Maybe it's just me but...

Maybe its just me, but when ever I see, hear or read anything to with the news I start feeling depressed. The world is really FUBAR’d at the moment. Really it is. Everything is.

If it’s not earthquakes and devastation, its wars and devastation or floods and devastation. Lesser things involve factory closures, job loses or defence cuts, health cuts, education cuts and more job loses. Everything sucks! I feel sorry for everyone who is involved in all the previously mentioned depressing events, but I can no longer watch the news, not even for the ‘And finally…’ segment about a skateboarding duck or tap-dancing Russian meerkat called Alexander. Seemples!

Another thing that I am having a problem with now is the news coming out of Libya. Whenever I hear the names Benghazi, Tripoli and Tobruk I do not see opposition forces battling against the government using high-tech weaponry. I see news footage in black and white of fresh faced, khaki clad, sunburnt soldiers in baggy shorts serving with the British Eighth Army taking on the German Afrika Korps, this is not a typographical error that really is the way that you should spell it.

Even saying the names Benghazi, Tripoli and Tobruk I have in my mind clips of great movies broadcast on a Saturday afternoons on BBC 2, such as The Desert Fox with the late James Mason portraying Field Marshall Rommel.

Another one that springs to mind is The Desert Rats with the late Richard Burton (and once again late James Mason portraying Field Marshall Rommel) commanding a bunch of hardened Australians taking on the might of the German Afrika Korps.

Then there was Sea of Sand, the only film I know that is actually about the Long Range Desert Group. In case you are wondering, the Long Range Desert Group was a forerunner of the Special Air Service. They roamed the North African deserts looking for the enemy and for stuff to blow up. That is a very simplified version of what they did, but I am not writing a historical novel here, so that will do for now.

For some reason I have always liked war movies based in the North African desert in world war two. Each one is like a great naval sea epic, but with more sand and less sea, unless you take the title ‘Sea of Sand’ literally.

Other things that spring into my mind when I hear or see the names Benghazi, Tripoli and Tobruk are the comics I read as a kid. I read and devoured the Warlord, The Victor and of course the good old Commando comic. I believe these little pocket sized slices of action are still around today, but probably less racially stereotypical than they were regarding the Japanese and the Germans. The German always, always had clipped Bavarian accents, shaven heads and square jaws; some even had duelling scars, riding crops and monocles.

It was from these and the Saturday afternoon movies broadcast on BBC 2, that I learned most of my history… then later, as I got older, I learned it properly, but still enjoyed the movies.

Anyway, that’s another random jotting from my random mind. I need to get these things out off my head or I feel I will explode like an artillery barrage (in black and white, of course). Until the next time, when I may have something much more interesting to say, I will say farewell, so, farewell.