I’m harmless, by comparison

Mind you. I’m harmless, by comparison – I don’t send ’em off, stuffed with lies and rubbish, to get killed or maimed for nothing except a politician’s vanity or a manufacturer’s profit. Oh, I’ll sham it with the best in public, and sport my tinware, but I know what I am, and there’s no room for honest pride in me, you see. But if there was – just a little bit, along with the disgust and hatred and selfishness – I’d keep it for them, those seven hundred British sabres.

Flashman at the Charge, p.123, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Charge of the Light Brigade, pride.

All for a shilling a day

...but it [Garryowen] always sounds bitter on my ears, because I think of those brave, deluded, pathetic bloody fools in that Russian shed, with their mangled bodies and lost limbs, all for a shilling a day, and a pauper’s grave – and yet they thought Cardigan, who’d of flogged ’em for a rusty spur and would have seen them murdered under the Russian guns because he hadn’t wit and manhood enough to tell Lucan to take his order to hell – they thought he was ‘a good old commander’, and they even cheered me, who’d have turned tail on them at a click of a bolt.

Flashman at the Charge, pp.122-3, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Charge of the Light Brigade, Garryowen.

A hellish thing

…it’s this kind of thing, the stale smell of blood, the wasted faces, the hushed voices, the awful hopless tiredness, that makes you understand what a hellish thing war is. Worse than a battle-field, worse than the blood and the mud and the smoke and the steel, is the dank misery of a hospital of wounded men…

Flashman at the Charge, p.120, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Crimean War, wounded.

This Sandhurst-and-Shop crowd

I’m told it’s all changing now, and that war’s no longer a gentleman’s game (as though it ever was), and that among the ‘new professionals’ a prisoner’s a prisoner so damned well cage him up. I don’t know: we treated each other decently and weren’t one jot more incompetent than this Sandhurst-and-Shop crowd. Look at that young pup Kitchener – what that fellow needs is a woman or two.

Flashman at the Charge, p.115, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Herbert Kitchener, Lord Kitchener.

The most crashing discharge

I moved, gasping gently to myself, stirring on my saddle, and suddenly, without the slightest volition on my part, there was the most crashing discharge of wind, like the report of a mortar. My horse started; Cardigan jumped in his saddle, glaring at me, and from the ranks of the 17th a voice muttered: ‘Christ, as if Russian artillery wasn’t bad enough!’

Flashman at the Charge, p.106, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,fart.

Hunting in Ireland

‘Tell ye what, Flashman; I don’t know much about fightin’, but it strikes me that this Russian business is like huntin’ in Ireland – confused and primitive, what, but damned interestin’!’

Flashman at the Charge, pp.92-3, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Charge of the Heavy Brigade, James Scarlett.

Their heathenish slogans

‘Damn your eagerness!’ cries he. ‘Stand fast! Reload!’
   They dropped back, snarling like dogs, and Campbell turned and calmly surveyed the wreckage of the Russian ranks.... they began to laugh and cheer, and yell their heathenish slogans…

Flashman at the Charge, p.85, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Colin Campbell, Crimean War, 93rd Regiment of Foot,The Thin Red Line.

Wasted days

The clever men were for driving on hard to Sevastopol, a bare twenty miles away, and with our cavalry in good fettle we could obviously have taken it. But the Frogs were too tired, or too sick, or too Froggy, if you ask me, and days were wasted, and the Ruskies managed to bolt the door in time.

Flashman at the Charge, p.74, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Crimean War, French.

A bit rough (even for someone like Mark Steyn)

The camp ground was littered with spent shot and rubbish and broken gear among the pools of congealed blood – my stars, wouldn’t I just like to take one of our Ministers, or street-corner orators, or blood-lusting, breakfast-scoffing papas, over such a place as the Alma Hills – not to let him see, because he’d just tut-tut and look anguished and have a good pray and not care a damn – but to shoot him in the belly with a soft-nosed bullet and let him die screaming where he belonged. That’s all they deserve.

Flashman at the Charge, p.72, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Crimean War, shoot.

Flashy is not among them

You may have seen the fine oil paintings, I dare say – the perfect lines of guardsmen and Highlanders fronting up the hill towards the Russian batteries, with here and there a chap lying looking thoughtful with his hat on the ground beside him, and in the distance fine silvery clouds of cannon smoke, and the colours to the fore, and fellows in cocked hats waving their swords. I dare say some people saw and remember the Battle of the Alma like that , but Flashy is not among them.

Flashman at the Charge, p.63, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Alma, Crimean War.

A little Russian creek

Just a little Russian creek, and today in any English parish church you may see its name on stone memorials, on old tattered flags in cathedrals, in the metalwork of badges, and on nameplates of grimy black streets besides the factories. Alma.

Flashman at the Charge, p.63, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Crimean War, Alma.

Devil a bottle of jallop

I watched the heavy, plodding tread of the infantry, and saw the stretched look of the cavalry mounts – I thought, how far will this crowd go, on a few handfuls of pork and biscuit, no tents, devil a bottle of jallop, and the cholera, the invisible dragon, humming in the air as they marched?

Flashman at the Charge, p.60, Pan edition, 5th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Crimean War.