Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Mercanthyr]

I was watching a History Channel program about WW1 and they talked about how Americans would dig under German trenches and when they met up with the enemy's tunnel they would have to fight each other to the death wielding only the basic tools they had such as pickaxes! Its funny to see how many DF-ey moments you can find IRL.

[Agdune]

something tells me that the IRL miners would have substatially more difficulty in applying their mining skills to cleaving through their enemies however

[Sensei]

I wouldn't be surprised if they used some sort of weaponized pickaxe design. Or at least had pistols. Then again, seeing as how we're handling the Iraq war... maybe they gave them rocket launchers and said "No-one can beat you now! You've got rocket launchers!"

Heh.

[Agdune]

actually by that stage (American expeditionary force) the Germans were beginning to deploy the first generation of submachine guns weren't they? Would've been messy.

[Aqizzar]

I was also watching that program ironically.  They were talking about the British, not the Americans.  I would submit that Dwarves are closer to the bit they played on the Vietcong, who built whole damn underground towns, all connected by cramped little tunnels full of traps and pitfalls.

[Shaostoul]

Ya, the whole vietnam thing was more DF related in my opinion.

[Strife26]

I wouldn't be surprised if they used some sort of weaponized pickaxe design. Or at least had pistols. Then again, seeing as how we're handling the Iraq war... maybe they gave them rocket launchers and said "No-one can beat you now! You've got rocket launchers!"

Heh.

That's the single least funny thing I've heard today (wait, my watch might be off, I'm not sure if it's past midnight) in the past several days.

[Noble Digger]

You should read about the battle for Elliot's Salient. It was this hard-to-crack fortress so they dug a tunnel underneath it and filled the end of it with demolition explosives.

Edit: link!

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/hh/13/hh13f.htm

[Okenido]

Well Toady One did make World War 1 Medic...

[Labs]

German sappin mah trench.

[Arkose]

something tells me that the IRL miners would have substatially more difficulty in applying their mining skills to cleaving through their enemies however

I don't know about pick-axes, but the military entrenching tools used in WW1 have something of a reputation for being the most useful hand-to-hand combat weapon to have in the confined spaces of trench warfare.

[userpay]

The shovels green berets get are the shit. Collapsable and I think it can be easily buried in someones skull, I'd have to look up that episode of deadliest warrior again.

[Leafsnail]

I saw one of those craters in the Somme last year.  It's still there, and still bloody enormous.  They put serious amounts of explosives in those things.

[shadow_archmagi]

The shovels green berets get are the shit. Collapsable and I think it can be easily buried in someones skull, I'd have to look up that episode of deadliest warrior again.

in All Quiet On The Western Front there's a long paragraph on the superior nature of shovels as compared to bayonets.

[Agdune]

In the movie as well. In all honesty, I can see why, bayonettes are actually damn terrible things to use. Long, slender things stuck on the end of a wood-and-metal pipe which back then were allready nearly a metre and a half long. Trenching tools though... short, heavy, tough and coated in filth. Perfect for all purposes :p