Old General What’s-his-name

      “Good Lord!” he exclaimed. “I believe I know this chap — but no, it can’t be, surely! Only he’s uncommonly like that old general . . . oh, what’s-his-name? You know made such a hash of the Khartoum business, with Gordon . . . yes, and years ago he won a great name in Russia, and the Mutiny — V.C. and knighthood — it’s on the tip of my tongue —”


Flashman and the Tiger, p.310, Harper Collins, paperback edition 2000.


Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, general.

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.

Suffering ignobly borne

…what I was thinking was, by God, you don’t deserve it [the Victoria
Cross], you know, you shifty old bastard of a Flashy – not if it’s courage they’re after… but if they hand out medals for luck, and survival through sheer funk, and suffering ignobly borne… well grab ’em with both hands, my boy…

Flashman in the Great Game, p.331, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Sudden keen pain

He reached up, and I felt a sudden keen pain in my left tit as he stuck the pin in – I gasped and looked down, and there it was, on its ribbon, the shabby looking little bronze cross against my jacket…

Flashman in the Great Game, p.330, Pan edition, 4th printing, 1979.

Tags:
Flashman, Flashman quotes, Victoria Cross.