quote:

Afternoon, Art. Many thanks for your kind and thoughtful letter - much appreciated.

My father was a Cork man...my mother was a Collins - her father, my grandad, was KIA on the night of 21/22 June 1917 - she was three and had only seen him once in her life.

I server 33 years in the Army, and spent way too much time over in Northern Ireland, where they all looked just like people in the street, but a proportion of them tried to kill or maim you on a daily basis, so believe me, I'm well acquainted with jingoists of all persuasions.

However, back to SIG forum and it's a matter of disappointment, more than anything else. All the dick-measuring that goes on - the 'I've got more guns/airplanes/boats than you' brigade are a minority, but the genuine hatred, not dislike, but hatred, shown to me by some posters almost leaves me breathless at times - it's worrisome, to say the least.

At the time of the American Revolution, carried out, I have to say, by British subjects at the time, and therefore a 'rebellion', my dad's family were no doubt scratching for a living in a field belonging to somebody else, and I have no idea what my mother's people were doing, except that their family name is Orchard. They are still in the village, too.

We had nothing to do with the times around 1776, except that they obviously lived through them else I wouldn't be here now catching all the shite from disaffected Americans with a permanent grudge.

AAMOF, here in UK I have 21 rifles and two handguns, and shoot at least twice a week. I've been shooting since age 6, and I'm now 78, and never really stopped. Black powder and casting, centre-fire and reloading, and Olympic-style 10m air are my things - shooting BP long-range out to 1200 yards with my Whitworth, and 600 yards with the Pritchett, and all kinds of .22 - I have seven of them, BTW.

For five years I was a Crown Expert Witness on firearms offences caught on CCTV or other kinds of imagery - that was fun, as it showed me the incredible depth of the ignorance about firearms in general that pervades today's UK.

Anyhow, enough blathering - it's good to meet up with an ally on a 'lonely shore' like SIG forum. My connection was real at one time - I had five SIG pistols. One school massacre took them all away, and many others, too.

You take care over there - America is starting to worry me, even though we have dear friends and relations in the PNW to go to. As we say here 'the flag is starting to fray at the edges...'

Best wishes -

Thierry A de C Foley [tac]

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
A few years back, tacfoley became upset with comments in the forum about his country and had decided he was going to leave the forum.

Here's his email to me:

And I’m really getting past the time I can spend fending off the constant sniping on the forum.

I’m done here.

I’ve been here a good long time now, and to be honest, I knew when I started that it was always going to be an uphill struggle against a large number of your fellow citizens for whom reliving ‘kicking out the Brits’ is still a highlight of their day, and having somebody who actually LIVES in UK to throw coconuts at, well, that must really make their day, and then some. The insults, either stated or implied, have mounted up and up, as have the endless criticisms of things that I can’t change, but have to live with on a day-to-day basis. The implication that the people of the UK are no more than gutless sheep was unpleasant the first time I saw it, but by the hundredth time it was barely noticeable among all the other stuff heading my way.

In spite of that, I’ve done my level best over the last almost twenty years to respond fairly, and without rancour, and by and large have managed to do so without seeming to lose my temper, although it has been very close sometimes. I’m not well-known over here for suffering fools – my thirty-three years in the Army is partly responsible for that.

I hope that me bailing out now will not be seen by anybody on the forum as an act of cowardice – it’s not so much that as a deep weariness. It’s hard for me to admit that I’m beaten, but my bald old head tells me it’s never going to be better than it is now.

I was always very proud to say that I was part of SIG forum, even though my rationale for being here disappeared in 1997 along with my beloved SIGs, but I still wear my SIG hat - my Swiss rifles have SIG barrels.

So now, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for your guidance of this great forum over the years, and for watching my six when you felt it was needed.

I’d like to think that we are friends, in fact, I’d be honoured to think that that was true.

Take care.

I understood both sides of the matter. I understood how he felt and I understood how those making the comments felt. If I were a member of a forum based in another country- and therefore automatically a minority- I would feel assailed by negative commentary of my country. I responded to his email and I told him that I would tend to matters and make members aware that despite the very real problems in the UK, it was fundamentally wrong to essentially place the burden of those things on one man- a man who was my guest in this forum, no less. It was true then and it's still true now.

Members responded positively to my comments about this, and, as you saw, tac stayed with us until the end. His reasons for remaining in his home country were a matter of family and I doubt that any man here who knew the particulars would have done any differently, but he did have a love for the United States.

I share this story with all of you, not to make anyone feel guilty for things they may have said in the past. As I said, I understood both sides and I mean that sincerely. I share this story to let those of you who didn't really know tacfoley get a glimpse of who he really was, and to see his good heart, and his love for this place and its members.

We- I, anyway- have the tendency to think our online friends will always be around, because much of their daily struggles are concealed to us, and therefore we tend to take their presence for granted because all seems well until it's not. A reminder from time to time to all of us of the danger of this illusion, is a good thing.

My sincerest condolences to tacfoley's friends and family