Let's Chat for a Moment

If you were expecting another episode in the tale which began way back in June of 2020, sorry, not today.

The reason being is that over the weekend, given the vicissitudes and circumstances of the world in which we live, I thought it best to compile all that I have written into Microsoft Word so that it would live safely upon my hard drive and not be subject to the whims and desires of some unknown party who might take offense at the ramblings and divers¹ opinions of the folks who frequent this corner of the Internet, tiny though it may be.

I know I've been writing rather a lot, but was a bit surprised to see just how much I had written so far.

On the left is page 1 of the first post in this series, published on the 2nd of June. On the right is the last page which contains the latest post, dated the 12 of January. (The wedding anniversary of The Missus Herself and Your Humble Scribe, forty-three years, thank you for asking.)

Seriously, one-thousand and two pages? Kinda reminds me of this...

Why yes, it is a "thousand pages, give or take a few..."

In going through all those posts (144 of 'em, I know, I counted), copying them and pasting them into Word, I noticed that there are an awful lot of pictures, most of 'em are Public Domain, many are not. So those need to be edited out. Also I need to update footnotes, remove the three or four videos that were in the posts, and generally clean things up. So in reality I probably have about four to five hundred pages. Which is, to my way of thinking, substantial. After all, I'm neither Tolkien nor Tolstoy (the former is a favorite, the latter, meh - he was a talented lad, but not my cup o' tea).

So I have my work cut out for me and, as most of you probably know, the war ain't over yet. The Ardennes Offensive is pretty much done, now it's just pushing the Germans back to where they started. Which presents, I learned the other day, a gap in my knowledge of the war. So research into the four month period from about mid-January to the end of April has been started, once again I'm relying heavily on the official U.S. Army history.

I am taking a bit of a break from the series, perhaps a day or two or three, I dunno yet, as I ponder just where our characters are going in the next few months. Nate Paddock is heading back Stateside to recover from his wound, for now S/Sgt Hernandez has 2nd Platoon in his more than capable hands.

I envision Major von Lüttwitz getting a battalion command, while his success rate matches that of the Wehrmacht in general, he's still a fighter. Will Manfred Sauer get a company in that battalion? Who knows. As for "Opa," he's still near the front lines as a prisoner of war. I envision following his experiences as a P.O.W., I think it would be an interesting tale.

As to our Polish and British friends, they'll be back in action soon, there is yet another forest to conquer on the road to the Rhine, a place called the Reichswald. We'll meet them there in February at the latest.

For now, no politics, no worries, God is in charge and I'm good with that.

Stay frosty...

¹ Not a typo, look it up. It's archaic, rather like Your Humble Scribe.