Remembrance of things past

Any soldier will tell you that, in the heat of a fight, sights and sounds imprint themselves on your memory and stay vivid for fifty years . . . but you lose all sense of time.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.337, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, soldier.

A journalistic law

… it’s a journalistic law, you see, that heroes can never do anything ordinary; when Flashy, the Hector of Afghanistan, beats a reluctant retreat, there must be an army howling at his heels, or the public cancel their subscription.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.335-36, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, journalism.

In which Lt. Flashman reviews the tactics of Sir Hugh Gough

I caught my breath in horror, for it was Ferozeshah all over again, with that raving old spud-walloper risking everything on the sabre and the bayonet, hand to hand — but then the Sikhs were groggy from Moodkee, in positions hastily dug and manned, while now the were entrenched in a miniature Torres Vedras, with ditch-and-dyke works twenty feet high, enfiladed by murderous camel-swivels and packed with tulwar-swinging lunatics fairly itching to die for the Guru. You can’t do it, Paddy, thinks I, it won’t answer this time, you’ll break your great thick Irish head against this fortress of shot and steel, and have your army torn to ribbons, and lose the war, and never see Tipperary again, you benighted old bog-trotter, you —


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.331, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, tactics.

A clash of armies

       The best way to view a clash of armies is from a hot-air balloon, for not only can you see what’s doing, you’re safely out of the line of fire. I’ve done it once in Paraguay, and there’s nothing to beat it, provided some jealous swine of a husband doesn’t take a cleaver to the cable.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.326, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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An old Irishman

…a continuous roar of explosions, shaking the ground underfoot, reverberating through the mists of the morning. Beyond our view, on the southern shore, an old Irishman in a white coat was beating his shillelagh on the Khalsa’s door, and with a sinking heart I realized I had come a bare hour too late. The battle of Sobraon had begun.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.325, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, shillelagh.

Slave of duty

Alas, though, subalterns’ minds travel a fixed road, and he was no exception: faced with a momentous decision, my dashing escort of the Lahore Road had turned into a Slave of Duty — and Safety.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.322, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Couldn’t abide Dickens

...she couldn’t abide Dickens because his books were full of coincidences.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.318, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Size of a tangerine

All kind of mad fancies flit by — not to be taken seriously, you understand, but food for wild imaginings — like bleaching your hair and striking out for Valparaiso under the name of Butterworth and never looking near England again . . . two million quid, Lord love us! Aye, but d’you dispose of a diamond the size of a tangerine?

Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.314, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, tangerine.

Complete and unashamed

      There’s a point, you know, where treachery is so complete and unashamed that it becomes statesmanship.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.310, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Nerve

Goddam, but that woman’s a bearcat for nerve — a bearcat, sir!



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.295, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Password

“Harlan brought this, for you, from Colonel Gardner in Lahore. Says it will establish his bona fides. The seal hasn’t been touched.”
      Wondering what the dooce this was about I broke the seal — and had a sudden premonition of what I would read. Sure enough, there it was, one word: Wisconsin.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.280, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Fatal breed

It’s the odd thing about deadly men — they’re all addicted to either God or the Devil, and I ain’t sure but the holy ones aren’t the more fatal breed of the two.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.277, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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Scotch nemesis

There was one quiet Lancer, though, a black-whiskered Scotch nemesis who said never a word, and played the bull fiddle for his recreation. He caught my eye then, and again fifteen years later when he led the march to Peking, the most terrible killing gentleman you every saw: Hope Grant.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.274, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Thank'ee Sir Henry

…plainly Flashy would get no credit either; my work with Lal and Tej would be conveniently forgotten. Well thank’ee Sir Henry, and I hope your rabbit dies and you can’t sell the hutch.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.273, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, rabbit.

The famous "fighting coat"

      All India knew that white coat of Gough’s, the famous “fighting coat” that the crazy old son-of-a-bitch had been flaunting at his foes for fifty years, from South Africa and the Peninsula to the Northwest Frontier. Now he was using it to draw fire from his army to himself (and the two unlucky gallopers whom the selfish old swine had dragged along). It was the maddest-brain trick you ever saw — and, damnation, it worked! I can see him still, holding the tails out and showing his teeth, his white hair streaming in the wind, and the earth exploding round him, for the Sikh gunners took the bait and hammered us with everything they had.






Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.264, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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I heard him growl

      …suddenly Gough wheeled his horse, looking right and left at the wreck of his army, and the old fellow was absolutely weeping! Then he flung away his hat, and I heard him growl:
      “Oi nivver woz bate, an’ Oi nivver will be bate! West, Flashman — follow me!”
      And he wheeled his charger and went racing out into the plain.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.263, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, weep.

A ragged fence of bayonets

…and the muskets of the infantry squares came to the present in a ragged fence of bayonets that must be ridden under as that magnificent sea of men and horses engulfed us. I never saw the like in my life, I who watched the great charge against Campbell’s Highlanders at Balaclava — but those were just Russians, while these were the fathers of the Guides and Probyn’s and the Bengal Lancers, and the only thing to stop them at full tilt was a horse soldier as good as themselves.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.260, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



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The forgotten brigadier

      Historians say that on that one moment, as the Khalsa’s spearhead was rushing at our throat, rested the three centuries of British India. Perhaps. It was surely the moment in which Gough’s battered little army stared certain death and destruction in the face, and whatever may have settled our fate later, one man turned the hinge then and there. Without him, we (aye, and perhaps all of India) would have been swept away in bloody ruin. I’ll wager you’ve never heard of him, the forgotten brigadier, Mickey White.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.260, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, hinge.

Good artillery

      There’s never a time when pain and fear don’t matter, but sometimes shock is so bewildering that you don’t think of them. One such time is when you wake up to find that good artillery has got your range and is pounding you to pieces; there’s nothing to be done, no time even to hope you won’t be hit, and you can’t hurl yourself to the ground and lie there squealing — not when you find you’re alongside Paddy Gough himself, and he’s pulling off his bandana and telling you to wrap it round your fin and pay attention.

Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.259, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Worth an extra division

      I ain’t one of your by jingoes, and I won’t swear that the British soldier is braver than any other — or even, as Charley Gordon said, that he’s brave for a little while longer. But I will swear that there’s no soldier on earth who believes so strongly in the courage of the men alongside him — and that’s worth an extra division any day. Provided you’re not standing alongside me, that is.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.255, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, jingoism.

When the swells

      I didn’t care for this — when the swells start sending their valuables down the road, God help the rest of us.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.253, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, valuables.