Children during T2k...

[Brother in Arms]

I dont find children with firearms disturbing...but then again im not british.

I fired my first firearm when I was 5 and by the time I was 9 I had my very own shotgun for hunting. By age 13 I have several rifles and shotguns.

It's not the fact they they are children using firearms. It't the situation those children are in that is causing them to have to use the firearms that is scary and sad.

Atiff is correct about children moral compass, morality is created by adults, and children will have to do what they have to do after the end of the world. We cant judge them or the actions of those who might have to kill them with our wolds morality.

If a pack of armed children came at me id be chucking grenades and slinging lead. I don't want to be killed by anyone especially not someone who should be playing with tonka trucks.

Brother in Arms

[95th Rifleman]

You miss my point.

What I find disturbing is that when I was running around playing with a woodedn SLR my dad made me as a toy, kids my age where using the real thing in a war somewhere.

Kinda makes me think about my society compared to others and I realise how lucky i was.

[Brother in Arms]

Agreed 95th

we were lucky and unfortunately many kids today don't have that option. After the eve of twilight war very few children would get to have a childhood as we know it.

Not all children woule child soldiers of course but there lives would probably be relatively altered probably alot like my Grandfathers. He had to drop out of school and go to work on a farm when he was in the 9th grade so at about age 13-14.

He didn't have the luxury of playing around and doing the sort of things like my fathers and my generation got to do. He didn't get to play on the football team or go to the prom or have a car and waste time with freinds. After my grand dad worked on away his childhood at the farm in 1945 he got drafted into the army at age 18 and went to Europe to fight in ww2.

Luckily for him it ended by the time he got there.But he was still deployed as an MP in post war Germany. Then he came back home to spend the rest of this life 18-65 working in a paper mill.

So I agree we where lucky infact I have never really been held to anything or had to account for almost any of the decisions or choices I have made in my life. I turned 31 this year and to be honest I have pretty much had an exstended childhood my whole life.

It went from being a Teen ager and playing around with my freinds. To going to college, dropping out , going to trade school, having crappy jobs. Ending a 10 year relationship only to become a gigallo for several years. I didn't really start being a grown up until I was about 29 or 30.

And to be fair I'm not doing a very good job of it. I manadge to stay employed and work on guns and I have a steady girlfreind. But I don't have a house or really any possesions of great value.

Comparatively I have lived a life of luxury and privledge, and I all I have to show for it is being soft and wanting to continue being a manwhore.

Things aint what they used to be...but at least I have enjoyed myself...the question is now what.

[schnickelfritz]

Ask any vet that was in combat aginst the 12th SS Panzer "Hitlerjungend" or any WW2 ETO vet that was in combat aginst Hitler Youth teenagers at the end in Germany. I bet they have nightmares regularly about it.

About 15 years ago a local paper interviewed a WW2 US Army ETO vet who was a gunner on a M1919A4 Browning MG, a man who had to open up on teenage German kids in uniforms because they opened up on him and his comrades and refused calls to surrender. The b!^ch interviewer tried to make this poor old man feel awful about it years later. I and everyone I knew that saw it could not have been more disgusted and horrified at what the interviewer did. This man did what he had to do to keep himself and the men he was tasked with supporting alive, simple as that.

Go dig up the video footage of Adolf pinning Iron Crosses on HJ "soldiers" in Berlin at the end...every time I see it I get a chill up my spine.

-Dave

[Targan]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

It went from being a Teen ager and playing around with my freinds. To going to college, dropping out , going to trade school, having crappy jobs. Ending a 10 year relationship only to become a gigallo for several years. I didn't really start being a grown up until I was about 29 or 30.

It sounds like we have led similar lives except for a couple of notable bits. I would love to have become a gunsmith but here in Australia that would mean working on really boring firearms.

The part I want you to clarify is that you were a "gigalo". I too slept with many, many women when I was in my 20s but I was never directly paid to do it. The term gigalo means a male prostitute who is paid by women for sex. Are you telling us that women have paid you to have sex with them? If so I say kudos, my good man, bravo. Please say it is so

[95th Rifleman]

I was just an old fashioned man-slut in my younger days. Now I'm 31, a bit too fat and working in a shop.

heh, but whenever I bitch about my life I try to keep in focus that some folks have it far worse. I have good memories, did 10 years with NAAFI, had 3 fiances (wasn't stupid enough to marry) and try to have few regrets.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by Targan

... I would love to have become a gunsmith but here in Australia that would mean working on really boring firearms.

Only in Western Australia, they had lots of interesting firearms in Queensland and New South Wales.

[Tombot]

Originally Posted by Brother in Arms

Agreed 95th

we were lucky and unfortunately many kids today don't have that option. After the eve of twilight war very few children would get to have a childhood as we know it.

Not all children woule child soldiers of course but there lives would probably be relatively altered probably alot like my Grandfathers.
He didn't have the luxury of playing around and doing the sort of things like my fathers and my generation got to do.
I turned 31 this year and to be honest I have pretty much had an exstended childhood my whole life.

It went from being a Teen ager and playing around with my freinds. To going to college, dropping out , going to trade school, having crappy jobs. Ending a 10 year relationship only to become a gigallo for several years. I didn't really start being a grown up until I was about 29 or 30.

Comparatively I have lived a life of luxury and privledge

The Brother in arms is right - in the T2k-world almost nobody would have an extented childhood.
The point is - as soon you are able to do stuff, you´d have to do it, whatever it would be. Fighting, selling your body and so on...

The generations (at least in most of europe and northamerica) after WWII are the lucky ones, and we are all an exception, when you compare it to the history of mankind. In most eras, it was (except for children of nobility, but even them had their own challenges) normal for kids to be pressed into some kind of hard labor.
Even today, in many countrys its just like that, right now.

Its a good thing, to enjoy this. When i am playing with my godson, i am happy about this. We are very lucky, indeed.

[WallShadow]

T2K canon shows several glimpses of the life of a child post-whoops.

In Armies of the Night, the description of food gathering mentions children catching rats. I guess the old fishing hole now has a new twist on it--rag-gigging has surplanted it in the urban environment. Children will have a lot more responsibility to provide for their own and their family's survival.

Free City of Krakow describes children as potential Artful Dodgers to be kept at arm's length to prevent theft and mischief.

And children would not be emotionally untouched by the heavy emotional burden of living after the world has become such a hard place to live in. In "The 900 Days", a chronicle of the German siege of Leningrad in WW2, there is a story of a woman whose bread ration was snatched from her by a boy after she had stood in queue for it for hours. The boy just sat there and ate the bread, insensitive to blows and kicks from the woman.
Another anecdote describes a child observed playing with a ball. After a while the child just stops and sits down, with an expression and demeanor reflecting utter futility of playing or even living. Hunger, exposure, need, and want will be the main drives for almost all the population, children included.

The next couple of generations are going to be really screwed up emotionally.

[Brother in Arms]

Targan

Sorry I didn't mean to side track the children thread for some insight into my life I was merly trying to point out that I haven't had it very rough.

Now to answer your questions being a gunsmith you often have to work on "boring firearms" but its like being a mechanic you don't always get to work on a Ferarri sometimes you just a Chevette.

as for clarification, I can't disagree with your description/definition as of the meaning of the word gigalo. As to the correctness of my previous statement id say its only a partial truth. I can honestly say I have never been paid by a woman for sex...but I have been allowed to stay with them for extended periods, while having no job or place to live, and I was not in relationship with them. As well as eat there food, use there shower sleep in there bed and one even did my laundry. Also I've had a few women "introduce" me to other women who were there freinds. Who I ended up servicing as well.
Perhaps that still falls under the more accurate description of a slut

And not to completely make this totally off topic (Targan is a moderator I think after reading the children in t2k forum I am going to start a child soldier picture thread.

And try to think of other things Kids might do other than be fighters. I can definitly imagine them as messengers where they memorize what they are to tell someone. Its a lot easier for a kid to wander around and bump into someone then an adult. Children go un noticed often to adults.

I think they would also be used as guides to war zones and regugee camps and the like.

Brother in Arms

[WallShadow]

And so it comes around again--Baden-Powell envisioned youths working as scouts ahead and around military units. In the PA world the children would again become gatherers of news and the eyes of the army. Although the T2K "scouts" might fall short on some of the points of the Boy Scout Code

[Brother in Arms]

Some Boyscouts fall short of the scout oath. I myself am an Eagle Scout.

" A member of an elite paramilitary group Eagle Scout."
Colonel Bella
Red Dawn

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by WallShadow

And so it comes around again--Baden-Powell envisioned youths working as scouts ahead and around military units. In the PA world the children would again become gatherers of news and the eyes of the army. Although the T2K "scouts" might fall short on some of the points of the Boy Scout Code

And something else to consider - children often notice things that adults don't. I remember part of the briefing for escape and evasion training was to avoid children because they often identified strangers far quicker than adults. Apparently this is because the children were curious while adults were more inclined to ignore details that didn't fit into their immediate worldview.

So perhaps you might even find children at checkpoints employed to watch people so that they can identify strangers.

[James Langham]

Watch Enemy at the Gates for inspiration for an excellent child NPC

[Targan]

There are scenes in the film Black Hawk Down where kids in Mogadishu are given cell phones by the militiamen and told to phone through sightings of foreign troops, vehicles and aircraft.

[rcaf_777]

This is what I let my daughter play with

[natehale1971]

She's so cute!

all it needs is some Hello Kitty stickers!

which reminds me... one of the female PCs in my old group wore a pair of panties with 'Hello Kitty' right over her... well, kitty. And a matching tee-shirt that had Hello Kitty with a heavy machinegun and the words "I have the P*$$Y, So I make the rules"

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

I've always thought it was an interesting bit of hypocrisy that we will allow our kids to go to war and possibly die before we'll allow them to buy a beer.

You have that right.. and now they can vote, and still not get a drink in lots of places... I waited 21 years for my first LEGAL drink.. had it all figured out too... trouble was I was 10000 miles away and sitting in a stinking (literally) rice paddy when I turned 21... such is life. It was over eight months before I got to hobble into a bar and order a beer.

[Targan]

Australian soldiers can vote, go to war and drink beer at 18. Possibly all on the same day if they are (un?) lucky.

[dragoon500ly]

Speaking of child solders, came across this one in “The Armies of U.S. Grant” by James Arnold….

By the 19th of May, 1863, Grant’s army had completely invested Vicksburg. The speed of his advance astonished his enemies. Having recently seen how easily his men had assaulted well-manned works on the Big Black River, he thought that an immediate hard push would capture the city. Accordingly, Grant ordered a general assault for 2 p.m. His main effort went in against a Confederate works called the Stockade Redan, which blocked one of the principal roads leading into Vicksburg. Blair’s Division of Sherman’s Corps drew the assignment of assaulting the Stockade Redan. A narrow, winding road---aptly named Graveyard Road---led to the Redan. The brigade of Kirby Smith would lead the assault, up either side of Graveyard Road . The precipitous slopes were littered with stumps and fallen trees made it impossible to maintain any order. Three times Kirby Smith halted his brigade to dress ranks, under heavy fire. Pinned down, he sent a courier to Sherman to request reinforcements. The brigade of Giles Smith was ordered forward to support Kirby Smith’s attack.

Giles Smith left one regiment to provide covering fire and took his four remaining regiments into a hollow that led up to the Stockade Redan. In spite of the covering fire, the defenders poured a punishing fire onto the attackers who paused briefly behind an embankment to catch their breath after the difficult climb. Then Smith ordered his men forward again. The 1st Battalion, 13th U.S. Infantry (the only regular infantry then serving with Grant) crossed the rise and immediately ran into a deadly crossfire of infantry and artillery. The captain commanding fell mortally wounded, but still cheered his men forward as he lay dying. A shot through the head killed the Color Sergeant. Another soldier picked up the fallen Color and he too fell dead. In quick succession, five Color-bearers were hit and killed or wounded. The regulars pressed on and went to ground within 25 yards of the Stockade Redan, unable to advance any further. Another captain seized the Color and ran ahead to plant the flag on the redan’s exterior slope. A bullet hit the flagstaff and carried away one of his fingers.

This torn standard marked the farthest advance of the day. Unable to go forward, unwilling to retreat, the regulars held their position throughout the afternoon. When the regulars ran out of ammunition, brave volunteers searched the cartridge boxes of the dead and wounded to replenish. The regulars particularly admired the efforts of Musician Orion Howe. Howe dashed across the fire-swept ground to collect cartridges and bring them to the firing line. He then volunteered to go to the rear to bring up a reserve supply. He ran along Graveyard Road, was struck by a bullet in the leg, but continued on to Sherman’s headquarters to tell the general that the men needed ammunition. Seeing blood dripping from the boy’s leg, Sherman asked what was the matter. Howe replied, “They shot me in my leg, sir, but I can go to the hospital. Send the cartridges right away.” Sherman promised him he would arrange it. As Howe limped off, he turned to shout out “Caliber 54!”, the unusual caliber required by his regiment’s Austrian rifles. For his exploits on 19 May, 1863, Musician Orion Howe, aged fourteen, was awarded the Medal of Honor.

[James Langham]

For useful insights into child soldiers try:

* Blood Diamond (film)

* King's Shilling (Mike Lunnon Wood)

both feature African child soldiers.