Thursday, February 18, 2010

I've mentioned David Drake's books before; son likes them

too, which led to the following story:

In Drake's The General series, co-author Steve Stirling, in the first novel one of the units, the 5th Descott Guards, takes from a warehouse a whole bunch of red & white-checked scarves, which afterward became kind of a unit badge. Fast-forward a few years...

Son's in a cavalry unit, and I made a suggestion, which led to finally finding a suitable scarf:So I sent a copy of the shot to Drake with the caption "...on detached duty from the 5th Descott."

Next day came a answer: "Wonderful!" and he sent it on to Stirling, who also liked it. Nice to give a bit of enjoyment to a couple of authors who've written so much stuff we like.

And yes, I did suggest he get the whole squad in scarves for a shot, but didn't think he could pull that off.

4 comments:

Mattexian said...

That's pretty cool! I've often thought some type of visual identification for units like that would be better than just the tiny shoulder insignias. I've only got two scarves like that, one in tan and black, the other in sage green and tan.

Keith said...

Time for a unit tartan!

Phelps said...

Don't forget that Drake rode with the Blackhorse in Nam. I can't stop wondering how many of his twists are historical in the sense of him finding it in his research, or historical as in happened to him.

Firehand said...

A bit of both; I remember he once wrote something like "Why try to create a new story line when there's such fascinating ones floating around in history?" And some if it, I'd think, includes his own.

Wonder how the colonel would react to "Sir, my family suggested this for the regiment" with something in a suitable wool...