#ettersberg

While working my way through the events of "the Ettersberg" (thanks, Hugh, what would we do without you) I stumbled upon an oddity. I called it "The Glider Issue".

The tale about Thomas giving up his seat on the aforementioned glider to David Mellenby is a bit of an "awww" but, let’s be honest, didn’t exactly lead to anything. Except, of course, for a vast amount of theories about the nature of Thomas and David’s relationship. But plot-wise, it’s just a piece of trivia. IF David Mellenby later turned out to be the Faceless man — THAT would be the whole other story. Alas…

So, the glider. The wizards were supposed to get evacuated via a glider. An aircraft without an engine that can’t lift off by itself. Usually gliders get pulled up into the air by another aircraft. They used cables for that, literally tied the machines together and once they reached an altitude released a glider. Not to mention a high rate of crash-landings. So, basically, a glider is a one-way ticket. Ideal for dropping off a landing party sneakily on the enemy territory. But a bit less appropriate as a getaway vehicle.

In short, they would NEED another airplane. And Hugh never mentioned if there was one. It was either insignificant for his story or… But at least they had to move the archive somehow, right? How big is the archive? Did they use another never-mentioned carrier for it? Or did they have to make do with the bloody glider and that’s the reason why Nightingale had to give up his spot?

The biggest question is, though… How did the author think it’s supposed to work? Magically? And what the heck was that, anyway? A case of lazy research? But that’s UK WWII history. You can google it.

So many questions…

is there a discussion to be had about the fact that Ettersburg happened and then, almost to a man, the British wizarding community gave up their practice? I’ve always thought that it can’t just be that they *saw* terrible things, they must have also *done* terrible things.

I could go either way on this one? But it’s quite possible that they were sent with orders to kill the prisoners rather than free them, yeah [fill in the justification here]. Although I feel like that’s getting a bit too dark even for the story as presented, and I can’t see Nightingale agreeing to it...

while this whole dialogue is painful to read, I'm SO GLAD Peter had this talk with someone he doesn't really know instead of Nightingale. There's no way Peter wouldn't instantly regret inflicting the pain of remembering this awful Operation Spatchcock on Nightingale. I'm so glad Peter didn't even inadvertently force Nightingale to go through all of this again.

Since the first story of my pet project series of RoL fanfiction is heavily Ettersberg-themed, at some point the plot goes back in time of the battle and the need to describe Nightingale's combat attire arises.

I did my research and found out that the combat uniform of the British army at the time was called "battledress". Which is totally fine. But then I found out that the top piece of the battledress, something that looks like a jacket but actually isn't, is usually referred to as "a blouse". And that got me thinking.

Would it be ok if I used the proper terminology? Would people who are not familiar with the terminology think of a word "blouse" in a more modern, common, feminine connotation (not that a feminine connotation is something bad, I don't mean that, I mean, would the description be clear for the readers)? And how would you call a battledress blouse if not "a blouse" or "a jacket"?

And by battledress blouse I mean this thing 👇