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.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, coat.

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.

Virtue and downfall

…if they have one virtue—in most folk’s eyes, anyway—it is courage; you never saw a scared Apache yet. It’s been their downfall; unlike other tribes, they never knew when to quit against the pony soldiers; my old pal the Yawner fought on until there was only a tattered remnant of his band left to be herded on to the reservation…

Flashman and the Redskins, p.177, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, Apache.

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.

Half panic, half lunacy

This myth called bravery, which is half panic, half lunacy (in my case, all panic), pays for all; in England you can’t be a hero and bad. There’s practically a law against it.

Flashman, p.276, Pan edition, 12th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes.