MM> VH> Oh, you took the tourist course. :-)

MM>Some tourist course - this was a School-Tramping-Club-teaches-the
MM>pallid-English-immigrant-mountain-climbing time;  the worst part
MM>turned out to be their enthusiasm for toting ancient equipment
MM>everywhere for no real purpose. The snowaxes weighed about 5
MM>pounds each and probably spent summers creating suburban ditches
MM>in the hands of hard labour gangs...  digging into a snowbank far
MM>up the Snowdon look-alike, once, was their only use on that
MM>summit-strolling trip....

A very long time ago, a British Commando Artillery Battery visited Fort
Sill, Oklahoma.  They were equipped with little, dainty Italian 105s
that you could use for watch fobs.  For a demonstration, they took one
of them apart, floated the pieces by rubber boat across Medicine Bluff
Creek, climbed Medicine Bluff 4, assembled it on top and fired one
round.

The Commandant of the Artillery Officer Candidate School said, "If they
can do it, we can do it."

Now, American 105s are about three times as big as that Italian toy, and
not designed to come apart.  But we got it apart.  We got it across the
creek, and up to the top of the bluff.

The hard part was refilling the recoil cylinder with oil -- the US Army
issues a "screw filler," for emergency topping off.  It holds about an
ounce and a half, and is threaded on one end, and has a t-handled screw
threaded inside it.  You fill it with oil, screw it into the recoil
cylinder fitting, and then turn the T-handle.

It takes about a thousand repetitions to fill the cylinder.

MM> VH> There very well could be something like that -- especially if those
MM> VH> widely-dispersed goodies fall into the hands of Al Qaeda.

MM>Or whoever the local `organised resistance' turns out to be;  I
MM>remember being very carefully told where and what to do should the
MM>Gerries ever over-run my hometown,  and we were far from being
MM>suicide-bomb zealots ....

Yeah, there is no shortage of fanatics willing to die for a crazy cause.
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