Sporting my tin

‘Sporting my tin, as you see,’ he drawled hoarsely. ‘In the public interest. At a time like this it gives the mob confidence to be reminded of who I am, and that I’m too damned old to mismanage any more campaigns for ’em.’


Mr American, p.518, Pan Books, paperback edition 1982.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, campaign.

No butcher’s bill

      For once — and for the only time in my experience of sixty years’ soldiering in heaven knows how many campaigns — there was no butcher’s bill. We hadn’t lost a man storming Magdala, just seventeen wounded, and with only two dead at Arogee and one careless chap who shot himself on the march up, I doubt if we had more than half a dozen fatalities in the whole campaign, mortally sick included. If there were nothing else to testify to Napier’s genius, that casualty return alone would do, for I never heard the like of it in war.



Flashman on the March, p.280, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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A reluctant hand

. . . my tale of the strangest campaign in the whole history of British arms — and that takes in some damned odd affairs, a few of which I’ve borne a reluctant hand in myself. But Abyssinia took the cake, currants and all.


Flashman on the March, pp.3-4, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2005.


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Warm feeling of survival

As I trotted through the lines I could feel that air of contented elation that comes at the end of a campaign: the men are tired, and would like to sleep for a year, but they don’t want to miss the warm feeling of survival and comradeship, so they lie blinking in the sun, or rouse themselves to skylark and play leapfrog.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.348-9, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




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Most wars

In most wars, you see, killing is only the means to a political end, but in the Sutlej campaign it was an end in itself.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.342, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.




Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, war.

Enterprising lads

I’ve seen a deal of war, and agree with Sherman that it’s hell, but the Mutiny was the Seventh Circle under the pit. Of course it had its compensations: for one, I came through it, pretty whole, which is more than Havelock and Harry East and Johnny Nicholson did, enterprising lads that they were. (What’s the use of a campaign if you don’t survive it?)…

Flashman in the Great Game, p.13, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

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Flashman, Flashman quotes,campaign, war.