(Photo: What's the Connection? Mad Magazine, July 1972, p. 9. Go buy it so I can justify putting this here)

Writing about battles is something of a challenge. When you're in the middle of the thing, it's exciting and events unfold in a nice progression of minor disarray. Trying to effectively convey that in words is like trying to describe why the car chase in The French Connection was exciting. You remember it and can even visualize parts of it, but pounding it into words flattens it, sucking all the joie de vivre from the thing. (The French references in this discussion are specifically for the Searle's Buccaneers crew, who I know will really appreciate them.)

(Photo:Jess Bagley) The best you can hope to do is put some interesting commentary on the photos so that people can at least laugh at something since they probably won't be able to string what happened in the battle together. This time will be different, though! I have the "2010 Searle's Raid Battle plan" that I swiped. I am going to use it when I get stuck. That way if you get bored or confused, I can't be held responsible...for once. The first thing we did was deboard (which is like deplaning. Except that deboarding is not actually a word, while deplaning is. Why is that?) Then we stood around and waited (at right). So...pretty fascinating so far, isn't it? Yeah. (Pretend I took this from the battle plan.)

(Photo: Mission)
(Photo: Mission) At the last planning session, they gave out a list of insults - Spanish and English - which we were free to use. Shay brought them them with her so we could practise. She felt the best way to remember them was to string them together. With this in mind, she came up with "You claybrained clodpoll dandypratt!" Clearly the strategy here was to make the Spaniards laugh so hard that they would be helpless during the attack.

Right: the English list. For your review, I've made it and the Spanish List into .pdfs.

(Photo: Mission)
Above: Chaos ensuing. Everyone stands around and
waits for the clock to strike five.
(Photo: Mission)
"I knew I shoulda' taken that left
turn at Albuquerque." It turns out that we (the English) were not supposed to be standing by the pavilion, but were supposed to be over where we had deboarded the bus. (I hereby declare it an officious word.) We had been told on the bus that we were going to take a group photo there. Following that, we marched over to a narrow alleyway (Artillery Lane) to wait for the clock to strike five. (I don't know which clock, so I'll call it "the clock" to make it sound like you should know) This involved blocking traffic. Someone had foolishly gone down our Lane. At first the driver looked confused, then irritated and finally amused.

(Photo: Mission) However, I am doing far too much of the talking here. I certainly don't want to be blamed for writing all the boring and confusing battle exposition, so let's make the battle plan responsible for this portion of the page. "At a pre-arranged time, the buccaneers will fire a mass volley from their location on Artillery Lane." OK, I can't stand it, I have to provide color. They waited for the 5 o'clock clock bells and then shot up in the air over someone's wall on Artillery Lane. I hope they told the people who owned that wall to put their dog in. I didn't actually hear a "Yelp!" *Thud*, but I can imagine that would have been the result. Especially if it was a Chihuahua.

Battle Plan: "Smoke grenades will be lit and shouting will commence." This doesn't begin to tell the half of it. Someone greatly overestimated the need for smoke grenades. I was only sorry that that little white car had managed to get out of the alley before this started. They'd have have been frantic, thinking their engine had caught fire or something.

(Photo: Jess Bagley) "Oh, Spaniards...are you in there? I've got something for you..."

(Photo: Jess Bagley) Melissa - using her scarf well.

"The buccaneers will continue to 'give fire' as quickly as possible and make noise as they proceed down Aviles Street into the Plaza." Well, we did that part oK, although I don't think the riflemen could fire while we were on the street. (There could have been Chihuahuas in the neighborhood.)

(Photo: DB Couper) The pikesmen on their way to the battle...

(Photo: Callenish) ...followed by the riflemen.

(Photo: Jess Bagley)
(Photo: Jess Bagley) "As the buccaneers advance into the Plaza, the Spanish townsfolk will flee west and north towards Government House and to the south end of St. George Street. Some will be captured by the buccaneers." The Spanish townsfolk fleeing may or may not have happened. Because the special effects folks had worked overtime, I could barely see the plaza at all. Nor did we capture anyone as far as I know. Had we done so, we would have had to drag them along with us en route, so I assume we gave that bit a miss.

(Photo: DB Couper) "The Spanish troops at the west end of the Plaza will open fire on the buccaneers as the townsfolk begin to flee. Individual Spanish troopers will continue to fire as rapidly as possible to make as much noise as they can from the time they sight the buccaneers until they retreat north up St. George Street." Well there was definitely a lot of noise from the other end of the Plaza as the Spanish troopers fired. Through the smoke, we could make out the ghostly forms of Spanish troopers and their weapons. (OK, I'll admit that it wasn't quite that bad for the majority of the time. I had had an upset stomach all day and the smoke was really stinky and seemed to do my stomach no good. So this account may be a bit biased.)

(Photo: Callenish) A cool shot of a Spanish sniper.

(Photo: Ivan Henry) The Spanish rifle forces massed the other end of the Plaza.

(Photo: Callenish)
"Pikers! Form off to the side in a disorganized mass!" "As the buccaneers advance west into the Plaza, the Spanish will rally at Government House." If you you want to see what I believe was government house, you have to look at the group shot at the top of this page. I don't see it in most of the pictures I have collected, probably because of all the smoke. (OK, that's that last snippy comment about the smoke...for now.)

"A firefight will take place between the opposing forces (east to west)." What it didn't say here was, "The pikesmen will get the hell out of the way of the rifles." Battle plans don't usually account for important things like that for some reason. We moved off to the side so that the folks who had carried their weapons all the way here would have something fun to do. They fired four or five rounds and made a lot of racket. It's actually just what you'd hope for a battle in the middle of town. (This really was part of the fun.)

(Photo: Jess Bagley) The English firing from the Spanish POV.

(Photo: DB Couper) And a view from the side.

(Photo: Callenish) The Spanish firing at the buccaneers.

(Photo: DB Couper) And a nice shot of the Spanish rifle line.

(Photo: Jess Bagley) From here the plan talks about the Spanish retreat, so I suspect there was a great deal of improvisation that took place. Since I think improvisation is good, this is OK. This may explain why Captain Willie Searle was buzzing around talking about how to be a proper pikesman. Or he may have done that because we didn't look anywhere near as organized as the Spanish pikesmen (at right). Our Captain, Sergeant Jeff's son Alex, was a good guy but he had inherited a bunch of green recruits. Still, we were to be involved in the battle, albeit with some officer reservations. Up until now, we had been over to the side of the gazebo pavilion standing at our ease. (In other words: goofing off.) It was decided to do the whole "push" thing with the Spaniards. First we yelled threats at each other. This sort of reminded me of that scene in Yojimbo where the two gangster crews are trying to intimidate each other while the Samurai sits on a tower and laughs at them.

(Photo: Jess Bagley)

(Photo: Jess Bagley)

Above: the two pike factions face off. The Spanish had much longer pikes than we did and if it were an actual battle, not fought with our pikes at an angle like you're about to see, I think it would have been buccaneer-ka-bobs all 'round.

Below: Following the face off, the puck was thrown between the two pike squads and the English took control. They used their spears to try and position it in front the Government house goal. Yzerman took his pike along the boards and...wait. Actually, it was just a big mess as the two squads set their pikes at and angle and shoved against each other.

(Photo: Jess Bagley)

(Photo: Jess Bagley)

(Photo: DB Couper) Also not mentioned in the plan were the sword battles. There were actually two sword battles going on at the same time, one on either side of the Plaza. (Probably so that the folks who had come out to see us could each enjoy a sword battle.) On our (the pike) side, we had Carlos (in black) who was originally meant to be a Spaniard. Since they didn't have enough swordsmen to fight for the buccaneers, Carlos took off his emblem and switched sides. (Very obscure movie reference: "Fester, for this fight, you're a Yank." Try and look that up!) I must say that it was a nice fight, well choreographed. Unfortunately I don't know that name of the guy in brown. (You may have noticed that this is a minor theme for this journal.)

So those were the non-Battle Plan events that occurred. We now return you to our original battle plan, already in progress. "After a massed volley from the Spanish the buccaneers will mass volley [not shown - use your imagination]; forcing the Spanish to retreat north up St. George Street." So we marched out of the Plaza, followed by many of the tourists. I later noticed that this was sort of like a traveling circus. We'd go along, stop to do something, catch the attention of some tourists and then get moving again, taking some of the tourists with us. That was really neat, except for one small problem we had. But you'll have to wait for the next chapter to learn about.

(Photo: Callenish) The pikesmen, leading the way out of the Plaza and into the streets.

(Photo: Jess Bagley) The riflemen following. Sergeant Jeff is in the fore, Willie has the flag (left), William Searle is in the blue waistcoat (right).

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