You bloody vandals

      My first thought was, why, you bloody vandals, I don’t shock easy, and have no more of the milk of human kindness than you’d put in a cup of tea; I’ll taunt and gloat over a fallen foe any day, and out a boot in his ribs if he sasses back — but I’m a brute and a bully. These were your upstanding pillars of society, bursting with Christian piety and love thy neighbour, and here they were, shaking their sanctimonious heads as they harassed and goaded a seemingly dying man… They even had the effrontery to argue and hector him, now that he was beat and helpless — I’d have liked to see ’em argue with him eight hours back, when he was standing up with his guns on.


Flashman and the Angel of the Lord, p.339, Harper Collins, 1995.


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Salaam friend or foe

“Salaam, Shadman Khan!” and he shouted with delight and yelled in English: “Stand fast, foortee-foorth! — and in an instant I was looking down on the bloody snow over Gandamack, with the remnants of the 44th being cut down by tribesman swarming over their position . . . and I wondered which side he’d been on then. (I’ve since remembered there was a Shadman Khan among those ruffians who held me in Gul Shah’s dungeon, and yet another among the band who saved me from the Thugs at Jhansi in ’57 and stole out horses on the way to Cawnpore. I wonder if they were the same man. It has no bearing on my present tale, anyway; it was just an incident at the Bright Gate. But I think it was the same man; everybody changed sides in the old days.)


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.119, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.


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Snug and helpless

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, which young military men should bear in mind, it’s that the foeman is generally as glad to accept your surrender as you are to give it. Mind you, he may turn spiteful later, when he’s got you snug and helpless (I often do), but that’s a risk you must run, you know.

Flashman and the Dragon, p.186, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.




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Foe of mankind

Conscience, you see? Note that; It’s a bigger foe of mankind than gunpowder.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.274, Pan Books edition, 1983.

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