Jokes and Stories from this months issue.

ONE OF Jack Kennedy's pet hates during his brief presidency was being entertained at the LBJ ranch in Texas . Soon after his election in 1960, the exuberant Vice President–elect had roused Jack from sleep before dawn to take him deer-hunting, a sport which JFK detested.

As practiced by Lyndon Johnson, the ‘sport' was pretty one-sided. Johnson's method of hunting deer was to drive at high speed in his white Cadillac, cradling a powerful rifle in his lap. When he spotted one of the many deer that frequently crossed the roads curving through thousands of acres of Johnson ranchland, he would stop the car, then take aim and shoot the deer from the driver's seat. Ranch hands would later collect the carcasses in a pickup truck.

After that experience, Jack had commented to his younger brother Bobby, “That will never be a sport until they give the deer a gun also.” Bobby had replied, “Yeah. If we can teach a deer to shoot back at him, that loud-mouthed Texan might not be so macho.”

There was always an uneasy alliance between the Kennedy and Johnson clans. LBJ resented their casual east coast Ivy League arrogance, whilst the Kennedys never trusted Johnson, whom they regarded as a crude, narrow-minded redneck. But LBJ had been foisted on them by old Joe Kennedy, who insisted that the Texan remain on the ticket during the 1959-60 political campaign to help carry votes in the Deep South .

I have always wondered about Johnson's part in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK in November 1963. He was acutely aware that Jack and Bobby planned to drop him as VP before the 1964 re-election campaign. Even before taking the oath of office at Love Field in Dallas , LBJ ordered that the blood and brain-splattered presidential limousine be washed clean before a forensics team could get to work on it. They may or may not have been vital evidence regarding Kennedy's brutal murder on the vehicle, but Johnson never allowed anyone even a chance to find out.

See True Crimes, January 2004, on the assassination of JFK

Tick Tick......

THE LONGEST wrestling match in Olympic history took place at Stockholm in 1912 when the Greco-Roman bout between Russia 's Martin Klein and Finland 's Alfred Asikianen lasted for more than 11 hours before Klein clinched victory. As they were completely exhausted, both wrestlers had to pull out of their scheduled fights against Claes Johansson of Sweden . Thus, the Swede was declared Greco-Roman middleweight champion with Klein the silver medallist and Asikianen taking the bronze. At light heavyweight, the fight between Sweden 's Anders Ahlgren and Finland 's Ivar Bohling was abandoned after nine hours. Both wrestlers received a silver medal apiece, without a gold being awarded. The bronze medal was taken by the Hungarian Bela Varga, whose bout for the final place medal had lasted a mere 3.5 hours. Um, pass the liniment, please.

Movie Quotes

“You wanna talk to a writer? Hey, this is Hollywood ; the place is full of ‘em. Throw a rock, and you'll hit one. And Fink; do me a favour - throw it hard!”

Tony Shaloub in ‘Barton Fink', 1991

“I always say that if you are not confused about the situation (in Northern Ireland ) then you don't know what's going on.”

Brad Pitt as ‘Frankie Maguire' in ‘The Devil's Own', 2003

“What in tarnation are you men doing? The railroad doesn't pay you good money to lollygag around like a bunch of Kansas City faggots!”

Slim Pickens in ‘Blazing Saddles', 1974

Husband Questionaire

BRITIAN'S WORLD champion marathon runner Paula Radcliffe (31) is no dummy. She is fluent in four languages, and has an honours degree from Loughborough University in Leicestershire. When she was 16 years old, she filled in a questionnaire sent to her by the British magazine ‘Athletics Weekly'. One of the questions was, ‘Who would you most like to meet?' Whilst most young female athletes polled by the magazine opted for such names as ‘Brad Pitt', ‘Tom Cruise' or ‘Michael Jackson'; Ms. Radcliffe wrote, ‘My future husband!' The lucky man was fellow student Gary Lough whom she met three years later. (davidcox@loxinfo.co.th)

Long Queue

AN AMERICAN expat in his late seventies is currently resident in Thailand 's ‘fun city' resort of Pattaya. This man reputedly has a personal fortune in the region of 60 million US dollars. And he has made out a well-publicised Will to the effect that, should he expire from natural causes whilst ‘on the job'; to ease the pain and grief felt by the lady in his dying embrace at that particular time, she shall receive financial compensation to the tune of 20 million US dollars. Unless my arithmetic is badly out, that converts to around 800 million baht. You will not be surprised to know that he has a constant queue of beautiful damsels at the gates of his mansion on a hill above the city. They say that the owner's spacious bedroom has a breathtaking sea view. Good luck girls.

Frank Thring, ‘Pattaya Today'

The Battle of Agincourt

THE 25th OF OCTOBER is an important date in British military history. The battle of Agincourt was fought on that St Crispin's Day in 1415 and the glorious (if foolhardy); Charge of the Light Brigade also took place on 25 October during the battle of Balaclava in 1854.

Agincourt is in northern France and the battle was fought in the defile formed by the woods of Agincourt and Tramecourt. The English force of around 8,000 men was barred from reaching Calais by a French army of 12,000 under Charles d'Albret and Jean Le Maingre. One of the patriotic myths of the conflict, thanks partly to William Shakespeare, is that a French army of over 30,000 was routed by a weakened British force of only 6,000 men thanks to the devastating use of the longbow. This does not square with the known facts.

Recent research by Anne Curry, Professor of Medieval History at Southampton University , revealed that the figures have been exaggerated over the centuries for patriotic reasons. Ms Curry studied the original enrolment records at the National Archives in London and the National Library of France in Paris , and she found out that there were more English and Welsh troops than previously thought, and far fewer on the French side. She discovered that though the French forces outnumbered Henry V's army, they did so only by a factor of three to two, and other medieval scholars in the academic community have backed up her findings. According to Professor Curry, the Battle of Agincourt was “a myth constructed around Henry to build up his reputation as a king.” In Shakespeare's play of 1599, Henry V addresses his troops before the battle with the famous line, “We few; we happy few, we band of brothers.”

Henry invaded France in August 1415 to improve his financial position and gain popularity at home. He hoped to seize extensive French lands and ransom many French nobles as was the custom at the time. His army landed in northern France on 13 August and besieged the port of Harfleur . This engagement took much longer than expected – the town finally surrendered on 22 September and the English army did not leave until 8 October. The campaign season was coming to an end, and the English had suffered many casualties, mainly from disease and dysentery. Henry wisely decided to move his men to the port of Calais , where he could re-equip over winter for the campaign season of 1416.

During the siege, the French had been able to call up a large feudal army which d'Albret skillfully deployed between Harfleur and Calais . He then mirrored the British maneuvers along the river Somme, preventing Henry's forces from reaching Calais without a major confrontation. Henry was thus forced to fight a battle which, given the weakened state of his army, he would have preferred to avoid.

The battle followed heavy overnight rain on 24/25 October, which proved to be decisive. The boggy conditions created by the rain prevented the French from using their heavy artillery, and d'Albret unwisely kept his crossbow men to the rear. Henry arrayed his men in three ‘battles', each with archers on the flanks and dismounted men-at-arms in the centre. The English and Welsh archers were thrown forward in wedge-shaped salients.

Throughout the 100 years war, French commanders consistently underestimated the power of the longbow. The English and Welsh had a tradition of archery. These men had practiced for years, and each man could put ten arrows into a man-sized target 200 yards away in 60 seconds. Even at this range, their arrows could slice through chain mail as though it was linen. High borne French Knights, trained in hand-to-hand combat, snobbishly regarded projectile weapons as somehow unsporting. They did not like to dwell on the fact that a simple peasant armed with a bow could turn a heavily armoured knight into crow's meat in the blink of an eye from 100 yards away. Still, the importance of the longbow at Agincourt has been overestimated.

The French were drawn up in three lines, each formed in deep masses. All were dismounted, except 2,000 knights on the flanks, who were intended to charge Henry's murderous archers. Henry moved his men into the defile, and the archers fixed pointed stakes, called palings, deep into the mud. These were designed to tear the guts out of a cavalry charge. Then they started the engagement by launching flights of arrows at their foe. The French forces were stung into action, and charged forward, only to get bogged down in the mud by their heavy armour. The French cavalry then charged. Many of Henry's archers were using what was called the ‘bodkin' point on their arrow heads. These sharpened points were designed to be armour-piercing, but most of the French knights were wearing new steel armour, which was largely resistant to the bodkin point.

The archers, however, shot the horses out from under them, leaving the French floundering on their feet in a morass of mud. Meantime the dismounted men-at-arms, led by d'Albret, reached the English lines, and engaged them. For a time the fighting was severe. The thin line of defenders was borne back and King Henry was almost beaten to the ground. But at this moment, his archers, taking hatchets, swords and mallets, penetrated the gaps in the now disordered French, and slaughtered them. Being unarmoured, the British were able to move more freely in the mud, and hacked their enemy down.

The second line of French then charged, but they quickly became bogged down also, and were engulfed in the melee. Many were taken prisoner. The only French success was a sally from Agincourt castle from behind the lines. Ysambart D'Agincourt and his men routed English forces in the rear and took King Henry's baggage train. Thinking that his rear was under attack, Henry ordered his men to execute the prisoners. He was afraid that the many captured Frenchmen could have counter-attacked, using weapons strewn about the field of battle. His nobles and higher officers, hoping to ransom their prisoners, refused to carry out Henry's orders. But his commoners had no such code of chivalry, and swiftly cut the throats of the captured French knights. It is said that this slaughter resulted in a pile of corpses over six feet (1.83 metres) in height.

Though Henry's actions were savage, we can see his logic and his tenuous position - if the captives were to arm themselves his army could have been crushed between the remaining French forces and the hostages. The next morning Henry's men came back to the battlefield, and killed off any wounded French who had survived the night. The total loss of the English is stated at 13 men-at-arms (including Edward, Duke of York, grandson of Edward III) and about 100 footmen. The French, on the other hand, lost 5,000 men of noble birth, including d'Albret (constable of France ) and 1,000 more were taken prisoner, amongst them the Duke of Orleans and Charles Le Maingre, Marshall of France.

Another feature contributing to the French defeat was the funnel-shaped battlefield that caused them to converge as they approached the English lines. As they moved forward, they jostled each other and tripped over the bodies of fallen horses and men. Many were suffocated as they were trampled into the mud by men behind them rushing into battle. Into this chaos, the British archers moved through the quagmire and cut the enemy down with swords, knives and mallets. Thus they did considerably more damage as infantry than as archers.

Also, the heavy overnight rain had probably rendered the crossbow strings almost useless. (Most of these archers fighting for the French were Swiss mercenaries). The British archers, on the other hand, had only to unstring their longbows before the downpour, and then re-string them for combat when the rain stopped. The strings were kept dry under their helmets.

The catastrophic defeat of the French allowed Henry to fulfill all his objectives. He was recognised in the Treaty of Troyes (1420) as regent and heir to the French throne and cemented this by marrying Catherine of Valois, the daughter King Charles VI. But he did not live to inherit the French throne. He died of dysentery in 1422 at the age of 34 whilst campaigning in southern France and Charles VI died two months later. His young son, Henry VI, succeeded Henry but during that reign the English were finally expelled from all of France except Calais . The French military successes were encouraged by the famous Joan of Arc, an uneducated French peasant who was motivated by her ‘voices from God' and a desire to have the Dauphin crowned as Charles VII of France . Joan, a fanatical Catholic, was burned at the stake after a show trial for heresy by English barons on 30 May 1431, and was declared a saint by the Vatican over 600 years later.

Research, wikipedia.org

(davidcox@loxinfo.co.th)

this month

regulars

stories

free ads

sports

golf

funnies

info

back issues