Fighting Talk: This Week's Blogs

I haven't decided which of the following statistics is more concerning: a) 60 percent of Britons cannot name a single living French person. b) 33 percent of Britons believe Benito Mussolini never existed. The former statistic, The Guardian opines, "will no doubt confirm the French view, held by 56%, that we are insular". Quite right. Sixty percent? Think of it like this: six in ten Britons failing to name a single living Frenchman or woman is a little like six in ten New Zealanders failing to name a single Australian.

http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_fightingtalk_archive.html#108128407056348371

I've just finished reading a strangely fascinating book, which was given to me by a friend who is even more of a war geek than is currently fashionable. The Mammoth Book of Soldiers at War (it's not really that big) is a series of firsthand accounts of a number of actions between 1800 and 1815: the "Age of Napoleon". The time has come to talk of cavalry and muskets (and in the case of one Russian horse division, bows and arrows), of red coats, and of battles where the gunsmoke is so thick you can't see where you're shooting.

http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_fightingtalk_archive.html#108111373808153453

Of course you remember. It's like saying "I was old enough to know we'd walked on the moon. I was old enough to know JFK had been killed." JFK killed by person or persons unknown - the Complex and the Beast and the Commies and the Mob and everything you were paranoid was outside just beyond your vision, all went through Jack's mind and blew his head open. Back and to the left, back and to the left. If you're thinking what I think you're thinking, stop.

http://fightingtalk.blogspot.com/2004_04_04_fightingtalk_archive.html#108104193998605522

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