Vale Fighting Bob

…they were burying the dead in scores, and I’d chanced to glance aside through an open tent-fly, and there, wrapped in a cloak, was the body of old Bob Sale. It quite undid me. He’d been such a hearty, kind old soul — I could see him mopping the noble tears from his red cheeks at my bedside in Jallalabad, or grinning from his table-head at Florentina’s wilder flights, or thumping his knee: “There’ll be no retreat from Lahore, what?” Now they were blowing retreat over him, old Fighting Bob; the grapeshot had got him when they stormed the jungle — the Quartermaster-General charging with the infantry! Well, thank God I wouldn’t have to break the news to her.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.239, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, retreat.

Fighting Bob

Even under the command of General Sale – the tall, handsome ‘Fighting Bob’ who used to invite his men to shoot him when they felt mutinous – clearing the passes was a slow, costly process.

Flashman, p.112, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Robert Sale, Fighting Bob.