I can’t abide leeks

As an unworthy holder of that Cross myself, I’ll say they earned them, and as much glory as you like, for there never was a stand like it in all the history of war. For they didn’t only stand against impossible odds, you see — they stood and won, the garrulous little buggers, and not just ’cos they had Martinis against spears and clubs and a few muskets; they beat ’em hand to hand too, steel against steel at the barricades, and John Zulu gave them best. Well, you know what I think of heroism, and I can’t abide leeks, but I wear a daffodil as my buttonhole on Davey’s Day, for Rorke’s Drift.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.288, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Welsh.

Mealie-bag ramparts

      That, briefly, is how I came to join the garrison at Rorke’s Drift — and all the world knows what happened there. A hundred Warwickshire Welshmen and a handful of invalids stopped four thousand Udloko and Tulwana Zulus in bloody shambles at the mealie-bag ramparts, hammer and tongs and no quarter through that ghastly night with the burning hospital turning the wreckage of the little outpost into a fair semblance of Hell, and Flashy seeking in vain for a quiet corner — which I thought I’d found, once, on the thatch of the commissariat store, and damned if they didn’t set fire to that, too. Eleven Victoria Crosses they won, Chard with his beard scorched, Bromhead stone-deaf, and those ragged Taffies half-dead on their feet, but not too done to fight — oh, and talk.


Flashman and the Tiger, pp.287-8, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.

 
Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Welsh.

Just the man

He was one of these direct, virtuous souls, bursting with decency, whose very thought was written plainly on his fresh, handsome face. Arnold would have loved him – and young Chard could have used a few of him at Rorke’s Drift, too. Brainless as a bat, of course, and just the man for my present needs.

Flash For Freedom!, p.119, Pan edition, 8th printing, 1980.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,virtuous.