What is it About Frogs?

The left hand picture below shows a British Army issue genuine 1944 bayonet frog.

Green woven cotton webbing, to fit the no.1, 4, 5 or 7 bayonet scabbard. Fitted with a retaining loop at the top to hold the no. 1 and 5 in place. There is a hole in the top scabbard loop for the no.4, 5 and 7 and the no.1 scabbard fits in between the two scabbard loops.

The next two pictures show the traditional Sword frogs used by the British Army.

Ranidaphobia is the fear of frogs and toads. It gets its name from Ranidae, which is the scientific name for one of the largest families of frogs.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT FROGS?
by Martin Ough Dealy

My reactions range from the extremes of fascination to repulsion. When I think about those slimy, noisy things I am more often than not simply repelled.

The word frog applies to any of various tailless amphibians belonging to the order Anura. Used strictly, the term may be limited to any member of the family Ranidae (true frogs), but more broadly the name frog is often used to distinguish the smooth-skinned, leaping anurans from squat, warty, hopping ones, which are called toads.

One of my worst nightmares is to dream of being in close proximity to a squirming mass of whistling croaking, amorous frogs in a dirty, muddy froth of their mixture of eggs and sperm during their mating season. This whilst half drowning in the black stagnant waters of a filthy pond surrounded by the threats of a dark, dank rain forest with lurking dangerous creepy crawlies with a thousand legs, or 8 legged scorpions and six legged nasties as hordes of blood sucking mozzies, or like-minded leeches thirsting for my blood.

Even more when I think of their dry cousins - the toads. Imagine a nightmare involving the warty, ugly aggressive and prolific, poisonous Cane Toad with its gigantic mouth wide open. Makes me sweat to think about it let alone dream…….

There are hundreds of varieties of frog…glass, horned, poison darted, red, yellow, green, dirty brown, large, small, tiny, golden poisoned, dwarf, tree, ghost, spade footed, fire bellied, gastronomic, gastric brooding (the mind boggles), let alone the multitude that comes with fancy Latin names.
But the word generates other ideas like frog men, frog women, frog worship, frog hats, frog cakes, army frogs, bayonet frogs and sword frogs amongst many which have nothing to do with the animate species.

Frogs have been worshiped throughout the ages and even today. The Egyptians, Chinese, Melanesians, Mexicans amongst many others, have all indulged. In fact the city of Guanajuato has a large park at its entrance featuring over 100 statues of frogs.

The frog is even linked with the worship in the US of one Donald Trump!

The word “Kek”, originally a Korean onomatopoeia for a raspy laugh, had long been used as a replacement for “lol” (laughing out loud). One day, a Trump supporter discovered that Kek is also the name of an ancient Egyptian frog god.

The cult of Kek was born. The link being, I suppose the size of DT’s mouth and Trump was sent to Earth to fulfil a divine destiny.

But the story I want to tell is associated with the Army Bayonet Frog. In the lingo of the Army Quartermasters it was officially described as the “frog, general issue, bayonet 1 for the use of”.

This is an attachment to the soldier’s belt that holds his bayonet and its scabbard. In my day it was worn on any parade where we were ordered to carry weapons. For me and my cohort our weapon was the Lee Enfield .303 Rifle. A formidable thing it weighed about nine kg and could fire with good accuracy over a range of up to 1000 yards.

I along with my fellow cadets I spent countless hours training with this rifle and its bayonet. In the words of the RSM we had to get to know it better than our girlfriends!

Part of the training involved firing live ammunition at targets on the range. In those days, the practices were quite primitive, there were no electronically controlled targets for example. Our targets were set up in the “butts” in which we took turns to operate the mechanisms that raised the targets into the air to be shot at. Protection from the bullets whistling overhead was afforded by the trench in which we worked the primitive frames through cables lifted the targets.

We shot at the targets from a series of firing points set up at regular 100-foot intervals starting at 500 feet from the butts. At first the drill was sedate. We were given plenty of time to aim and shoot before changing position to close the range and shoot from the next firing point at the set intervals of 100 feet. But later on our training became more intense and we had to complete a practice in a certain time and that meant we had to run (with full packs weighing about 20 kg), and fire from a starting range of 500 feet to a final range of 100 feet and falling into a lying position each time from which to shoot.
This went on whatever the weather. On this particular occasion the weather had been awful and the range had become water logged and very muddy. By the time we had got to the last firing position we were all covered with mud and were blowing like grampuses, making it exceedingly difficult to aim accurately. But I seemed incapable of hitting the target. I was sure that something unusual had caused me to miss as I was a reasonably good shot.

The reason for my poor performance was not revealed until the following day. We were on a formal drill parade on the Old College Square, and we were bearing our weapons. During the course of this drill we were ordered to fix bayonets which involved a complicated manoeuvre wherein one held the rifle out in front with the left hand with the butt end grounded, whilst using the right hand to extract the bayonet from the scabbard in its frog and attach it to the barrel end of the rifle. Normally this was straight forward, the bayonet would slide onto the muzzle of the rifle and with a sharp twist was secured.

But that day, my wretched bayonet would not slide onto the muzzle. Somehow the diameter of the muzzle had expanded and the hole in the bayonet proved too small. No matter how I struggled to get it fixed I could not. Need less to say I quickly became the obvious target for the platoon sergeant. I was the only soldier on the whole parade ground unable to “ Fix bayonet”. My name was taken, and I was marched off in disgrace to try to explain to an apoplectic sergeant major why I had been so inept. Of course I paid the price of having to do extra drills.

Later when cleaning my rifle I found the cause of my problem. During the previous range practice I had somehow got mud into the barrel of my rifle. This had acted as a plug, so that when I fired, the pressure of the gasses built up momentarily and was enough to expand the muzzle It was that expanded muzzle that prevented my being able to fix the bayonet the next day.

To add insult to injury, some days later I was summoned to the Company Quartermaster’s store and told that I was to have GBP5 deducted from my pay as compensation to HM for the damage to the rifle barrel and to pay for a replacement! Of course, like most things in the Army there was no appeal against this most unfair impost!

“Sir, I have no live / blank rounds, empty cases, pyrotechnics or parts thereof in my possession and I understand that I must report anybody in breach of this declaration to the Chain of Command” It did not cover defective weapons!

My Frog obviously had no comment to make and was no help whatsoever!
If you plug the barrel with mud, snow, or water (water being non-compressible) you can easily blow apart the barrel. Usually happens at the point the plug is at AFAIK.

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