How many Gettysburgs

‘I’d also like to remind our jingo-drunk public that they haven’t the least notion what a war with modern weapons will be like and the only fellows who can even guess are your American survivors from places like Antietam and Shiloh — that’s the only real war there’s been in a hundred years.’ The General pointed an accusing spoon at Mr Franklin. ‘Know how many men went down at Gettysburg? Fifty thousand — and if I hadn’t moved damned lively I’d have been one of ’em. Well, how many Gettysburgs d’you think it will take to settle a scrap between the kind of forces under arms in Europe today? I don’t know — perhaps a month of it would make everyone cry quits, but knowing the sort of clowns who’ll be in command — who are always in command — I take leave to doubt it.’


Mr American, p.520, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, warfare.

That gnarled old man

. . . at that moment an audible snore erupted from the General’s corner of the cab. He was leaning back, his great head sunk forward on his chest, his hat tilted over his eyes, breathing stertorously; one great mottled hand lay palm down on the seat beside him; Mr Franklin could see the shiny white streak of a wound running from wrist to little finger, and there was a star-shaped scar of what might have been an old bullet-hole in the loose flesh between thumb and forefinger. He shivered; he had looked Sir Harry up in Who’s Who and read incredulously through the succinct list of campaigns and decorations — that gnarled old man sleeping there had seen Custer ride into the broken bluffs above Little Big Horn, and fought hand-to-hand with Afghan tribesman more than seventy years ago; he had ridden into the guns at Balaclava and seen the ranks form for Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg; he had known Wellington and Lincoln — and now he was snoring gently in the corner of a motor car in the busy heart of modern London, and all the glory and horror and fear and bloodshed were small, dimly-remembered things of no account, and when he woke his one concern would not be the fate of nations or armies or his own life in the hazard, but the welfare of one wilful young woman who he was trying to save from her own folly in his strange, unscrupulous way.


Mr American, pp.431-2, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


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A great orator

   ‘And I’m warning you, Buck!’ Lincoln’s voice was suddenly sharp. ‘Oh, I know you, I reckon. You’re a real hard-barked Kentucky boy, own brother to the small-pox, weaned on snake juice and grizzly hide, aren’t you? You’ve killed more niggers than the dysentery, and your grandmother can lick any white man in Tennessee. You talk big, step high, and do what you please, and if any “legal beanpole” in a store suit gets in your way you’ll cut him right down to size, won’t you just? He’s not a practical man, is he? But you are, Buck – when you’ve got your gang at your back! Yes, sir, you’re a practical man, all right’
    Buck was mouthing at him, red-faced and furious, but Lincoln went on in the same hard voice.
   ‘So am I, Buck. And more – for the benefit of any shirt-tail chewbacon with a big mouth, I’m a who’s-yar boy from Indiana myself, and I’ve put down better men than you just by spittingteeth at them. If you doubt it, come ahead! You want these people – you’re going to take them?’ He gestured towards Cassy. ‘All right, Buck – you try it. Just – try it.
    The rest of the world decided that Abraham Lincoln was a great orator after his speech at Gettysburg. I realized it much earlier, when I heard him laying it over that gun-carrying bearded ruffian who was breathing brimstone at him.

Flash For Freedom!, p.239, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,Abraham Lincoln, hoosier boy.

Half-decent soldier

If I had been the hero everyone thought I was, or even a half-decent soldier, Lee would have won the battle of Gettysburg and probably captured Washington.

Royal Flash, p.11, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1978.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes,Robert E. Lee, Gettysburg.