The Victoria Cross Trust

If you are ever in Doncaster try and visit The Victoria Cross Trust , an amazing little shop /Museum full of intersting items and staffed by very helpful volunteers ,The shop sells lots of really nice gifts that are very resonable priced and most are made by the volunteers and can be personalised to make it even more special,and the profits go to cleaning and restoring veterans graves all around the country .

Spectre Operations

Been quite a while since ive played Spectre Operations so thought I would dig the stuff out and give it a go . Played 2 solo games using the same board but different forces ,basically avery simple set up of an hostage rescue situation , an hostage in each building needed saving . The first game pitted 6 SAS against 12 Militia ,I split the SAS into Two , Three man teams and thats were it probably started going wrong ,one team succeeded in wiping out one group of militia but the other group were a disaster ,the die rolls for the Militia were amazing ,two SAS went down with seriuos wounds and the third killed instantly , and of course the dead trooper had the first aid kit so the other two bled out.

The second game had 6 Elite Deniable Ops taken on 8 `professional tier Insurgents ,This time the good guys stuck together and again rescued one hostage but the `insurgents excectued the other before they were wiped out . Simple scenarios just to get back into the rules ,really enjoyed it and picked it up really quickly , a word of advice for any one new to the game ,down load the indepth `index from the web page it is much easier to find stuff with this than the onw in the book .

All Figures Spectre , resin pick ups Antenocities

The Zulu war Library grows again .

Picked up another 4 boooks about he Anglo Zulu War ,two by James Bancroft ,both soft back with just over 50 pages each ,they are well written with lots of photographs and illustrations . Another book on Rorkes Drift this one by Edmund Yorke and the last is a book I have been after for a while ,The Road to Isanhlwana ,Colonel Anthoney Durnford in Natal and Zululand by R.W.F Droogleever ,Durnford is one of my favourite Heroes of the AZW ,his story if full of heroism and intrigue ,was he an hero or was the disaster all his fault ,played bt Burt Lancaster in Zulu dawn Durnford was quite a colourful character what ever you beilieve about him.These bring my collection to over 120 titles

Havoc--02:00 hours

Played another scenario ,Havoc . John chose the SAS and I was the Germans , a cracking Game where John won his primary mission ,destroying all of his Targets but I prevented him getting his secondary objective by manageing to take out most of his force once the alarm was raised , got really into this so didnt get many pictures .I cannot reccomend this game enough .

Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage centre

My pal John got me abelated birthday present of the Mosquito experience at Licolnshire Aviation centre , expecting to be bitten by small insects I had an amazing day getting up close and personal with the wooden wonder ,seeing it Taxi and the bonus of seeing the Lancaster Just Jane taxining as well . Lots of other great stuff on display but the obvious highlight was seeing and hearing those 2 legends

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Death of the Prince Imperial

One of the strangest stories from the 1879 Anglo Zulu War is the death of the Prince Inperial Louis Napoleon . After his father Napoleon 111 was dethroned in1870 he moved with his family to England When his father died in 1873 Louis was he was declared Napoleon IV . Wanting to be recognised for his military skills he with the help of his mother Empress Eugenie and his God Mother Queen Victoria he managed to get sent to join the British Forces in the Zulu Land for the second Invaasion , being headstrong and reckless he was almost killed on one patrol when on 1st June 1879 on apatrol led by Captain Jaheel Carey they were ambushed and in the attempt to escape Napoleon was killed in hand to hand combat with a group of Zulus . Many books give the full account my favourite is " with his face to the Foe " by Ian Knight but many others cover the episode . I was lucky enough to visit the monument to Louis and the graves of those who died with him { Louis was brought back for buriel in England }.

I have built the benito 54mm Diorama representing Napoleons last moments below are some in progress pictures and the finished diorama

This fascinating piece of history has been the subject of many books ,two in my collection are the Ian Knight book I mentioned earlier and Captain Careys blunder by Donald Featherstone a nice read but very dated with lots of mistakes .