An older, much wiser soldier

  
That was how I made my strategic retreat, then, from the massacre of Isan’lwana — the greatest debacle of British arms since the Kabul retreat nearly 40 years earlier. Oh, aye, I’d been in that, too, freezing and bleeding on that nightmare march which never reached the Khyber. But I’d been a thoughtless boy then; at Isan’lwana I was an older, much wiser soldier, and I knew I was a long way from safety yet.

Flashman and the Tiger, p.280, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, retreat.

Slicing at my neck

      God, he was quick! One whip of his hand and his blade was slicing at my neck, and if I hadn't practised my favourite retire, which is to fall backwards, howling, my head would have been on the carpet.


Flashman and the Tiger, p.149, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, fencing.

A journalistic law

… it’s a journalistic law, you see, that heroes can never do anything ordinary; when Flashy, the Hector of Afghanistan, beats a reluctant retreat, there must be an army howling at his heels, or the public cancel their subscription.



Flashman and the Mountain of Light, pp.335-36, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, journalism.

Vale Fighting Bob

…they were burying the dead in scores, and I’d chanced to glance aside through an open tent-fly, and there, wrapped in a cloak, was the body of old Bob Sale. It quite undid me. He’d been such a hearty, kind old soul — I could see him mopping the noble tears from his red cheeks at my bedside in Jallalabad, or grinning from his table-head at Florentina’s wilder flights, or thumping his knee: “There’ll be no retreat from Lahore, what?” Now they were blowing retreat over him, old Fighting Bob; the grapeshot had got him when they stormed the jungle — the Quartermaster-General charging with the infantry! Well, thank God I wouldn’t have to break the news to her.


Flashman and the Mountain of Light, p.239, Fontana Paperback edition, 1991.



Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, retreat.