THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 5, 6 January 1934, Page 8

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.)

Here is a Christmas card from the officers' mess of No. 84 (Bomber) Squadron, Royal Air Force, Shaibah, Iraq. On the front leaf is an embossed die imTHE SCORPION, pression of a fearsome beast whose posterior portion is in seven sections, ending with a sting. 11l front the armament consists of a pair of pedipales, claws, or nippers. The motto beneath is "Scorpiones Pungunt." Within is a photograph of a bombing machine flying over country irrigated by the Tigris —but the animal on the front page is the real point of interest. The card having been handed round, those happy New Zealanders who had never seen a scorpion were unanimous that the Eighty-fourth Air Squadron had chosen a crayfish for a badge, crest or die. As a matter of fact, the resemblance is striking, and scorpions imitate in some parts of their construction the king crab. Exceedingly appropriate, too, for bombers, for the scorpion bites at both ends and sucks the juices of its victims. Some highbrow airman has, of course, selected the scorpion as a crest because the ancients called their catapultie slings '"scorpions." That type of catapult was set on legs. The "bombers" used to "Scotch-walk" the catapiilt into position by man-handling the legs, pull down the long arm that threw the rock, holding it with a spring. When the spring was released the stone flew towards the enemy and biffed him if he was foolish enough to get in the way. They' manage, t their scorpions differently in "Mespot."