas, dad is drunk and lets slip that he always wished he had a boy instead >a major part of who I am is the way it is because my dad was sad about not having a boy >the government does this stuff too >they've always been doing this stuff >rugged individualism is a lie >I don't have free will >my sense of self is fiction I didn't create
This thread is proof that a “Military - /mil/“ board should exist
I hate you stupid fucks
Elijah Wood
Sounds like your kid's gonna be a fuckin pussy if you think that's gay i feel bad for you and your offspring that's cool as fuck,.
Bentley Hall
It's not an MP-18. It's a MAS-36 next to the trench knife. The one with the helmet and the little bayonet is a Sten. They got me too. Not like I mind, though. Disassembling and cleaning guns makes me comfortable.
Jack Powell
Hello Ms.Lumley
Jayden Davis
>US people seemed to have different comics featuring super heros in latex and shit like that, that did not exist here
I remember always feeling like an outcast here in the US For not being into all that super hero and fantasy shit, the second I found out about shit like WWII history and guns my interest was piqued. When I found out about milsims and STALKER, that’s all I would play.
OP has a point but could it be that there are some people who are just predisposed to be interested in this sort of thing
I remember GI Joe in the late 90's, also still have a ton of those little plastic army men. I came from a military/tech based family though so I grew up with different interests than most of the other kids.
Luke Roberts
Your dad created you, but you made the choice to continue the world he created for you, rather than rebel against it, so that was an act of free will. Stop overthinking your life and go for a run.
Dylan Hernandez
FUCK.
I remember me being a bonglad in bongprimaryschool and we found this perfect tree branch that looked like a GPMG and would drill with it and set it up in bunding lines and take it in turns to act as the crew and advance on schoolmates under covering fire from our machine gun.
We were about 8 years old and watched a fuck of a lot of band of brothers
This is a p interesting thread, thanks OP. I’m 19, living in the US, and I never really experienced any of this (which is expected since all we do is proxy wars), nevertheless, thanks for the good read.
Joshua Butler
Same; I just couldn't get into capeshit at all (sole exception being Spiderman), but anything with blades or bullets caught my interest automatically. >yfw superhero shit is really a communist psyop to increase the individual's sense of specialness so they feel entitled and anti-nationalist and become homosexual surrendermonkeys to global bolshevism
Luis Kelly
>kek
Question: Joanna Lumley and a battalion of retired Gurkhas storm Parliament and declare a provisional English government. Good thing or bad thing?
