I injured my right hand last saturday...

Well it WAS a war-kind of!

I have 9 stitches around my thumb, some stitches in my index finger and the tendon that stretches the index finger is severely damagad.

What happened?

I was carrying a flintlock musket back to the camp (not mine, but one that had malfuctioned earlier). When I moved it from my left shoulder to the right it blew.

Most probably there have been sippering powder down behind the flinlock and the wood.
When the powder moved around when I moved the musket the powder got in contact with the still very hot barrel.

The musket was loaded, but the doghead was down so it could not have come a spark from it accidently.

Well the blast made the musket fly away very fast, it hit first my right hand with full power, then bounced into my upper arm leaving a HUGE bruis -is's about 10 times 10 centimeters, and then it bounced away from me and landed in the grass about 2 meters away.

GEE!

Luckily I had a first aid kit in my haversack, and got help putting on a pressure bandage. It hurt as hell, and I bled like a butchered pig.

The ambulance came shortly and I had to spend the entire evening at the emergency at on of the closest hospital- being referred by the personnel as "the war wound".

Already in the ambulance the started to pump in morphine and after that it did not hurt much.

Guess the difficulty of explaining for people what happened...

I said: " well it was this flintlock musket...."

nurse: " a WHAT!

me: "well some sort of rifle"....

etc etc

I guess I was an exotic sight there sitting on a stretcher still with my regimental trousers on and white shirt- all of it neatly patterned by blood stains, and having my jacket as support behind my back. And with one hand in a mess of blackpowder and blood and the other dirty from the powder.

Well what did we do?

It was several swedish, finnish and russian reenactment groups that have joined in at a park in the middle of Stockholm ( the capital of Sweden) to do the grande finale of the memorial year of the events 1809 when Sweden lost the whole of Finland to the Russians. We showed parts of several of the most important battles of that campaign to a rather huge audience. Shooting with flintlocks and cannons, there even was some cavalry.

Great fun! Exept for the accident- but lucky the musket did not blow when it was still in a crowd. Then more people would probably have been injured.

A picture from one of the articles about the event in the newspapers.



/bargy

Wow Bar you were very lucky! I had a similar thing happen to my Sharps Carbine, a little black powder got behind the stock and then a spark. Lucky there too, the sharp piece of wood went sky high and then back into the ground to stick like a dagger - it could have gone into someone. Thankfully it didn't.

I am sorry you hurt your thumb and hand. Events like this are lots of fun but not without danger. Hopefully your accident will alert others to any similar situation to keep people safer.

Thanks for letting us know.

How is that filly doing?

Wow, that's scary! Glad you were okay!

Yeah I am aware of that it could have been much worse, but fx someone could as well have stumbled in a hole in the field during the battles -breaking a leg or got a hand injured while beeing squeezed in a car door during the trip up to Stockholm.

But when handling anything with explosives involoved there is always a risk of things going wrong .

As we say in Sweden: " The one who join the game, have to endure it without complaints."

Yup the societys involved will look into it and make their security precautions even more precise, the musket involved will be closely checked.

The filly is doing fine she grows and grows, now she is around 5 months old.

Pics taken just about 2 weeks ago!





/Bargy

Yup really scary!

Thanks!

/Bargy

Wow, not everyone gets to be "the war wound". Glad you're still all in one piece. I try to stick to pre-black powder era myself. All that new fangled alchemy going and ruining a perfectly feudal hierarchy.

Seriously, glad you're okay and thanks for the story. Must have been tough to type that up.

Love the pics. You going to be a dragoon in that society someday?

Well I have 8 uninjured fingers left...

I am not planning to be a dragoon since I work on a hussar uniform from approx 1810, the horses I have are somewhat heavy for being hussar horses though, but I also do medieval reenactment and there they fit perfectly.

( And there is a limit to how many horses I can afford to have...currently I have 5, 2 stallions, the brood mare and the filly- all of the breed North Swedes, plus one evil crossbreed pony that is to small for me to ride sadly enough since he is utterly cool and really clever and would do fine as a warhorse if he was like 2 hands bigger!)

The dolman for the hussarproject- almost finished at this pic. It is all hand sewn and the strings for the braiding I also made by hand out of wollen yarn. It's from one of the swedish hussar regiments of the napoleonic wars-common ranks.



/Bargy

Very spiffy. I used to wimp-out and rely on my wife's needlework skills all too often in our medieval re-enactment days. Those hobbies are mostly boxed now. Hopefully to return to service after the kids are older.

It took marrying a horsey-girl to start getting a better sense of the distinctions between dragoons and hussars. Both light cav with similar roles depending on time and national military strategy but different origins of the members leading to different skill-sets, approach and capabilities.

If we ever got around to it it would be fun to write out some elven cavalry short stories between say 50 and 450 FA, before Ard Galen gets toasted in Dagor Bragollach. I think horse archers are mentioned at one point but a lot is left to the imagination.

Of course we could always use some more developed cavalry personae and themes in our current storyline...

We had a LOT of cavalry in one of the older storylines ( Ascendary of evil) here at the TE. Both elven an harad cavalry.

And of course also the orcish version.

Lots of the ladies involved in the RP ( or just reading it) cried their eyes out when the handsome haradrim cavalrycaptain Bakir got killed. Ridden over by his men during a charge.

( Evil grin...)

"The charge advanced over the battleground. Bakir felt his black mare move under him in a smooth clean gallop. Every step she took caused his eyesight to dim by pain, he bit his tongue to blood trying to ignore the wound to his shield arm.

They approached the enemy and soon they would bash into the elves with full force and speed. The rais hoped that this would do the trick and be the weight that would push over the battle into their side's advantage. He held his weapon in a firm grip both by will and by years of experience. Arrows whooshed by and Bakir realised that some of the elves had taken to their bows. He cried out to his men to protect themselves with their shields...But nothing could protect the horses and he well knew that.

He heard the scream from a horse to his left and guessed that some unfortunate equine had taken a hit, but he had not the time to turn his head to check.

Moments before they reached the goal of their charge the black mare under him stumbled. She overhauled and just at the very last moment she managed to gain her balance. The unexpectance of this sudden movement in combination with Bakir's injury made him lose his balance and in spite of his desperate attempts to regain his position he slid sideways and fell from the saddle. He felt the stirrup pull on his left leg and with a flash of fear he realised that he would be dragged after his mount.

A few more strides and the stirrup leather snapped by the force of the impact of him hitting the ground repeatedly.

They are all coming after me, he thought ...and there is no room for them to turn!

---

A warm, almost hot wind brushed over his face. He could hear faint music and the refreshing sound of a fountain. Slowly he opened his eyes and stretched out on his bed for a new morning. With a slight surprise he realised that his left soulder and arm were compleatly healed. An awkward feeling of loss overcame him, but it soon faded. He got to his feet and walked out into a green and well kept garden and did not look back."

/Bargy