Re: [semi OT] Women wargamers

You wrote: 

I don't know what the malfunction with your mail software is, but 
please teach it to format your mail properly.  For instance 

>bzzzt! wrong! if my background says that armies can afford power 
armour all round, then, in my background, they can. i accept that in 
most backgrunds - gzg offical included - power armour is restricted to 
a fraction of the infantry. in starship troopers, it seemed to me that 
the whole infantry was powered, except for specialists such as the 
sensitives who did not need power armour. in sp*** ma**** etc, the 
whole of the marines was armoured, even if the guard (and all other 
races) were not.

Appeared as one line a couple hundred characters long.	Please fix.

Anyway, I conceede this point--but also note that in Starship Troopers 
the Mobile Infantry was a very small army relative to it's population. 
In the final assault on Klendathu, the first echelon was only three 
divisions, and the dispersion over the territory covered is so large 
that I believe it is highly probable that the MI totaled maybe 6 
divisions, and certaintly did not come close to double that.  And also 
that the MI _did_ require a high standard of physical fitness and 
stamina--remember their basic training had a more than 80% failure 
rate, a failure rate more in keeping with Ranger School in the US than 
with basic or infantry school anywhere in the world.

>i expect that when armoured, mororised transport for infantry was 
introduced, there were people who said it would never be universal. 

Everyone wanted to make it universal, but the US was the only nation 
whcih could afford to motorize their entire army for WWII.

>now, every infantry formation has apcs/ifvs, or have more specialised 
>travel arrangements, such as helos or parachutes. in fact, i am sure 

Beg to differ.	In US, 10th Mountain, 29th Light Infantry, and numerous 
seperate brigades are light but not airborne or air assault.  The 
Germans have their mountain units, the Brits have. . . Actually, I 
don't know whether the Brits have light infantry formations outside of 
the Paras and Royal Marines.  I do know that they dismounted some 
normally mech units and sent them to the Falklands as foot troops 
because they don't/didn't have the sea lift capability to send them nor 
the logistical infrastructure to sustain them.	But at any rate, that's 
just major powers.  Smaller nations generally have a lot of 
truck-mounted infantry and straight leg divisions because they can't 
afford even trucks.  I'd also note that so-called parachute/airborne 
units tend to do as much or more movement conventionally than by air 
assault--the Paras walked to Goose Green, and the 82nd made a 
truck-mounted assault into Iraq.

>> Pet Peeve:  Eyesight has not been that big a deal since they 
invented  >> eyeglasses.  I speak from the perspective of a man with 
20/400 vision  >> in one eye and 2/200 in the other.  
>
>ok, sorry about all that. i already stand corrected on that one. 
incidentally, what does 20/400 and 2/200 mean? we don't use that scheme 

That means that what a 'normal' eye sees at 200 (or 400) feet, I see at 
20.  IOW, I'm pulling in 1/10th of the level of detail a non-visually 
impaired chap is-and that's my good eye.  This level of eyesight was 
such that it required a medical waiver to join the Army.  :)

John M. Atkinson