For
my last blog post of the semester I decided I would write about one
of the funniest moments in history in my opinion. During the 1930's
in Australia, a certain species of flightless bird was causing a bit
of a headache for local farmers. The emu, a bird native to the area,
had been damaging the crops of the farmers in the area for decades
and in 1932 the farmers decided to fight back. The local agrarians
enlisted the help of Major G.P.W Meredith of the Royal Australian
Artillery to devise a way to curtail the threat. In regular army
fashion the Major decided that the best way to take care of the emu,
was with good old fashioned machine guns. This is how this panned
out, the Major, accompanied by two of Australia's finest carrying
machine guns started out into the bush in early November to hunt the
bird. After searching for the emu for hours eventually the soldiers
found a few a few hundred yards away. The soldiers fired on the
birds, which did nothing other than scare them away, much to the
dismay of the men. After repeating this a few times the Major decided
to mount one of the guns on a truck to give chase to the birds. Since
this is 1932, this idea was not as glamorous as it sounds, as the
truck only made the gun less accurate. After weeks of searching
however the soldiers discovered a large flock of the bird, and
decided to try and ambush the emu. In position, the birds were
spooked into rushing their position. The soldiers waited until they
were in point blank range, then started to unload their guns on the
birds. Instead of mass destruction of the species, the guns jammed
after about 12 had been killed and the rest scattered. The men,
disheartened gave up their mission, and faced international ridicule
for their mission. After a number of other similar attempts, the
Great Emu War was deemed a failure by every party involved, except
the emu, who were victorious. I think my favorite quote from the who
experience was from an ornithologist, Dominic Serventy; “The
machine-gunners' dreams of point blank fire into serried masses of
Emus were soon dissipated. The Emu command had evidently ordered
guerrilla tactics, and its unwieldy army soon split up into
innumerable small units that made use of the military equipment
uneconomic. A crestfallen field force therefore withdrew from the
combat area after about a month.”
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