Fairbairn-Sykes Commando Knife.
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“We all went for a Burton.”

“yellow jersey.. Tour de France”

“Trossocks!”

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“Those who abjure violence can only do so because others are committing
violence on their behalf.”
 –George Orwell, “Notes on Nationalism (1945)”

Brian Sewell, 1931-2015

Conscription no longer exists in Britain any more than it does in America, but some of the oddest people, including the late homosexual art historian Brian Sewell, believed that the experience of military service did them a great deal of good.

From Outsider (the first volume of his autobiography):

In my young days boys were prepared for life by dancing lessins and National Service, and of the two I much preferred the latter. Oh the misery and discomfort, the crippling sense of inadequacy engendered by the hours spent in the compelling arms of a corseted dancing mistress learning the quickstep, the foxtrot and the tango – to these the ingenious bullyings of strutting Warrant Officers and corporals proved infinitely preferable.

What did I learn from National Service? I learned to shoot with a cold accuracy that surprised the men who taught me. I learned to ride a motorcycle and to drive almost everything the Army had on wheels. I learned to pitch a tent and dig a trench and wriggle at a snake’s pace on my belly. I learned, if I did not already have them, the habits of neatness and economy. ‘Any fool can be uncomfortable,’ said one of my instructors, a Captain in the Gloucesters, lately wounded in Korea, and I learned from him to make silk purses out of sows’ ears. These were practical things that have stood me in good stead, but the less definable things have served me even better. In the intimacy of my platoon it was as though we had sworn the marriage vow to obey, serve, love, honor and keep each other in sickness and in health. We learned lessons in loyalty and interdependence that wove the platoon together; we learned that the strength of a group of men is the strength of the weakest member and that the weakest can be made stronger with forethought and support. With modesty and squeamishness abandoned I learned that compliance is not an easy option, but often the only option in a particular set of circumstances that one can do, and sometimes must, do things about which one has almost overwhelming intellectual and moral reservations, or that are deeply offensive to one’s taste. I think I learned – it was never put to the test – that there was nothing I would not do, that needs must when the Devil drives. I believe this still to be so, though my choices now might be significantly different. I learned too, that separation from my dog was more painful than separation from my parents.

Most of a lifetime later I am so burdened with moral baggage that I have perhaps lost the ruthlessness the Army taught me, but for decades I believed that my two years of National Service had done me far more good than my three as an undergraduate, my eight at school and twenty on my knees in church. National Service revealed depths and darknesses in my soul that I was grudgingly glad to know were there; if I am now capable of making worthwhile moral judgements it is because I was for two brief years a soldier of sorts, not because I am an art historian, a lapsed Conservative, an agnostic Christian.

The Telegraph reports belatedly-released news of an unusual feat of arms.

A British sniper in Afghanistan killed six insurgents with a single bullet after hitting the trigger switch of a suicide bomber whose device then exploded, The Telegraph has learnt.

The 20-year-old marksman, a Lance Corporal in the Coldstream Guards, hit his target from 930 yards (850 metres) away, killing the suicide bomber and five others around him caught in the blast.

The incident in Kakaran in southern Afghanistan happened in December but has only now been disclosed. …

Lt Col Richard Slack, commanding officer of 9/12 Royal Lancers, said the unnamed sharpshooter prevented a major attack by the Taliban, as a second suicide vest packed with 20kg (44lbs) of explosives was found nearby.

Lt. Gen. Hubert de la Poer Gough

“It so happened that I was in command of ‘A’ Squadron and brought it to parade five minutes before time. Goughy* appeared at 9.00 am and had his trumpeter sound ‘Squadron Leader’. We all galloped up and saluted, and he addressed us as follows. ‘Good morning, gentlemen. I noticed 1 squadron on parade this morning five minutes early. Please remember that it is better to be late rather than early. The former shows a sense of sturdy independence and no undue respect for higher authority, the latter merely shows womanish excitement and nervousness. Go back to your squadrons.’”

*”Goughy” = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Gough

— From the memoirs of Brigadier Sir Edward Beddington (1884-1966), late of the 16th Lancers.

Hat tip to John Brewer.

From Col. C.E. Callwell, C.B.’s Service Yarns and Memories, William Blackwood, 1912:

Ever since a distinguished Crimean veteran one day came down to the Royal Military Academy to hear reports of Examiners and of the Governor and of other people solemnly read out, and I found myself transformed into a commissioned officer, the Service, according to the verdict of unim­peachable authorities, has been going to the dogs —one had not heard of it as a cadet. But even the most determined pessimists allow that occa­sional bright patches display themselves in the overcast and stormy sky; and an example of such a patch is found in the fact that newly-caught subalterns who know nothing whatever, no longer have drafts flung at their heads to take out to the uttermost parts of the earth, as they did in those days. My very first experience of responsibility after appearing in the ‘Army List’ was the taking over of some forty gunners and drivers at Woolwich, and conducting them to Allahabad where somebody else luckily assumed control over them.

The object of the phalanx of gunners and others who had been drawn up in rear of the drafts now made itself apparent. By a deft manoeuvre they disposed themselves along the flanks and the rear of the troops bound for Asia, while a select party of good-conduct-badge-bedecked veterans assumed the role of wreckers in rear-guard, charged with the picking up of stray men who had collapsed, and of kit-bags which had been abandoned in the stress of the progress. The drafts were composed almost entirely of old soldiers, who were in that condition which may be said to include every stage of exhilaration from the paralytic to that commonly described in the orderly-room as “hav­ing had beer.” However, we got to the station somehow, and there the confusion seemed, to one unaccustomed to such scenes, to almost border on a riot. But although in a disorderly mood, the drafts were merely light-hearted, and in any case they were hopelessly outnumbered, they were bundled into compartments by willing hands, as each compartment filled, stalwart gunners forced the door to, and the guard instantly locked it. Almost before one realised the work­ings of an efficient organisation the task was completed and the whistle sounded. The crowd of officers who had assisted in the engagement, a look of relief depicted on their faces, waved their hands to us cheerily in our first-class compart­ment, the band broke out into “Auld Lang Syne,” the drafts responded with a hurricane of inartic­ulate noises, and we were fairly off on our way to Hindustan.