The Armour Archive

I don't even WANT to know how much you have to eat to get eat exhaustion.

Broke a bone in my right hand (demi got hit full strength and I wore a old leather one) Dislocatted my hip and west An-tir(poped it bac myself right before the castle battle) and had both of my nipples split open one worse than the other and I kept fighting through all off it (my body doesnt let me know when I am hurt till I am "Out of danger")

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Tuomas
I like things that go thump.

At fighter practice after a long break from fighting, I threw a bad shot.

My demi was too big for my basket, and effectively locked my hand to the rattan.

My arm twisted up like wringing a towel, and severed my bicep tendon. (Which consequently rolled up my arm like a curtain )

Was like a 7 hour surgery to fix, but I have to say it's 99% as good as it used to be, and doesnt bother me at all fighting. (Although Im a lot more careful now.)

Brutus

jeezus god.

To quote an acquaintance (an Australian metal weapons combatant):

"1984 - Spear enters below knee-cap, still makes odd clicking noise
1985 - Spear strikes left eye-socket, missing eye, but bruising nerve which
serves left-scalp rendering it numb for some weeks (odd feeling)
1986 - Spear enters left thigh, 2" scar (cant remember who or how)
1991 - Shot to death by ramrod - scars all over body, including surgery and
entry and exit wounds, vertebrae-chipped, aorta cut(but not punctured or
severed), diaphraigm punctured twice, liver partially removed, collapsed
lung, blah-blah,blah. 10 days intensive care, 2.5 weeks hospital, 3 months
off work and I still can't smell unleaded exhaust without blanching.

However, the most serious injury that I have ever incurred was being
verbally abused by Tim Dawson at Gundaroo in 1983 or 1984 for jumping up and
down upon his banner like a child without the sense it was born with, after
we had stormed and taken the great straw-bale fortress."

The worst injuries I've ever suffered was at Quad War this afternoon.

I lost my sword, I'm unable to find it anywhere. Friday I packed my 27" axe and my 50" axe into the car, thinking "this will be a good opportunity for me to do a little more axe fighting". I only have one right handed gauntlet, I was planning on borrowing a left when I got to the war. Fought pickups and for-fun melle scenarios with the shield and axe all day Saturday, I did alright, but I kept seeing all these openings where I could have gacked a guy if I was fighting with the long axe.

So today were the War Scenarios, I wandered all over the site asking folks if I could borrow a gaunt. "No, but I have a pair of hockey gloves," was the reply I received over and over. I politely declined every offer, remembering the horror stories from the Archive. I forgot the long axe and fought axe & shield for the field battles, I killed Duke Davin of An Tir , but other than that my performance was poor. So I decided to bite the bullet and borrow the hockey stuff. I fought really well with the long axe, every time I was able to get close enough to the carnage I scored myself a kill, and vought about eight battle scenarios without injury. Then during a break I was fighting pickups with another guy who was also fighting with a long axe, and he hit me in the thumb. It just smarted at the time, I fought about ten more pickups and about 12 crossroads battles before everyone called it a day. My thumb was difficult to bend while I was armouring down, more uncomfortable for the 5 hour drive home, and fight now it is so sore and swollen I can't properly hold a can of soda.

All the times you guys told me that hockey gloves are utter crap, but like a child I had to learn for myself. Fighting long axe was the most fun and success I've ever had in SCA combat, but I'm retiring it until I get my gauntlets from Galon properly padded and strapped.

I'm sorry.

~Wil

Saw my brother's friend take a sword point right above the eye in live steel. Somebody slipped, the sword hit the eye-bar braces just right and broke one of the welded bars protecting the eye slot of a great helm. That left just enough room for the sword point to enter the helmet. Like I said, it made contact right above the eye-brow. Pretty scary. Amazing amount of blood, too. Didn't seem to hurt the guy much, though. Made him REAL mad.

ScottC

Helmet failure: Broken nose, fractured facial bone, two loose teeth, and (thanks to a congenital condition) detached retina in left eye. Two and a half years, three surgeries and $20,000 later I went back to fighting.

I also have enough skeletal injuries to make Evel Knievel proud. One of my friends made jokes about the possibility of my mortal remains being dug up in the far future and exhibited as an example of the harshness of life in the 21st century.

I'm just glad I don't fight live steel in Australia...

Lets see, in 25 years of SCA combat:

Various bumps, bruises and armor bites too numerous to count.

Tennis elbow in both right and left elbows caused by hyperextension of my elbow while throwing blows. Two months rest and I redesigned my arm armor to prevent hyperextension of the elbow.

Pulled left hip tendon through improper body mechanics. One month of physical therapy and theraputic ultrasound, followed by several years of special stretches before combat.

Momentarally knocked out by a misguided body thrust that landed on the grill of my helm. Sat out for 30 minutes and resumed combat.

Pinched nerve between C5 and C6 as a result of being hafted with a polearm through a 1/4 inch ID 4 in 1 camail, 1/4 inch sole leather gorget and a 1/2 inch of padding. Two weeks in intense agony while on painkillers, spinal x-ray series and an MRI, two months of physical therapy AND chiropractor (I count myself very fortunate to get a neurologist, physical therapist and chiropractor that were willing to work together!). Two additional months of recovery time before getting back into armor. I still have a residual numbness in two fingers of my right hand.

Most recently - Moderate facial laceration due to an excessive off axis face thrust which forced my grill to impact the side of my face. Iced for 3-4 hours, brusing lasted about a week (fortunately mostly hidden by my goatee).

Now, I fight in a fairly heavy kit - 60 to 65 pounds of armor including:

A 12 ga bascinet with camail;
A 1/4 inch thick sole leather gorget;
A 16 ga steel suede covered corrazina;
16 ga stainless shoulder and upper arm armour;
16 ga stainless elbows with leather covered plastic forearms;
14 ga stainless 3/4 length cuisses;
16 ga mitten gauntlets;
heavy leather turnshoes;

Basically the only areas that are unarmored are the middle of my upper arm, and my lower leg (starting 4 inches below the knees).

-Keith/Austin.

Lets see? My left thumb floated out of my gauntlet while fighting with a polearm right then is when my opponent came right down with a verticle shot right on it! It fealt like lightning hit it and it was black for about a month after falling off - thumb nail-. During a practice I stepped on a unseen mud clod the size of a soft ball and twisted it so bad that it felt like it fell off plus the noise it felt it made was horror show! I have seen a broken forearm. Also a knight that got knocked out witha polearm. At Armageddon X I witnessed a spear thrust send a guys head all the way back that when I standing behind him we made eye contact (through his helm) before his head snapped back in place. Funny thing he didnt act like he was heart.

Last night at practice:

He swung to my left and then to my right. As I tried to move around his right, his sword glanced off my sheild and carried on right into my chin. Left a little gash and knocked my jaw around good. Didnt bleed much thankfully. I sure am glad it hit my shield first though.

I had just finished a full enclosed helm the day before, but only wore that for HALF of practice. Sure enough, the minute I put my Nasal helm back on, SMANG!

Live Steel + Chin = ouch.
Good thing it didnt hit my teeth or my eyes!

Now I have a cool cut in my chinstrap beard to show to my girlfriend. (who insidentaly was not impressed.)

Kelly,
I took almost exactly the same shot some years ago. In my case it was just a bone bruise - sore and stiff for about a month, but no real swelling and nothing broken. Still, get that X-ray, if you haven't already!

Dalewyn,
I had the almost exact same thing happen to me my first tournament, and no, I haven't forgotten my cup since then, either. No daughter yet, though - Oh c&@%!

Mostly, so far I've been tougher than I've been stupid

- Kyle

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Kyle:
<B>
Mostly, so far I've been tougher than I've been stupid

- Kyle</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh, if you want _stupid_, there's the nine stitches I have in my scalp from sparring with steel ... without a helm.

Still have bloodstains on my gloves.

if u want to hear stupid listin to this i i make and train with weapons i have a 11in diam stainless buckler i made and i have a metal hafted battle axe thats about 21 inches long over all with a 5 in blade with a hammer on the poll oppisit side of the axe blade well one day practicng on an 6 foot cedar pell i made was practicing with axe and buckler and konked my self in the head pretty hard with the hammer end no helm or nuthin i was pretty dioreinted for a whlke about 10 min standin there holdin my head thinking how much it hurt and all i got was a huge lump on my head for a couple of days

If you ever play around with a dull iron short sword in the left hand and a flail in the right, do NOT bring the handle of the flail to a quick stop directly in front of your stomach level if you have been doing figure 8's with it....momentum could bring it to an unintentional groin strike where you'll be fortunate to just have an uncomfortable few days...I used to play with such a rig, and don't for sure recall whether I actually made said mistake

Hmm...except for a few concussions this would be my list:

both of my ankles had the muscles injured and I could not walk properly for two months (first fighting event)
Cracked a rib due to a fluke polearm hit (also first fighting event)

Cracked that skeleton breastplate which some of the ribs are attached to. (cant remember its name)

Kinda broke my longfinger-joint.. Strange injury, but it was all twisted and is still a bit off center. stupidly enough I Never went to the doctor.

had the tip of another rib broken off. (last december)

My left knee has twisted me out of it a few times, each time I had to rest for about three months

Quite a bit of scarring on my knuckles due to a couple of extremely bad gauntlets...I wonder why I didnt change those sooner...

Thats the fighting-related ones I believe. I also have a few words of wisdom I want to share:

If you have recieved an injury, ALWAYS go see a doctor.
Dont be put off from fighting just because you have read this thread. My worst injurys have come from non-fighting stuff. The fighting is the best thing i have ever done.

And finally: Never ever go into an exhibition fight using twohanded swords thinking "nah, dont need to put on my cup, it´s only a fight or two"
That hurted. A lot.

The worst thing I have ever had done to me fighting was a few bruises, and one blood blister. However, I still cannot believe what I did to a friend of mine, or that she has such a low pain threshold. We were sparring in a mutual friend's backyard. I was using two bokken, one katana sized, the other about the size of a ninja-to. I even had the longer sword in my left hand, I know, not correct, but what the hell. The girl I was sparring with had a four foot staff. She only seemed to know a couple of attacks with the thing. She came at me with an attack to my upper body, which I parried with the katana. Of course, I simultaneously countered with the ninja-to, stabbing her in the abdomen. It was a clean hit, but not exessively hard, but she started complaining, saying it did not count because it was below the waist. I did not recall us agreeing to such a rule, but I did not want to get into a whining session with her, so we started over. She came at me with THE EXACT SAME ATTACK, and I responded as I had earlier, only aiming a bit higher, at her chest. Here's where it got wierd. One moment, my sword is making contact with her breastbone, the next, she is six feet away from me, curled up on the ground, holding her face and crying. Of course, I felt awful, and as I was going over to her, I had horrible visions of what I would see when she took her hands away from her face..Broken or missing teeth, crushed nose, serious cut? She removed her hands from her face, and I was greeted by the sight of....a scratch the size of a popped zit, and the about the same amount of blood..barely a drop or two. At first, like I said, I felt awful. But as soon as she dissappeared to see the damage for herself, my friend and I busted up laughing..not at her getting hurt, but her reaction. If she had seen blood all over her hand, okay, but there was barely a drop of blood on her hand if even that. My friend said "What a GIMP!!"
What must have happened was my sword struck her breastbone and glanced upwards, striking her in the chin. The thing is, I did not even feel that second blow through my sword at all. And she was moving forward at the time, so it must have been one hella good shot to knock her backwards that way. Funny thing is, the regrettable second match would never have happened if she were not such a sore loser over the first. Karma's a bitch sometimes

In the about year total that I have been fighting:

Two broken thumbs(same thumb, I broke it once, didnt let it heal all the way, broke it again from another mace shot) Its a funky looking thumb now...

Fractured knuckle on my middle finger, drunken shinai fighting with my g/f's dad at an event. Evedently I got the crap beat out of me but never felt a thing until the next morning...

Dislocated shoulder put me out for awhile, had it popped back in place and let it heal a bit. I havent been fighting much since then, just the occasional practice. I'm going to give it another month. Non sca, just messing around backyard style.

nasty cup shot that put me out for about a week of any kind of action.

fell off a cliff, no injury, just a really dented set of faulds. I kinda bounced, everyone got worried I was hurt, I started moaning, then realized I wasnt hurt, got back up and ran back to the fighting. the glory of plate armour...

twisted ankle from fighting at night

concussion from a really nasty mace hit, along with wiplash for a few days afterwards

broken chin strap caused the inward curve along my sallet sight to shove into my face giving me a pretty scar along my face that I have been admiring for the last week, along with quite a bit of blood that I tried to hide from anyone. All of this while a reporter from the newspaper was interviewing us to explain what we did to the public.

Took a hit in a loaner helm that gave me a cut across the brow, lots of blood, lots of freaking out by the chiurgion and non fighters, which ended my fighting for the night.

Thankfully, thats about all I have had, nothing too seriouse, just stuff that will come back to bother me in about twenty years(I'm 19)

the worst injury that I have had to date would have to be when I was knocked unconscious at a crown tourney; Oct 2000 Drachenwald. The worst part about this was that I was one of the two marshals of this event. the short version of the incident is that the list field was at least 2 meters to small in overall dimension. the fighters both liked to run around the field and I didn't block or duck quick enough. this was the first time that I marshalled, the first shot thrown and the first bout of the tourney. Needless to say I don't remember much of the rest of the day.

Mike wrote: However, the most serious injury that I have ever incurred was being
verbally abused by Tim Dawson at Gundaroo in 1983 or 1984 for jumping up and
down upon his banner like a child without the sense it was born with, after
we had stormed and taken the great straw-bale fortress."

Ahhh, Timmy Dawson stories....The man that managed to route both sides of a battle just by playing a shawm (very very badly).

I feel so outclassed for injuries to report.
Sure I was concussed as a result of not noticing that a knight I was going up against was left handed. He reports I practically dived at his sword blow with my head. All I know is that I felt a bump on the back of my helm, turned to politely inform him it was "light" and threw up on him as soon as I opened my mouth, instead. Don't remember the next few days much...but tunnel vision can be fun.

The really fun one was the result of a non SCA injury, though. I had a bad motorcycle accident two days before a major tourney where the King and Queen were visiting (and I was autocrating the fighter auction in their honour). My knee was completrely locked. The doc showed me my petella welded to the knee joint and talked about the joys of surgery.

I decided to fight in the tourney.

I announced to the crowd that I would not be able to drop to my knees and would thus take leg blows as a "death". When the furor had died down somewhat (A lot of people thought I ought not be fighting. The rest wondered how they were planning to enforce that) The other fighters in our group said that they felt this would not be fair. I could "ignore" the first leg blow and take the second as a death.
It was agreed.
In the auction I sold for something like $20 because I was lame. Someone got a good bargain. I cam in ahead of th Prince and the Queen when the day was out.

But in fighting the queen....One certain lady named Aerron si where the "injury" of this tale occured. For you see, she was a lot of fun to fight. A hell of a lot of fun, in fact. So much fun that when she hit me in the leg after what seemed like hours of "playing"....I went on automatic pilot and tucked my legs up under me to fall to my knees!
And that is where the mind does strange and amazing things in the presence of much pain.
For I clearly remember time freezing to the speed of pitch dripping through the eye of a needle at room tempreture. I remember registering a great shock of pain without actually having it "hurt"....just sort of writing a check for a great deal of pain that will be cashed very shortly.
And I remember a voice in my head saying "If you think this hurts, wait till you hit the ground!"
...And then I remember dropping to the ground.....Like riding a glass walled elevator to hell. I hit the soil on the points of both knees and yes, it hurt. No real words for how much. Just bad. Very bad. Worse for feeling really stupid.

As it happened I ended up finishing that bout with her majesty. I just needed about 5 or so minutes to lay there and wimper.

The day after this I was back for new X-rays. The doc looked at me and said it was not the way he would have prescribed it...but I was no longer going to need surgery. He was going to look for bone spurs over the next few months...but the patella seemd to have been torn neatly back to where it mostly should have been.

Getting on a horse has been harder to do ever since this accident ...But I want this to be perfectly clear. I would not change that tourney day for anything at all. It was as close to a perfect day in the sca as I could ever have and I wouldn't lose the memories for all three peerages and a throne.

There is however another story to tell....
Far more painful then any here so far.
A tale of a US sailor of my aquaintence.

While I was living in Ynys Fawr (Tasmania) a rather large rowboat called the USS Carl Vincen came into port for a week. It had an SCA Barony on board and we showed the folks a good time. Nice people.
One of the Ladies of Ynys Fawr (who we shall call Theresa, for that is her name) got intimately fond (or fondly intimate) with one of the sailors who we had been hanging out with, training with and reapairing the armour of (all those machine shops on board...and they are not allowed to make armour. A crime, I tell you). Anyway, on the last night of the ship being in port Theresa and the sailor spent the evening doing that which sailors have done with girls named Theresa since time immoral .
The next day, after we had watched the ship sale out past the Bridge (Hobart has a "bridge" across its harbour too, and ours has collapsed and killed people more frequently then the golden gate), anyway, Theresa had a very strange look on her face. Sort of puzzled and bemused. Naturally we decidd that her moment of reflection needed us teasing her mercilessly to make it eternally special for her, and eventually she told us the gruesome tale.

The sailor has just been transferred to the ship, had not known there was an SCA on board and so had not brought his armour. Fortunatly one of the SCA guys on board was on duty during a SCA training and offered to lend the guy his armour.
Problem number one. Our sailor has only got boxer shorts and the box in the armour does not have a support sling. Answer? Duct tape. I kid you not. It is minds like these that steer nuclear powered vessels (or wessels) around our planet.

Problem number two? I'll get to it in a moment.

So they are training up on deck. 8 armoured folks, happy as can be. They decide to practice melee scenarios. Our hero is hit a glancing blow and continues the advance when he notices that his box has now shifted somewhat and is now halfway down his thigh, held within his trouser leg only by the strapping on the borrowed leg armour!
Our brave hero decides that rather then call a hold and suffer the giggles of the others at his predicament, he will simply accept the blow as a delayed action fatal, and so he collapses to the deck. To make sure he is "safe" he pulls his shield across his body and lies on his back.

Unfortunately the tide of war has turned against his side and they are in full retreat. Three guys that do not know he is down are now running backwards straight towards him...

The first trips on the edge of his shield and sits down very heavily on his shield. Likely the breath would have been knocked out of our hero anyway. The impact of the second man into the first was probably irrelevent to the rest of this tale of borrowed armour blues. Maybe.

What we do know is that the shield being driven violently downwards with the mass of a large fully armoured man falling on it connected with the cuisse it was resting on. The leg armour (which was not built for our hero and was not great armour anyway) was then forced in its turn....
The inside edge of the cuisse then found no protective white plastic armour of final salvation to anchor on...and so it cut down like a guilotine.

The gist of the story that Theresa told us was that the man's penis had been split down its length, not unlike the traditional bannana split (A dessert she was likely to never look at in the same way again). He was "iced", flown out and operated on. He was back on board 8 weeks later and six months after these events is when we met him.
Theresa reports that there is scarring of an interesting kind that can best be described as "ridged for her puzzlement".

She told us the number of stitch marks still visible...but it would be ungalant of me to disclose.


The special irony for me was that I sold the man a set of Riverforge leg armour while he was in town. He had insisted on plastic cuisses!

I could describe the leg armour. It would allow you to recognise the guy at Pennsic



Sasha

u g h

I can honestly say that if that were me, I'd look for a new hobby.

Brutus

Describe it! Descriiiibe it!

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Aye, lads & lasses.

Long ago and far away, when Olaf and I were courting, he built a beautiful helm for me. I had padded it (I thought) and he was testing it to make sure I could wear it in fighter practice that afternoon...one kinda light shot across the facebars, no problem, so he rares back and gives me a good hard hit, same place. I discovered that I'd not quite done the padding job I should have when the center bar of the grille went right into my nose. It hurt like crazy, but I didn't think much of it....until that afternoon in practice when my opponent threw a flurry of strokes that I managed to dodge - all except for one. That one landed square on my facebars and pushed that bar into my nose again and I went down like a felled tree. Scared the poor guy half to death (I don't know if he was more scared about hurting a lady or hurting Olaf's lady?!) and when I came around, my nose was sitting kinda funny on my face...felt really weird putting it back into place, too.

Thorfinna
(who's since learned how to PROPERLY pad a helm!)

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Thorfinna dottirÚughter, Helerskan
Armourworks
(formerly Armory of Westlig Stjerne/Alemain Rivet Munitions Armory)
www.armourworks.com

Ooh, let's see. Australian metal weapons injuries . . .Tim Dawson stories . . .

First, there's when Tim was at the feast (night-time, you understand, candle-light only)at the First Maldon Convention (Easter 1985)and decided to have a knife fight on a table with another person (whose name seems to vary with each telling).

Now, the knives WERE blunt combat ones, and both guys had a lot of experience a this sort of thing, but Tim seems to have missed his footing up on the table, and slipped forward just as the other guy thrust with his knife . . . which went in under his armpit and entered his lung . . . interesting shade of blue he went. I wasn't there to witness it, but the nurses at the local hospital were still talking about it 4 years later.

Then there's the Megalong gathering, October 1987, when Pierre of the Routiers and Tim had a sword duel. Both experienced fighters. Tim in breastplate and peaked helmet, Pierre in 17th century "soft" clothing, including Black Floppy Hat (TM).

All went well, until Pierre, forgetting what he and Tim were respectively wearing on their heads, tried the time-tested trick of head-butting Tim. Pierre's head, protected only by the aforementioned BFH (TM), made smart contact with the metal peak of Tim's helmet. LOTS of blood. Pierre quite cheerful and philosophical about it all. I was fortunate enough to be present for this one.

My own injuries - at my first training session a (headless) spear thrust just below the eye socket.

At my first Convention, Easter 1987, as a total newbie, I singlehandedly charged 3 guys, one of whom had a (blunt) spear. I seem to have run onto the end of the spear with my elbow. Lying there after they killed me, I noticed a strange trickling feeling coming from my sleeve, and that feeling you get after being hit on the funny bone. Three stitches.

1989 Convention, bridge battle, over Real Water (TM) somebody thrust a little (actually a lot) too hard with a (headless) wooden spear which got through a gap in my gambeson and (I think) broke a rib. Never bothered to check on it - didn't think it might have been broken until after it healed.

1997 Convention - twisted my knee - AGONY - never been the same since.

Otherwise fairly minor stuff, bruising lip with my own shield rim, stuff like that.

I have injured others, and I find that MUCH more upsetting than being on the receiving end.

Early in my career, I had a new one-handed axe with a "horn" that was much too sharp. It caught somebody in the wrist and dug in. I thought it was caught in his sleeve, and didn't let go, but instead pulled on it in an attempt to free it. Aaargh. Hit someone else in the elbow with the same axe, which was not only too sharp-cornered, but too heavy. Urrk.

Then a (fairly) uneventful career, till Hastings 2000, when I was the one who caused the injury that got the battle stopped so the ambulance could come onto the field (blush - oh, for shame!). Hitting at a line of shields with my sword - up-down-up-down. Suddenly there's a face where I thought there was a shield. Couldn't stop in time. Got him in the face. VERY embarrassing. Turns out to have been a relatively minor injury - I just hit him in a facial nerve, which made it hurt like HELL, but wasn't terribly serious.

Well, that's about it.

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Egfroth

"Power; it corrupts! I can FEEL it!!
see my webpage at www.geocities.com/egfrothos

Just so there can be no doubt, 'twas not I who was "verbally abused by Tim Dawson" - the parts of that post in inverted commas ("") were quoted from an associate on another list.

As for Mr Froth, as an indication of his socially fecund tendencies ... Egfroth arrived at Battle, Sussex, the day before the event. After the incident on the first day, the rumours flew about the battlefield (and pubs and other surrounds) about some bloody dangerous Australian who had come over to the UK and clocked someone. Upon learning that the perpetrator was Egfroth, most tellers of the tale exclaimed: "Oh, Egfroth! Well, that's okay then. He's a nice bloke, is Egfroth. Met him in the pub last night etc etc."

Probably my own "closest to permanent maiming" injury was at Armidale in '94. Received a spear to the eye socket, resulting in cuts above and below the eye, and substantial blackening. Luckily, the metal-tipped spears were reversed that day ...

Of course, everywhere I went after that for the next week, someone asked me if I'd been in a brawl ...

Michael B

in service to the crown a few years back:
i broke three short ribs on my left side cracked three on my right side, i had nine hair line fractures on my right arm. broke a bone in my left arm (helm fell off truck and landed on my arm) had my left shoulder dislocated by a sword shot (shoulder poped back in after the other fighter knocked me down) cracked a bone in my lower left leg. broke a few fingers. and recieved two concussions. all this in less then a year!
sometimes it does not pay to be in the spotlight. the worst injury was a broken hart after my first ladywife left me (same time a broke three more bones in my upperleft chest while moving a washing machine,tripped and it fell on me)

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Michael B:
<B> "Oh, Egfroth! Well, that's okay then. He's a nice bloke, is Egfroth. Met him in the pub last night etc etc."

Michael B

</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Michael;

Your cheque is in the mail.

Egfroth

Well, it didn't happen to me, but Saturday, one of our guys got a broken neck.

Ouch.

The spinous process on his C-6 vertebra was fractured, almost completely broken off, and may have cracked the body of the vertebra as well.

Several things contributed to this happening. He is not a large guy, and does not have as much meat covering his body as many of us do. Upon closer inspection, his gorget does not qualify as "rigid" material. The leather is relatively heavy but very flexible, 8 oz or so on top of some padding, but the leather is separate from the padding and can move around. He was out of position and was struck at just the right angle for the vertebra to be hit (C-6 is bump at the base of your neck). It is also not as hard to break this as you might think. Weight lifters can break it, and it used to be referred to as a "clay-shoveler's break" because intense physical labor can cause enough stress for the ligaments to pull hard enough to break it.

The Society Chirurgeon just happened to be watching the fights (he's local), so even though no one knew it was broken at the time (found out Monday), it helped when we investigated the injury later.

The bottom line is, make sure your neck is protected. Don't try to get by on substandard protection here. If he had had even a small plate covering it, he would probably be at work today, instead of resting at home, and he would be able to fight for the next three months.

That just caused me to begin a hunt for a steel gorget. No broken necks for me.


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Aye, lads & lasses.

a

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Cheers
Rod
Sweat more in Training.
Bleed less in War.

Ok, this is the third time I have tried to send this.

My first international jousting tourney, the Englishman I was jousting hit low on my shield and broke his lance, with a death grip he drove the broken tip into my groin, I was black from navel to knee and ejaculated blood for a week and a half.

Multiple concussions from unhorsings, my right shoulder dislocates easily from repeated shock from lance recoil and the aformentioned unhorsings, same for my right hip, I always seem to hit the ground right side first.

The little finger on my left hand broken and crushed, all the meat on the outside is not a good look. 2 fingers on the right hand broken. A rather dashing looking scar on my left cheekbone attained by stepping out of a mellee, raising my visor for a drink and having the mellee roll over the top of me. My squire yelled look out and ran.

Stabbed in the thigh during a duel by the chap who was shot with the ramrod, that hurt. I could fit my little finger in up to the second joint, why do I know this??? 'cause someone asked how deep it was and I am an idiot.

Other than the above just the usual bumps and bruises......and yes I am an Australian.

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Cheers
Rod
Sweat more in Training.
Bleed less in War.

You know, to have as many bad things happen to my body as do, my friends say that i ran a nazi consentration campin a passed life and i am paying of the karmic debt.( dont worry , bystanders usualy dont get taken out too) However you australians all seem to have me beet. At this point, I havce been hung from a tree and beeten with sticks ( by 8 people), run over by a car ( 3 Times), fallen up a flight of stairs ( dont ask) and the list goes on. Though mine are wierd, I am suprised you guys are still alive!

Mine's not that bad, but I once had a piece of fletching from and arrow drive up into my thumb. It hurt quite badly, but other than that just a few bumps and bruises.
You guys be careful...

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by randy:
. . . However you australians all seem to have me beat. . . . Though mine are wierd, I am suprised you guys are still alive!</font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Ah, well, we have to be tough to deal with all those hoop snakes and drop bears . . .



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Egfroth

"Power; it corrupts! I can FEEL it!!
see my webpage at www.geocities.com/egfrothos

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Egfroth:
<B> Ah, well, we have to be tough to deal with all those hoop snakes and drop bears . . .
</B></font><HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yep, even Steve Irwin's not dumb enough to take one of those on. They say he had a drop bear fall on him as a child ...

Michael B