Obits This Day
These are The Telegraph's offerings, in the main. They tell us about England's very best and some others too. They care [ some times ]. The rest might or might not.
Air
Chief Marshal Sir John Barraclough
QUOTE
On
the outbreak of war he converted to flying boats, and in 1940 he
operated with No 240 Squadron from the Shetland Islands. Flying over
the northern North Sea he flew in support of the ill-fated British
Expeditionary Force to Norway and on searches for German ships
seeking to break out from the Baltic........
Promoted to
wing commander at the age of 24, he commanded the captured Italian
airfield at Mogadishu, Somaliland, where Wellingtons conducted
anti-submarine operations. On his return to Britain in May 1944 he
became chief instructor at a flying-boat training unit and was
mentioned in dispatches.
UNQUOTE
Promotion came fast in those
days. So did death. He didn't do really exciting things. So it was
promotion instead.
Lieutenant-Colonel
Douggie Moir
QUOTE
Lieutenant-Colonel
Douggie Moir, who died on May 6 aged 89, was taken prisoner in 1940
and made a series of escape attempts from German PoW camps, including
Colditz............ Later, when he was being moved by cattle-truck to
Warburg, he and a brother officer squeezed through a hatch window and
jumped clear of the moving train.
They
were at large for several days, but were then given away by a local
and returned to Warburg. Moir was soon assisting in the planning for
another escape attempt, which involved some 60 officers scaling the
perimeter wire with makeshift ladders while fellow prisoners fused
the lights and created distractions to confuse the guards.
UNQUOTE
A
lively man and a practical man.
Robert
Vesco
QUOTE
Robert
Vesco, whose death in Cuba at the age of 71 has been confirmed by
Cuban burial records, was a swashbuckling Wall Street financier and
con man whose escapades included looting millions of dollars from a
Swiss mutual fund, drug trafficking, money laundering, making an
illegal contribution to Richard Nixon's 1972 presidential re-election
campaign, attempting to set up his own mini-state in the Caribbean
and plotting to bribe US officials to allow Libya to buy American
military planes.
UNQUOTE
An interesting life but a bit too
exciting for me.
Flight
Lieutenant Nicky Ross DSO
QUOTE
Flight
Lieutenant Ross, who has died aged 90, was one of Bomber
Command's most experienced heavy bomber pilots; he completed three
tours of operations over enemy-occupied northern Europe, flew on
Leonard Cheshire's No 617 Squadron and attacked numerous targets with
Barnes Wallis's 12,000-lb Tallboy "earthquake"
bomb.............
An avid gardener, he also enjoyed tinkering with
old Jaguars and he had a passion for Scotch. A kind, generous and
extremely modest man, he once described his time in the RAF as "the
best six years of my life".
UNQUOTE
Some were lucky. A
lot were not.
Major
David Liddell MC
QUOTE
On December 23
1943 Liddell was in command of a company detached as reinforcements
to 5th Battalion the Essex Regiment which was ordered to capture the
village of Villa Grande, near Termoli on the Adriatic coast of Italy.
Patrols had reported that the position was held in strength by the
formidable German 1st Parachute Division.
Liddell's company attacked at first light. His men gained a foothold in the village, but the platoons became separated by 100 yards of bullet-swept ground. The leading platoon had suffered severe casualties, and when Liddell came up with reinforcements they were pinned down by heavy machine-gun fire.
Liddell charged the
machine-gun post single-handed, knocked it out with hand grenades and
enabled his men to continue the advance. During the engagement his
batman was killed beside him and he himself was wounded in the eye.
He continued, nevertheless, until he had linked up with the isolated
platoon.
UNQUOTE
He had a lively war and a brother who got a
VC.
Diana
Barnato Walker
QUOTE
Diana Barnato
Walker, who died on April 28 aged 90 , occupied an almost legendary
position in the world of aviation: as well as being one of a handful
of “Atagirls”, women who served during the war as ATA
(Air Transport Auxiliary) pilots delivering newly-built and
battle-ready aircraft to airfields all over southern England, in 1963
she became the first woman in the world to break the sound barrier.
The diminutive socialite granddaughter of a South African diamond millionaire, before the war Diana Barnato was well known in London for her high spirits and for late nights spent at the Embassy or 400 Club in London. She was also known for the Bentley which she was given for her 21st birthday - a gift from her doting father, the motor-racing champion Woolf “Babe” Barnato.....................
On another occasion, “skimming happily along in a Spitfire”, she suddenly found herself in thick cloud, “but I couldn’t bale out! My skirt would have ridden up with the parachute straps and anyone who happened to be below would have seen my knickers!” Instead, to the astonishment of those on the ground, she managed to nurse her aircraft down, breaking through the cloud at tree-top height and banking sharply to avoid a patch of woodland, to make a perfect landing in heavy rain on the tiny grass airstrip of what turned out to be the Navigation and Blind Flying Establishment at RAF Windrush............
One evening
in 1963 in the mess at RAF Middleton St George, the Wing Commander
Flying, John Severgne, idly suggested that Diana might like to fly
one of the RAF’s new supersonic Lightnings. She jumped at the
chance and on August 26 1963, following clearance from the Ministry
of Defence, she took off and reached a speed of Mach 1.65 (1,262
mph), making her the first woman to break the sound barrier.
UNQUOTE
She really did live. Being a Master of Fox Hounds is
rather special in this foul year of Our Lord. She was the
granddaughter of a very successful Jewish crook until he came
unstuck.
Philipp
Von Boeselager
QUOTE
Philipp Von
Boeselager, who died on Thursday aged 90, was the last surviving
conspirator in two failed attempts to assassinate Hitler during the
Second World War, including the July 20 plot for which most of his
co-conspirators were executed. Boeselager was one of eight
Wehrmacht officers who planned to shoot Hitler and the head of the
SS, Heinrich Himmler, on a visit to the eastern front in March 1943,
but the plot was called off in Himmler's absence.........
Claus
Schenk von Stauffenberg and other officers involved in the plot were
rounded up and shot the same day, while others, including thousands
of their relatives, were tortured and executed; but Boeselager, who
had obtained the explosives, escaped detection.
UNQUOTE
A pity
that he didn't succeed. We have plenty of politicians equally worthy
of deposing. They know it too. That is why their security is so
heavy.
Deborah
Palfrey - Suicide Or Murder?
QUOTE
Deborah
Palfrey, who has died aged 52, was known as "the DC madam";
for more than a decade she ran a call-girl ring in Washington DC
which was alleged to attract clients from the heart of the American
establishment. The girls she employed at "Pamela Martin &
Associates" were required to be university-educated,
well-mannered and capable of holding an intelligent conversation
about current affairs.............. Deborah Palfrey was found
hanged at her mother's house at Tarpon Springs, Florida, on
Thursday.
UNQUOTE
Suicide is a way out and rather a
pity. Releasing her list of clients should have been the master
stroke but the establishment closed ranks. They didn't hesitate when
it came to dropping Eliot in it even though he is a Jew. Murder is a
political tool and a very effective one. Dead men tell no tales as
Vince Foster will not tell you ever since he got sorted out by the
CIA/FBI/Mossad. See Eliot
Spitzer Was Screwed for the context.
Mark
Wyndham MC
QUOTE
Mark Wyndham, who
died on April 15 aged 86, won a Military Cross in the desert and
later worked in industry for his cousin, the novelist Henry Yorke,
before becoming a notably successful chairman of the Children's
Society and a founder of the 999 Club, a charity at
Deptford............
When war came he joined up, and was commissioned in the 12th Royal Lancers............... In March of that year, while on patrol, he was wounded; and throughout this period he performed reconnaissance movements that, in the words of a senior officer, showed "the utmost dash and gallantry", taking his vehicle as close to the enemy as possible, even though out gunned and suffering from inferior British armour.
On June 7
1942, when Wyndham's squadron was providing reconnaissance for the
22nd Armoured Brigade near the Rigguel ridge, he noticed an enemy
concentration south of the ridge, almost entirely hidden. Spotted
by the Germans, Wyndham found himself under heavy shell-fire for some
45 minutes, during which time he managed to gain information about
the size of the enemy force and the exact location of its
batteries.............
UNQUOTE
A lot of men had interesting
times then and showed that they not just anybody.
Wg
Cdr Paddy Barthropp DFC
QUOTE
Wing
Commander Paddy Barthropp, who died on April 16 aged 87, was one of
the RAF's most ebullient and colourful characters; he fought in the
Battle of Britain, escaped twice from prisoner-of-war camps and later
became a test pilot and a winning jockey in Hong Kong............
Throughout that summer he
was constantly in action, and was credited with destroying two enemy
fighters, probably destroying two others and damaging two more. On
numerous occasions his Spitfire returned damaged by anti-aircraft
fire. In August 1941, after completing 150 operations, he was awarded
a DFC and sent to a fighter training unit as an instructor.
UNQUOTE
Another good one gone.
Bruce
Wyllie
QUOTE
Bruce "Titch"
Wyllie, who has died aged 85, was a rear-gunner ("tail-end
Charlie") in Lancasters with 57 Squadron of Bomber Command,
whose very first operation was the famous Dresden Raid. It was not
until half a century had passed that Wyllie could be prevailed upon
to speak of his wartime past. When finally he did, he recalled a
number of harrowing, terrifying but ultimately hugely rewarding
experiences........
His other sport of the 1930s, shooting, taught him the concepts of swinging through a target and firing slightly ahead of it to allow for the speed of the moving lead. Unbeknownst to him at the time, these were soon to prove invaluable...........
With the
appallingly high casualty rate suffered by Bomber Command, Wyllie
considered the whole of the rest of his life to be an unexpected
bonus, and he enjoyed it to the full.
UNQUOTE
Some were lucky.
A lot weren't.
Sydney
Dowse MC, the Great Escaper
QUOTE
Sydney
Dowse, who died on Thursday aged 89, was one of the principal
constructors of the tunnel used in the Great Escape; he was among
those who got away, and was at large for 14 days before being
recaptured and sent to the "death camp" at Sachsenhausen,
where he dug another tunnel to gain a few more days of freedom.
Dowse had been in captivity for just over a year when he arrived in May 1942 at Hermann Goering's "escape-proof" camp, Stalag Luft III, at Sagan. He made two unsuccessful attempts before further efforts by the prisoners were put on to a more formal footing by the formation of an escape committee under the chairmanship of Roger Bushell, known as "Big X"..............
Although
Dowse spent most of his time underground, he also befriended a German
corporal who worked in the censor's office at the camp headquarters.
Through this contact he obtained numerous authentic documents, which
were passed to the escape committee for copying, and much valuable
military intelligence. He even managed to persuade the corporal to
provide him with a tailored suit, which he subsequently wore for his
escape.
UNQUOTE
A first class man. A pity that we don't have
men like him running England rather than the traitors and communists
that have wormed their way in.
Sergeant
Dougie Wright MM
QUOTE
Sergeant Dougie
Wright, who has died aged 88, earned a Military Medal and a legendary
reputation as a fighting soldier with Lord Jellicoe's 1st Special
Boat Squadron in the Greek islands. In April 1944 he
distinguished himself in a close-quarter attack on an enemy post on
Ios, which resulted in no SBS losses but five enemy casualties. He
was also involved in two dramatic attacks on a radio station on
Amorgos. In the first he found himself under the command of Anders
Lassen, a Dane (later to win a posthumous VC) who hated Germans and
usually killed them; but on this occasion Lassen did a deal with a
captured wireless operator by which he took the man's dog as well as
the station's code books, while Wright took the German's Greek
mistress.
UNQUOTE
The worst thing about the British Army
is the snobbery that gives VCs to officers and lesser medals to the
men who do the fighting. What a useful man to have on your side.
Bill
Curling
QUOTE
Bill Curling, who died
on April 1 aged 96, was "Hotspur", the racing correspondent
of The Daily Telegraph, from 1946 to 1965 and wrote half a dozen
books about racing; before the Second World War, during which he
served in destroyers, he was from 1936 to 1939 the racing
correspondent of the Yorkshire Post.
Bryan William Richard Curling was born on November 15 1911 at Bitterne, near Southampton, the elder son of Captain Bryan Curling, who won a DSO during the Great War and retired in the rank of brigadier-general. In later life Bill would recall how as a small boy he rode his father's polo ponies when they were out in Egypt.................
In younger days he played
squash; later, he stuck to shooting, stalking, fishing and sailing
from his holiday cottage at Bembridge on the Isle of Wight. He was a
member of the Bembridge Sailing Club for more than 50 years.
UNQUOTE
Eton, destroyers, racing and shooting; a good life.
Charlton
Heston
QUOTE
Charlton Heston, the
Oscar-winning actor known for his larger-than-life movie roles, has
died at the age of 84. In a career spanning 60 years, Heston lavished
the world with a seemingly inexhaustible roster of resolute screen
heroes, from Michelangelo to Moses, El Cid to Judah
Ben-Hur..............
To his detractors, Heston could be an inflexible, monolithic presence, weighed down by his own mantle of heroism and pious sense of virtue. Others took a more charitable view. [ The Grauniad has a very fair share of supercilious, left wing, homosexual scum - Editor ] Assessing the actor's cultural impact, the critic Pauline Kael hailed him as "a god-like hero; built for strength, he is an archetype of what makes Americans win. He represents American power - and he has the profile of an eagle."........
It could be
argued that Heston gave his last great performances at these NRA
rallies. Brandishing a rifle on the stage, the actor would strike a
pose reminiscent of the one he held while parting the Red Sea as
Moses, and then challenge critics to pry the gun "from my cold,
dead hands".
UNQUOTE
Charlton served for real; he flew
from England as a gunner during the war years but the Graun doesn't
see fit to mention that. They don't like honest men.
Charlton
Heston II
A rather better obit albeit
with a left wing sneer or two thrown in.
Pedro
Zaragoza
QUOTE
Pedro
Zaragoza,......... is credited with turning Benidorm into a
destination for mass-tourism.....................
In 1953 - on the
principle that "you couldn't stop it" - Zaragoza authorised
the wearing of bikinis at Benidorm. No one in the country had
attempted this, and there was uproar. As members of the Civil Guard
scuffled with scantily-clad girls on Benidorm's beaches, the local
archbishop threatened to excommunicate Zaragoza, who decided to
appeal directly to Franco.
UNQUOTE
Pushing for the bikini was
the master stoke. Today they even go topless in Marbella.
Major-General
Sir Desmond Langley
Career soldier who
later became Governor of Bermuda and hosted Anglo-American summits
for two British prime ministers. Did he ever hear a shot fired in
anger? He definitely had a lot of fun.
Bhanubhakta
Gurung, VC
QUOTE
Havildar [ Sergeant ]
Bhanubhakta Gurung, who has died aged 86, was awarded a VC when
serving as a rifleman in the 3rd Battalion of the 2nd Gurkha Rifles
in Burma on March 5 1945.........
Bhanubhakta's citation..... recorded that: "On approaching the objective, one of the sections of the company was forced to the ground by a very heavy light-machine-gun, grenade and mortar fire, and owing to the severity of this fire was unable to move in any direction.
"While thus pinned down, the section also came under accurate fire from a sniper in a tree some 75 yards to the south. As this sniper was inflicting casualties on the section, Rifleman Bhanbhagta Gurung stood up and, while fully exposed to heavy fire, calmly killed the enemy sniper with his rifle, thus saving his section from suffering further casualties."......
Without waiting for any orders, Bhanubhakta dashed forward alone and attacked the first enemy foxhole. Throwing two grenades, which killed the two occupants of the trench, he immediately rushed on to the next enemy foxhole and killed the two Japanese in it with his bayonet.
All this time he was under continuous light-machine-gun fire from a bunker on the north tip of the objective, and two further fox-holes were still bringing fire to bear upon the section. Bhanubhakta dashed forward and cleared these trenches with bayonet and grenades.
He then turned his attention to the machine-gun bunker, and realising, as the citation put it, that it "would hold up not only his own platoon which was not behind him, but also another platoon which was advancing from the west", he pushed forward a fifth time to knock out the position.
"He ran forward and leapt on to the roof of the bunker from where, his hand grenades being finished, he flung two No 72 smoke grenades into the bunker's slit." Two Japanese rushed out of the bunker, partially blinded by the smoke and with their clothes aflame with phosphorous; Bhanubhakta promptly killed them both with his kukri.
One
Japanese soldier remained inside, holding up 4 Platoon's advance with
the machine gun. Bhanubhakta crawled in and, prevented by the cramped
space from using his bayonet or kukri, beat the gunner's brains out
with a rock.
UNQUOTE
Do we deserve men like that? With a
grossly corrupt government like ours? No, but still they come. Still
they serve.
Pearl
Cornioley - SOE
QUOTE
Pearl Cornioley
outfoxed the Nazis by - among other tricks - concealing secret
messages in the hem of her skirt and helping airmen escape to safety,
according to records unsealed at Britain's National Archives on
Monday...........
The records shed light on a woman who
quickly adapted to life as an agent but never forgot about her family
in Britain, requesting in handwritten notes that officials in London
send her mother and sisters timely birthday and Christmas presents.
She escaped France ahead of the Nazi invasion and returned to
Britain via Spain. Upon returning to Britain, she worked briefly at
the Air Ministry in London but used her French to gain a slot as a
Special Operations Executive agent - one of about 40 women to serve.
The Air Ministry became part of the Ministry of Defence in the 1960s
while the Special Operations Executive evolved into the Secret
Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. [ Written
by an ignoramus - Editor ]..........
She
parachuted into France initially posing as a cosmetics saleswoman to
deliver coded messages to members of the French Resistance. Following
the capture of her leader, she assumed control of the cell in the
north Indre department of the Loire River valley, about 55 miles (90
kilometres) south east of the Normandy beaches.
She
interrupted the Paris-Bordeaux railway line more than 800 times and
attacked convoys in June 1944, the same month of the D-Day invasion.
All told, she led 3,000 French Resistance fighters in a host of
guerilla warfare missions.
UNQUOTE
She did well.
Pearl
Cornioley II
QUOTE
Pearl Cornioley, who
died on February 23 aged 93, was a wartime agent in France with the
Special Operations Executive (SOE)...... Pearl Witherington
joined the WAAF, but became increasingly frustrated by her
pen-pushing post at the Air Ministry, and presented herself at the
SOE headquarters in Baker Street, London, demanding a job.
She was taken on, and embarked on seven weeks' training in armed, and unarmed, combat and sabotage - "Having been in the Girl Guides proved very helpful," she recalled. "We learned to use explosives and did a lot of firearms training. I was quite a good shot."........
In the
event of capture - as with all the SOE agents operating in France -
her instructions were to remain silent under interrogation for at
least 48 hours, in order that her comrades should have the
opportunity to escape.
UNQUOTE
Women do things too from time
to time.
Air
Commodore Kit North-Lewis DSO DFC
Commodore
Kit North-Lewis, who has died aged 90, led his squadrons of
rocket-firing Typhoon fighters in the fierce fighting during the
Normandy campaign and the advance through Holland to Germany.........
On August 7 a major German counter-attack, spearheaded by five Panzer
divisions, was identified moving against just two US infantry
divisions. The Panzers had already captured three important villages
and were threatening to cut off the US Third Army near Mortain as it
began moving into Brittany. A shuttle service of Typhoons was
established, and by the end of the day they had flown more than 300
sorties, three of them led by Lewis.
UNQUOTE
He did well.
Captain
Robert Franks DSO
QUOTE
Captain Robert
Franks, who has died aged 95, was an officer in destroyers and also
fought a vicious, little-known river war in Burma.......
Drifting upstream on the tide on a moonless night, he saw several large, camouflaged craft. He whispered "Action Stations" and closed to about 80 yards range, surprising and destroying an enemy convoy. He returned with what he thought were the first Japanese prisoners on this front.
On March 7 Franks again
moved upstream, this time to establish himself permanently in the
Mayu river. His force endured continuous artillery fire ("new
and very unpleasant to us sailors"), and during the day hid from
aircraft in the shelter of chaungs [jungle covered inlets]. At night,
however, it was able to dominate the river and, after several fierce
night-time battles, managed to halt the Japanese river
traffic.
UNQUOTE
He really did do things.
Neil
Aspinall, 'the fifth Beatle', dies aged 66
QUOTE
Neil
Aspinall, who has died aged 66, was the Beatles' original road
manager and went on to run the group's business empire for 40 years;
he became their chief confidant and, although not the only contender
for the title of the fifth Beatle, perhaps deserved the accolade more
than most.
For
some 20 years following the break-up of the group in 1970, Aspinall
applied his astute business acumen to fighting lawsuits on their
behalf and unravelling the tangled skein of their financial affairs.
His flair for figures helped to transform them into the wealthiest
entertainers in the world, with a estimated combined fortune of £2
billion.
UNQUOTE
Epstein robbed them blind I thought but I am
glad that some one played straight with them.
Lazare
Ponticelli - The Last Of The First
QUOTE
The last French
foot-soldier of the first world war chose to go uncelebrated.
The
approach of the death of Lazare Ponticelli therefore caused something
of a panic in France. This derdesders,
“the last of the last”, was for a while the only man in
the country who remembered the first world war because he had fought
in it. The suburb of Kremlin-Bicetre, where he lived, had like most
other communities in France a memorial to the war dead. But, more
important, it had Mr Ponticelli, who up to his 111th year appeared
every November 11th in his flat cap and brown coat, lean and
bright-eyed, gamely managing the few steps required to lay his small
bunch of carnations there. The most astonished and serious observers
were always children, to whom—if they wanted—he would
tell his stories...........
It
was as important to him as it was to them to underscore the horror
and futility of it. More than anything, he was appalled that he had
been made to fire on people he didn't know and to whom he, too, was a
stranger. These were fathers of children. He had no quarrel with
them. C'est complètement idiot la guerre. His Italian Alpine
regiment had once stopped firing for three weeks on the Austrians,
whose language many of them spoke; they had swapped loaves of bread
for tobacco and taken pictures of each other. To the end of his life,
Mr Ponticelli showed no interest in labelling anyone his enemy. He
said he did not understand why on earth he, or they, had been
fighting.
UNQUOTE
He was a man of the
Légion étrangère.
The Telegraph didn't bother to write him up. A parochial lot
Tim
Denny DFC
QUOTE
Tim Denny, who died on
February 24 aged 87, was a wartime air observer who rescued a gunner
from a burning bomber and was awarded the DFC and Bar; he later
forged an international reputation as the leading expert on lavender
and the distillation of essential oils.
At the Bridstowe estate in Tasmania, a lavender plantation founded by his father in the 1920s, Denny propagated new more productive strains, developed improved husbandry techniques, designed and built the world's first lavender-harvesting machine and designed steam distillery equipment which improved both the quality and yield of lavender oil and the productivity of the stills...............
His proudest claim,
however, was to have designed the "Yak Pack", a portable
still that could be carried up a mountain by a yak for essential oil
production in remote regions of Bhutan.
UNQUOTE
Flyer,
engineer, innovative farmer; he was versatile. A man should be
versatile.
Frederick
Seitz
QUOTE
Eminent physicist who
stood accused in later life of selling out to commerce.
UNQUOTE
A
first class man. When accusations are made it is always worth asking
who is feeding us the dirt and why. A lot of men in the science
racket are place men with nothing original about their work.
John
Prott MM
QUOTE
Gunner John Prott, who
died on February 22 aged 88, was awarded two Military Medals for
unusual courage and unfailing presence of mind during the fighting in
north-west Europe............
On July 19 1944 Prott was driving a tank serving as an artillery observation post for 3rd Royal Tank Regiment at the village of Bras, on a ridge south of Caen, when his commander was shot in the face by a sniper and the tank caught fire. Although still under small arms attack, Prott tried to douse the flames before helping down the officer and two other wounded. He then climbed back up to rescue another crew member, only to be hurled to the ground when the turret exploded............
When
billeted in a country house before the invasion he and a comrade
found a comfortable sleeping place beside a large fireplace. But its
warmth attracted so many others that the two tossed a bulging sandbag
on to the fire, saying "There, boys, that'll give you heat",
and then watched the room being rapidly vacated as two dozen thunder
flashes went off.
UNQUOTE
Private soldiers don't get the
recognition in the British Army that they deserve and they would in
New Zealand or Oz. They deserve better officers too. Then there is
the matter of politicians and treason.
Lord
Pym MC
QUOTE
The Lord Pym, who died
yesterday aged 86, was a classic casualty of the shift in
Conservative Party attitudes from paternalism to laissez-faire
liberalism. In a Commons career spanning more than a quarter of
a century, Francis Pym served with distinction under four prime
ministers, making his name in the Whips’ office. But it was
under the fourth of those leaders, Margaret Thatcher, whom he served
as Defence Secretary, Leader of the House and Foreign Secretary, that
he made his greatest impact;..........
He
was educated at Eton and Magdelene College, Cambridge. In 1942 he was
commissioned into the 9th Lancers, joining his regiment in North
Africa just before El Alamein, in which he took part as a troop
leader. He was appointed adjutant just before the fall of Tunis in
March 1943, and landed in Italy that September; he served as adjutant
until the end of the war and did not miss a single day’s
action. He was twice mentioned in dispatches, and in 1945 was awarded
an MC.
UNQUOTE
One of the better Tories, I think. Too many of
them are men on the make.
Squadron
Leader Charles Patterson DSO DFC
QUOTE
Squadron
Leader Charles Patterson, who has died aged 88, took part in many
daylight low-level bombing raids, including three of the most
audacious of the war, exploits which earned him a DSO and a
DFC........ his air officer commanding, Air Vice Marshal Basil
Embry, selected him to fly a Mosquito specially modified to carry a
cine camera in the nose of the aircraft. It was his task to follow
the bomber force and to arrive over the target five minutes later to
film their results as he dropped his own bombs. Flying at very
low level in broad daylight was always hazardous, but Patterson ran
the additional risk of being shot down by the German flak batteries
that had been alerted by the 20 or 30 bombers just ahead of him.
He
was a fine horseman, and hunted with more than 40 packs in England
and Ireland......... A cultured, articulate and patriotic man
who was fiercely loyal to his country and to his
friends,..........
UNQUOTE
A
first class man who never married; a waste.
Paul
Raymond
QUOTE
"The King of Porn",
as Raymond was dubbed, was an avuncular figure who claimed that he
was an honest entertainer. But some argued that his prurient
productions and publications whetted the public's appetite for darker
material, and that Britain's moral decline began in 1958, when
Raymond circumvented the laws prohibiting striptease by opening a
private club, the Revuebar, his flagship and life-long base. The club
could be joined on the door, and within two years it had more than
45,000 members. Its neon sign - the first in Britain to offer
STRIPTEASE - became a Soho landmark.
UNQUOTE
He cheered people
up and gave Puritans something to moan about.
Brigadier
John Prendergast DSO MC
QUOTE
Brigadier
John Prendergast, who has died aged 97, won a DSO and two MCs in an
adventurous military career which spanned more than 30 years. In May
1937 Prendergast was serving with the Tochi Scouts in North
Waziristan. They were leading an advance on the village of Gariom
with the objective of blowing up two of the towers as a punishment
for harbouring the wily Fakir of Ipi when they came under heavy fire
from rebel tribesmen............
UNQUOTE
His service reads
like a roll call of forgotten regiments. Interesting times and better
too in some ways.
Anthony
Blond
QUOTE
Anthony Blond, who has
died aged 79, was a gentleman [ believe that
if you want - Editor ]
publisher from an age when business was conducted in dusty garrets
and promising authors were given small retainers to allow them to
find their muse.
Charismatic, daring and outrageous, Blond collected talents as diverse as Harold Robbins and Jean Genet, Spike Milligan and Graham Greene. He was the first to spot the potential of Jennifer Paterson (of the Two Fat Ladies), and was an early director of Private Eye, of whose bank account he was a guarantor.
Of the 70 or so writers to whom Blond gave their first chance, he became most closely associated with Simon Raven [ well worth a look - Ed. ] , whose books he published throughout his literary career............
As well as
publishing, Blond also became involved in the founding of Piccadilly
Radio and stood unsuccessfully as Labour candidate for Chester at the
1964 general election. A member of the National Council for Civil
Liberties, he opposed censorship of any sort.
UNQUOTE
An
interesting man but it was well to keep your back to the wall
round him.
Lieutenant-General
Dan Shomron
Architect of the raid on
Entebbe in 1976 and later Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence
Forces
Lieutenant-General Dan Shomron, who died on Tuesday aged
70, was a leading figure in the Israeli Defence Forces of which he
eventually became Chief of Staff; as the commander in charge of
Israel's paratroopers and infantry, he planned and led the daring
military operation at Entebbe, Uganda, to rescue 105 hijacked
hostages in 1976. On June 27 1976 Air France Flight 139 from Tel Aviv
to Paris, carrying 248 passengers and a crew of 12, was hijacked by
two armed gunmen from the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine and two Germans from an organisation called the
"Revolutionary Cells".
UNQUOTE
Competent - Who Dares
Wins. Surprise is a useful weapon
Sir
David Orr MC
QUOTE
David Orr, who died
on February 2 aged 85, was chairman of Unilever, Inchcape, the
British Council and the Globe Theatre Trust; as a young engineer
officer in Burma during the Second World War he was awarded a
Military Cross and Bar.....
In mid-April they reached the
village of Kanhla, south of Yamethin, where a bridge over a deep
chaung, or gully, had been demolished and was covered by enemy fire.
The chaung made an effective anti-tank obstacle and the advance was
halted. Lt Orr went forward in a bridge-laying tank and supervised
the installation of a scissors assault bridge across the 30ft gap
under heavy rifle and mortar fire; it was laid straight and evenly,
although it was impossible for anyone to direct the operation from
outside, enabling the fighting tanks to cross quickly.
UNQUOTE
A
man of parts; he did things before, after and during.
Squadron
Leader 'Hawkeye' Lee DFC
QUOTE
Squadron
Leader "Hawkeye" Lee, who has died aged 92, was a Hurricane
pilot sent to France on the day the Germans invaded France in May
1940; during the month that followed, as his squadron fought against
much superior odds, he shot down five enemy aircraft before being
forced to bale out of his own. Lee's squadron, No 501 (County of
Gloucester), was on standby to reinforce Norway when it was rushed to
an airfield near Rheims on May 10, the day the Germans started their
Blitzkrieg. In the first three days Lee accounted for three enemy
bombers as the German army advance continued. The squadron flew three
or four patrols a day but was forced to retreat to Le Mans, where it
gave cover as the British and French forces were evacuated from
Dunkirk. During this period Lee shot down two more bombers as they
attacked the "little ships".
On June 10
he attacked a formation of Heinkels, but exhausted his ammunition
without any apparent effect. As he turned away, his Hurricane blew up
and he baled out, hitting the tailplane of his aircraft. He was
injured in the hand and leg, and 10 days later was put on a boat for
England from St Malo. He was mentioned in dispatches.
UNQUOTE
Would
men try as hard today with a corrupt government behind them?
Lieutenant-Colonel
Ken Scott MC
QUOTE
Lieutenant-Colonel
Ken Scott, who has died aged 89, was awarded the first of his two MCs
for his part in an SOE operation to sabotage the Asopos viaduct in
Greece in 1943...........
The approaches were heavily wired and mined, and guarded by about 50 men equipped with searchlights and machine guns. The destruction of the viaduct, however, became a priority with the military planners, since it would cut the railway supply line through Greece to Rommel's army in North Africa for several months.
By
moonlight the four men carried the charges to the bottom of the
ladder. While their comrades kept guard, Scott and McIntyre climbed
to the top platform and hauled up the explosives. They could hear the
Germans patrolling above their heads for the whole of the hour and a
half that it took to fix and connect the charges to the main girders.
UNQUOTE
The SOE did well sometimes.
Major
Frank Courtney MC
QUOTE
Major Frank
Courtney, who has died aged 91, won an MC and Bar during the Second
World War, then stayed on in India after independence to become a
symbol of the Raj at the Royal Bombay Yacht Club. Courtney refused to
learn Hindi, continued to correct Parsees' English and never said
Mumbai for Bombay. But he joined the club only in 1953, when it
became the last in the country to admit Indians, and he expected no
deference - though he once struck a fellow member who had insulted
his wife.
He earned his first MC as a forward transport officer in an attack on the Vichy French at Mouaddmiye, Syria, on June 18 1941. As the Fusiliers came under heavy fire, Courtney gathered the vehicles together, appointed relief drivers and by personal example inspired the continuation of the advance. When the remains of the column were subjected to further small arms and tank fire later that morning, he aided its temporary commander in restoring a confused and difficult situation.
He did much
to restore the self-esteem of the expatriate community by rescuing
the UK Citizens' Association from decline, setting the Bombay
Ex-Servicemen's League on a sound footing and serving as a trustee of
the Breach Candy hospital. He was appointed OBE in 1980. Frank
Courtney's wife predeceased him. He kept a home in Britain, but
Bombay remained his chief residence. He rented a flat for 27 rupees
(£3.20) a month, and retained a cook-bearer to minister to his
needs.
UNQUOTE
He was there when it mattered, unlike the
shysters and con men who constitute Her Majesty's Government.
Jack
Lyons
Jack Lyons, who has died aged 92,
would have been remembered chiefly as a great patron of the arts were
it not for his involvement in the Guinness scandal [ Rather
like Adolf's involvement in the Second World War - Editor
]. This resulted in his being convicted of theft
and false accounting, reproached by the trial judge for "dishonesty
on a major scale" and stripped of his knighthood by the Queen.
UNQUOTE
Lyons was a Jew and a thief; one of the Guinness Four.
Three and a half of whom were Jews. All four were thieves.
Badri
Patarkatsishvili - Jew And Thief On The Run
QUOTE
Badri
Patarkatsishvili, the Georgian [ sic ] billionaire who was found dead
at his Surrey mansion on Tuesday night aged 52, a month after running
unsuccessfully for the Georgian presidency, was one of the
"oligarchs" who made a fortune from the privatisation of
state-owned industries during the Yeltsin era and eventually found a
haven in Britain,..........
In June 2001 Patarkatsishvili was charged in his absence with attempting to organise the escape of Berezovsky's associate Nikolai Glushkov from prison. In October 2002 he was charged with fraud in connection with a subsidiary of Avtovaz.
At first he was welcomed in Georgia. He was courted by the country's president Eduard Shevardnadze, who repeatedly rejected Russian calls for his extradition, and by the then opposition leader Mikheil [ sic ] Saakashvili......
Patarkatsishvili's
relations with Saakashvili deteriorated, by his account due to the
coverage given by Imedi to opposition parties, though allies of
Saakashvili suggested that the real reason was that Patarkatsishvili
found himself blocked in his efforts to gain total control of
Georgia's economic and business life.
UNQUOTE
A man with 120
body guards who thought he wanted more has upset people who
matter. The Telegraph draws a light hand over his guilt. He
colluded with Berezovky, another Jewish crook.
Ian
Michie
QUOTE
Ian Michie, who has died
aged 79, was an investment banker and field sportsman, and the
brother of James, the classical poet, and of Donald, the
distinguished scientist in the field of artificial intelligence and a
codebreaker at Bletchley Park, both of whom predeceased him last
year....
Educated at
Marlborough, where he was captain of house and a school prefect, Ian
Michie was commissioned into the King's Royal Rifle Corps (60th
Rifles) after passing out equal second from the officer cadet
training unit at Eaton Hall...... Field sports - particularly
stalking, shooting and fishing - played a large and significant part
in his life, accompanied by a love of golf and skiing. His
semi-autobiographical book on these subjects, Passions Shared, was
well received by his many friends.
UNQUOTE
Brains and brawn
make a good combination.
Major-General
Ronnie Buckland
QUOTE
Major-General
Ronnie Buckland, who has died aged 87, had a varied career which took
him to many of the world's trouble spots. As an officer of the
Household Division, Buckland had a most unusual career in that he
never served at the MoD, HQ London District or at his regimental HQ;
his time in the Army was largely spent as an officer at the "sharp
end" or with field formations....... Having accompanied his
battalion to Normandy in July 1944, he was seriously wounded in its
first operation and was out of action for six months.
He spent nearly 14 years
abroad, serving in most of the trouble spots: Palestine,
Tripolitania, Malaya, Egypt, Cyprus and British Guiana. He ended his
career with five years at Salisbury as Chief of Staff Army Strategic
Command and Major-General in charge of Administration, HQ UK Land
Forces.
UNQUOTE
Join the Army and see the world; meet
interesting people and kill them.
Joshua
Lederberg - Jew And Nobel Prize Man
QUOTE
Joshua
Lederberg, who died on February 2 aged 82, shared the 1958 Nobel
prize in Physiology or Medicine (with Edward Tatum and George Beadle)
for establishing that bacteria engage in sex, a discovery that laid
the foundations for modern genetics and biotechnology.
When Lederberg began his
researches after the Second World War, bacteria were thought to
reproduce by cell division, producing clones identical to the parent
organisms. But the discovery by Oswald Avery that deoxyribonucleic
acid, or DNA, was the material that encoded the genetic information
for life, inspired him to test that hypothesis..........
UNQUOTE
Brains are the reason why we are not swinging in
trees.
Anthony
Sumption DSC
QUOTE
Anthony Sumption,
who died on January 8 aged 88, served in submarines during the Second
World War before embarking on a successful career as a lawyer and in
the City.
Sumption had an extremely
good brain, and as a lawyer he used it to address the complexities of
the taxation system, developing various strategies - then perfectly
legal - which earned many of his clients in the City large fortunes.
In the process he, too, prospered.
UNQUOTE
Doing things in
submarines would have been interesting. Beating the tax system is
still perfectly legal although more difficult. The details are
different of course.
Maharishi
Mahesh Yogi Indian guru to the Beatles who built a business empire
based on transcendental meditation
Indian
guru to the Beatles who built a business empire based on
transcendental meditation. It sounds as though he might even have
believed his own tosh.
George
Habash
QUOTE
George Habash, the
Palestinian guerilla leader who died in Jordan on January 26 aged 80,
earned an entry in the grim annals of Middle Eastern politics as one
of those responsible for introducing the world to international
terrorism. As chief of the Marxist-leaning Popular Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second largest group within the
PLO after Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, Habash "pioneered"
the use of airliner hijackings to call attention to the cause of his
people.
UNQUOTE
The
Telegraph makes him sound like a rebel without a cause. He was up
against the world's most dangerous murderers and political
manipulators, the Zionist Jews who stole Palestine and showed us that
Adolf could be outdone.
Charles
Elwell
QUOTE
Charles
Elwell, who died on January 11 aged 88, was the MI5 officer
responsible in 1961 for breaking the Portland spy ring, run by the
KGB officer Konon Molody (Gordon Lonsdale), which passed naval
secrets to the Russians. A year later Elwell had similar success
with John Vassall, the KGB spy at the Admiralty who was blackmailed
into passing secrets after taking part in a homosexual orgy in
Moscow..........
But in March 1942, having successfully disembarked two SOE agents in Holland, Elwell and his Dutch companion were unable to launch their dinghy through the surf and he was taken prisoner.
An
attempt to escape resulted in his being sent to
Colditz...........
UNQUOTE
He lived in interesting times.
Squadron
Leader 'Jimmy' James
QUOTE
Squadron
Leader "Jimmy" James, who died on January 18 aged 92, was
an inveterate escaper during his five years in captivity during the
Second World War. James: the refusal to accept incarceration, he
said, it was 'our contribution to the war effort'
James
was one of the few to escape execution after the Great Escape, and
joined two others at the notorious death camp at Sachsenhausen, from
where he made another daring escape by tunnel, only to be recaptured
10 days later. He had already made a number of unsuccessful
escape attempts by the time he arrived at Stalag Luft III, near
Sagan, in the spring of 1943. Plans were being made to dig three
tunnels, and he was soon recruited to the organisation and appointed
to the security team.
UNQUOTE
A great escaper and on the Great
Escape.
Group
Captain Dudley Honor DFC
Group
Captain Dudley Honor, who has died aged 94, flew during the Battle of
France and as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain before going
to the Middle East; shot down in the latter stages of the German
invasion of Crete, he spent six days in the mountains before reaching
the coast where he was picked up by an RAF flying
boat.....
UNQUOTE
Nine
kills is respectable. He pranged a few as well so he was lucky.
Bobby
Fischer, Chess Champion And Jew
QUOTE
Chess
legend Bobby Fischer has died. Despite having a Jewish mother,
Fischer was famous for his vitriolic antisemitism..........
In
sporadic interviews on Philippine radio during the past five years,
Fischer has used almost every question to launch into another
diatribe about the global Jewish conspiracy directed against him and
the need for an extermination of all Jews. The f——-g Jews
want to destroy everything I’ve worked for all my life,”
Fischer said during a January 1999 interview with Baguio City’s
Bombo Radyo. “There was no Holocaust. The Jews are liars. It’s
time we took off the kid gloves with these parasites.”..........
Fischer
has developed a straightforward narrative of a Jewish world
conspiracy, [ So have a lot of other people - It is just a matter of
looking at the evidence - Editor ]
UNQUOTE
He
had the brain. Jews often do. The evil goes with it all too often.
Issy
Smith VC
QUOTE
Smith
was born in Alexandria,
the son of French citizens Moses and Eva Shmeilowitz, who were of
Polish origin. His
father was employed by the French Consulate-General as a clerk. Aged
11, Smith embarked as a stowaway aboard a vessel proceeding to
London. Undaunted by this unfamiliar environment, Smith attended
Berner Street School, Commercial Street, and worked as a deliverer in
the East
End, then an impoverished ghetto
where Yiddish was
the predominant spoken language. Persecution
and extreme deprivation had compelled millions of Eastern European
Jews to migrate to Western Europe, the Americas,
and elsewhere. By the time of Issy Smith's arrival, Jewish
immigration to Britain had peaked and was further curtailed by the
enactment of the Aliens
Act in 1905.
UNQUOTE
Why were they being hassled? Depend on
a Jew not to tell the truth about why he is hated. To be fair, this
one served well.
Rear-Admiral
Joe Bartosik
QUOTE
..........was
the only Pole to reach Flag rank in the Royal Navy, earning a
reputation in the process as a latter-day Captain Bligh........... As
second gunnery officer in the 35-knot destroyer Blyskawica, he was
credited with shooting down two Luftwaffe aircraft during the
Norwegian campaign. In May and June 1940 he took part in Operation
Dynamo, the successful evacuation of the beaches at Dunkirk. Later
Blyskawica, one of the few ships that could keep up with the liner,
escorted the Queen Mary.
UNQUOTE
An interesting life. There
was not much to go back to in Poland after the war. Poles are prone
to be a pain even when they are not in positions of
authority.
Philip
Agee
Former
CIA operative who exposed more than 2,000 western agents around the
world. Given the CIA' s track record of
evil which includes decades of torturing people and major narcotic
trading it is difficult to argue that his treason was misdirected.
Sir
Edmund Hillary
QUOTE
Sir
Edmund Hillary, who died late yesterday aged 88, made his name as the
first conqueror (with Norgay Tenzing) of Everest; just as impressive,
though, was the use he made of his renown over the remainder of his
life. On the one hand there were feats of exploration - to the
Antarctic and South Pole from 1956 to 1958; in other parts of the
Everest region in the early 1960s (including a search for the
Abominable Snowman, or yeti). In 1968 he drove jet boats up the
violent rapids of Nepalese rivers; in 1977 he took them up the
Ganges................
UNQUOTE
He cheered us up at time when it
mattered. A decent man as well.
George
MacDonald Fraser
QUOTE
George MacDonald Fraser, who died on Wednesday aged 82, revived
in a long-running series of novels the career of one of fiction’s
most infamous characters, Flashman. the fag-roasting bully of Tom
Brown' Schooldays, Thomas Hughes’s 1857 tribute to Dr Arnold’s
Rugby, was last seen being expelled for drunkenness. Age had not
improved him. Fraser’s appropriation in 1969, Flashman,
joyously confirmed him as a thoroughgoing rotter and cad of the first
water.................
UNQUOTE
Our best writer has left us; a
pity. He made the middle brow writing industry look like the
pretentious third raters that they are. He will be missed.
John
Groves
QUOTE
John
Groves, who died on Boxing Day aged 85, was a journalist-turned-civil
servant and headed the Government Information Service in the early
Thatcher years, having earlier served as director-general of the
Central Office of Information.....he decided to serve in the Army and
joined the Queen's Royal Regiment. In 1943 he was commissioned in the
newly-formed Reconnaissance Regiment (formerly the 5th Gloucesters).
The
regiment sailed for France in June 1944, but Groves's ship was sunk
by an acoustic mine off the Normandy beaches; there was heavy loss of
life. Groves was one of the volunteers who returned to the sinking
ship to bring ashore the vehicles from the forward holds...... Groves
fought with the regiment throughout the subsequent campaign in
Belgium, Holland and Germany and was mentioned in dispatches. Later
he was promoted to the rank of captain and spent the summer of 1946
as a War Office observer officer in Berlin.
UNQUOTE
He sounds
like a good man.
Lt-Cdr
'Fuzz' Fyson DSC
QUOTE
Lieutenant-Commander
'Fuzz' Fyson,...was involved in covert operations during the Second
World War; after leaving the Navy he became a successful craftsman in
wood.
From
early 1944 to May 1945 Fyson was based on Corsica and in Italy
commanding the secret and elite No 2 Combined Operations Pilotage
Party (COPP). He reconnoitred the coast of Elba before its liberation
by Free French forces and later moved to Bari, where he led covert
operations in the Aegean and Adriatic. Then, in March and April 1945,
he took part in Operation Roast, the assault by 2 Commando Brigade on
the Spit, a narrow stretch of low-lying land about 600 yards wide
between the sea and the shallow, brackish waters of Lake Comacchio,
which was strongly defended by the
Germans..................
UNQUOTE
He did things. Training
twenty apprentices after was worthwhile; an investment in the future.
Professor
John Strugnell
QUOTE
Professor
John Strugnell, who has died aged 77, was a prominent Biblical
scholar, and was editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project
until he was sacked for making what were construed as anti-Semitic
remarks to an Israeli newspaper......
In
the course of an interview in November 1990 - during which he drank
beer but did not, according to his interrogator, seem to be drunk -
Strugnell was quoted as describing Judaism as "a horrible
religion. It's a Christian heresy, and we deal with our heretics in
different ways".
UNQUOTE
The Jews had a problem with him;
they couldn't abuse his ignorance as they do with us. He knew too
much but a claim of anti-Semitism did the trick. It just means hatred
of Jews. They never bother to tell us how they cause it.
Flight
Lieutenant Mick Shand
QUOTE
Flight
Lieutenant Mick Shand, who died on Thursday aged 92, was a fighter
pilot interned at Stalag Luft III at Sagan and survived "the
Great Escape" - the last to emerge from the tunnel before it was
discovered, he was recaptured after four days on the run. Shand and
his fellow New Zealander Squadron Leader Len Trent, VC, planned to
"hard arse" it on foot to Czechoslovakia in the hope of
getting to Switzerland. They had no great expectation of reaching
England, and felt it would be impossible to make it across the frozen
countryside undetected - but they felt they "had to do
something"........
The
RAF was desperately short of fighter pilots, and Shand was rushed
through training. After just 20 hours' flying [ 40 hours are the
minimum for a basic licence in these decadent times - Editor ] on
the Spitfire, during which time he never fired its guns, he was
posted to No 54 Squadron.
UNQUOTE
Men fought for something and
then found themselves betrayed by corrupt politicians like Blair and
Bush.
Benazir
Bhutto
QUOTE
Benazir
Bhutto, the former prime minister of Pakistan who was assassinated in
a suicide bombing in Rawalpindi yesterday aged 54, restored democracy
to her country in 1988 after 11 years of military dictatorship. Her
glamorous good looks and fluent English led to a sustained love
affair with Western politicians and journalists, many of whom had
known her at either Harvard or Oxford. For those with the standard
Western prejudices against the Islamic world, she had the added
assets of a pronounceable name and a tolerant religious outlook.
In
Pakistan she was often far less popular than her foreign press made
out. To her opponents she was more English than Pakistani, more
Western than Eastern. Her Urdu, although fluent, was ungrammatical,
while her Sindhi, her family's mother tongue, was almost
non-existent.
UNQUOTE
Corrupt, vicious, couldn't speak her own
language properly. No wonder the main stream media told us that she
was wonderful. Pakistanis aren't fool enough to believe them. The
world is better without her.
Lieutenant
Colonel Herbert
Jones VC
QUOTE
Colonel
attended Eton College. He joined the British Army on leaving school
and was commissioned into the Devonshire and Dorset Regiment. By 1982
had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel, During the Falklands War
he was in command of 2nd Battalion, The Parachute Regiment when the
deed described below took place for which he was awarded the VC.
Command of
2 Para passed to Major Chris Keeble, and Jones was buried at Ajax Bay
on May 30, near where he fell. After the war his body was exhumed and
buried at the Blue Beach War Cemetery in Port San Carlos on October
25
UNQUOTE
He commanded in the first land battle of the
Falklands War so the result mattered. 2 PARA won against much greater
forces albeit Chris Keeble took 2 PARA onto victory rather than
Colonel Jones.
Simon
Raven
QUOTE
Promiscuous
chronicler of upper-class life
The death of Simon Raven, at the
age of 73 after suffering a stroke, is proof that the devil looks
after his own. He ought, by rights, to have died of shame at 30, or
of drink at 50.
Instead,
he survived to produce 25 novels, including Alms For Oblivion
(1959-76), a 10-volume saga of English upper-class life, numerous
screenplays, eight volumes of essays and memoirs, including Shadows
On The Grass (1981) - "the filthiest book on cricket ever
written," according to EW Swanton - and The First Born Of Egypt
sequence (1984-92), which contains requests such as "Darling
mummy, please may I be circumcised?" and "Please, sir, may
I bugger you, sir?"
UNQUOTE
He was a first rate writer
but never a gentleman. Any sneers from the Grauniad's supercilious
poofters should be treated with contempt.
Wing
Commander 'Dal' Russel DSO DFC
QUOTE
Wing
Commander "Dal" Russel, who has died aged 89, was a highly
decorated wartime Canadian fighter pilot whose log book recorded
kills in the Battle of Britain and the Normandy invasion; he later
led attacks on enemy rail and road transport as the Allies entered
Germany and Holland.... Russel arrived in England in June 1940 with
No 1 (RCAF) Squadron, the first Canadian unit to see action. Flying
Hurricanes, it was declared operational in mid-August, and within 10
days Russel shared in the destruction of a Dornier bomber over
Gravesend. ...
His squadrons destroyed more than 700 transport
targets and tank concentrations; and on October 4 one of his pilots
shot down a Messerschmitt 262 fighter, the first jet to be downed by
a fighter..... In retirement he enjoyed salmon fishing but, although
invited to hunt by friends, he never liked shooting after the
war.
UNQUOTE
He did well. Going off shooting after having done
the real thing is understandable.
John
Hereford
QUOTE
John
Hereford, who has died aged 82, was a German brought up in the Jewish
faith; during the Second World War he completed a full tour in
bombers over Germany as a wireless operator disrupting the
Luftwaffe's night fighter operations by jamming their control
frequencies.
UNQUOTE
There weren't many Jews who served far
less got up the sharp end. He was one of the few and did a tour of
thirty operations. Nor many made it. He was big in the hotel trade
after.
Professor
John Hudson GM
QUOTE
Professor
Hudson, who died on December 6 aged 97, held a Chair in Horticultural
Science at the University of Bristol and was director of Long Ashton
Research Station; during his wartime career he was one of Britain's
foremost experts in bomb disposal and won two George Medals. On the
night of January 17/18 1943 the Germans dropped on London the first
bombs containing a new type of anti-handling fuse, designed to go off
when the device was moved.
UNQUOTE
A man should be versatile.
Being lucky helps too. It is that or dead so fast you don't even
notice.
James
Lamond MP
QUOTE
Although
an unrepentant Stalinist, Lamond saw no contradiction in accepting
the Lord Lieutenancy of Aberdeen. Until the collapse of the Soviet
Union he had been active in many Communist front organisations and
vice-president of one of the most notorious, the World Peace Council.
Nothing deterred him from taking a favourable view of the Soviet
Union, and he justified its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 as a
natural response to American "imperialism" in that
country..... Lamond - and he was far from being the only Labour MP to
take this view - once declared that the Communist Morning Star was
essential "for sensible discussion inside the British Labour
movement".
UNQUOTE
It takes all sorts to make a world. He
did the right things for his constituents though.
Brigadier
Rupert Harding-Newman
QUOTE
Brigadier
Harding-Newman was probably the last survivor of a handful of
Englishmen whose professions had taken them to the Middle East
between the First and Second World Wars and whose experience of
desert travel and exploration led to the formation of the Long Range
Desert Group (LRDG).... In the spring of 1931 Harding-Newman drove an
Austin Seven overland back to England to attend a course at Bovington
and, the following year, accompanied Major (later Brigadier) Ralph
Bagnold on a long trip to northern Chad. He was the group's mechanic
and sometimes did the cooking as well. Using sun compasses, they
learned how to navigate vast expanses of often featureless desert and
mastered the art of driving vehicles over huge sand dunes without
overturning or getting stuck. Bagnold's aim was to create small,
independent units of extraordinary mobility and endurance which would
pose an apparent threat to the enemy out of all proportion to the
reality. After the outbreak of the Second World War when, supported
by General Wavell, Bagnold formed the LRDG, Harding-Newman was
serving with the military mission to the Egyptian Army and was not
permitted to join him.
UNQUOTE
Another good man gone.
Evel
Knievel
QUOTE
Evel Knievel, the
American motorcycle stunt rider who has died aged 69, combined a
considerable talent for self-promotion with a hazardous capacity for
bravery; among the several world records he held was that for the
most bones broken by one person (433), and he is said to have spent
the equivalent of three years in hospital.............. In September
1974, he attempted to jump the mile-wide canyon of the Snake River,
Idaho, on a rocket-powered motorcycle. Once airborne, he seemed to
lack the necessary momentum to reach his target, but the matter was
settled when his emergency parachute opened prematurely and he
floated 600 feet back down to earth.........
Thereafter
Knievel worked briefly as an insurance salesman. He sold 271 policies
in a single week, but left his employers when they did not
immediately offer him a seat on the board. Then he embarked on a
successful career as a safe cracker, working mainly in Oregon. He
also had spells as a bank robber, swindler and pickpocket. After
several narrow escapes from the law, he decided to go straight and
settled at Moses Lake, Washington, where he worked as a car dealer.
Prospective customers could obtain a discount of $100 if they
defeated him at arm wrestling........... Then, in 1977, Knievel was
convicted of assaulting his former agent, Sheldon Saltman. Knievel
had objected to Saltman's book Evel Knievel on Tour, which portrayed
the stunt man as an alcoholic addicted to painkillers; moreover, it
alleged that Knievel did not love his mother. Knievel severely
chastised Saltman with a baseball bat and was ordered to pay him £6.8
million in damages. He was also sentenced to six months in
prison.
UNQUOTE
An interesting life. Courage has its uses but
I wouldn't want a son to follow him.
Colonel
David Owen DSO
QUOTE
In 1944, as a
major and 2nd-in-command of the regiment during the long slog up
Italy, he had the task of reconnoitering under shell and mortar fire
forward areas which were often heavily mined. Because of the mines,
the casualty rate amongst 2i/cs was very high, but Owen took no
notice of the danger and always volunteered for the most dangerous
operations.
UNQUOTE
At least with explosives it tends to be
quick.
Sir
Peter Laurence MC
QUOTE
Sir Peter
Laurence was a diplomat in Berlin in 1968 when his nephew spotted a
two-page picture story in a children's comic recounting how he won
the MC in Italy during the Second World War. The boy, who was home
from Marlborough, told his parents - who then informed Laurence of
this unusual piece of publicity in The Victor. In the first frame
Lieutenant Laurence of the 11th Battalion, King's Royal Rifle Corps,
was shown wondering whether the enemy was occupying an isolated
house, known as "The Apostle", near Ponte in December 1943.
Then, in broad daylight, he and a Corporal Angus crept up close, to
find themselves under fire from a hole in the wall. "You spray
the windows while I pop a visiting card through the hole,"
Laurence was shown saying, before he threw in a grenade and Angus
fired his tommy gun up at the first-floor window.
UNQUOTE
It is
nice to know that the Foreign Office is not all pinko poofters. They
tried to get rid of the Falklands for us. It must have been the oil
and fish that the Argies wanted.
Patricia
Clarke
QUOTE
Life in Cairo was not
all partying, however, and it was not long before Patricia Russell
was seriously engaged in the war, working in the Cairo military
interrogation centre. This was to be the start of her intelligence
work, about which she would never speak, that took her from Egypt to
Italy.
UNQUOTE
She got about in a big way and was probably very
useful.
QUOTE
Captain
Roger Villar , who has died aged 85, claimed three enemy submarines
as anti-submarine control officer of the destroyer Active. She was
patrolling the Straits of Gibraltar in April 1943 when a surfaced
submarine appeared out of a rain squall. Active opened fire, and the
U-boat dived.... the "kill" was not
confirmed until after the war.
On May 23 1943 Active and the frigate Ness sank the Italian submarine Leonardo Da Vinci north-east of the Azores after it unwisely signalled its intention to head for Bordeaux..... The Italian vessel was sunk with no survivors....
He was
navigator of the destroyer Bleasdale at the Dieppe raid, and then
commanded two landing craft which ferried ashore American troops west
of Algiers during Operation Torch.........
UNQUOTE
He
got about.
André
Bettencourt
QUOTE
André
Bettencourt, who died on November 19 aged 88, served as a cabinet
minister in French governments of the 1960s and 1970s and won medals
for bravery for his service in the Resistance;.....
In his youth Bettencourt had been a member
of La Cagoule, a violent Fascist group bankrolled by Eugène
Schueller, founder of the cosmetics giant L'Oréal.....
After the German invasion, they swore
allegiance to Hitler, sent men to support the German forces fighting
in Russia...........
UNQUOTE
Misguided
and sincere is perhaps the best you can say. Being a friend of
François Mitterrand is
something to hide. Before you sneer too much be grateful that we
never had to decide which side to join.
Captain
John Gower
QUOTE
Captain John Gower,
who has died aged 95, had a distinguished war in destroyers....
Having
located it, he towed it to safety despite coming under air attack. In
April he took part in Operation Tungsten, the attack on the German
battleship Tirpitz, which was hiding in the fjords.
On D-Day
Gower was bombarding targets on Sword beach when he saw a torpedo
bouncing on the surface at the end of its run; it went on to hit the
Norwegian destroyer Svenner, which became the first Allied ship to be
sunk on the morning of June 6.
UNQUOTE
Join
the Navy and see the world.
Ian
Smith
QUOTE
Ian Smith,.. was the Prime
Minister of Rhodesia and an ardent advocate of white rule; in 1965 he
unilaterally declared independence from Britain, and over the next 15
turbulent years fought an increasingly bitter war against African
nationalist guerrillas, a war that cost between 30,000 and 40,000,
mainly black, lives - but it was a struggle he eventually lost,
paving the way for the country's independence as Zimbabwe.
'Sir' Roy
Welensky [ a Jew from Poland unlike Slovo, a Jew from Lithuania
who subverted South Africa. Editor ] once remarked that "dealing
with Smith is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. Make no mistake:
Smith is a ruddy ruthless man."
UNQUOTE
The Telegraph
writes for the right but it is a propaganda machine none the less.
Read the hate and compare it with their coverage of Mugabe, the black
racist thief who is destroying the country.
Ian
Smith - Man whose folly unleashed Mugabe
QUOTE
The
stooping old man with a shock of white hair lived in a modest house
where the front gate always stood open and virtually anyone who
walked up the drive would be invited in for tea...... Smith
earned his place in history by leading the first revolt against
Britain by white settlers since America’s declaration of
independence in 1776...... He was convinced that only a handful
of western-educated and Communist-sponsored Africans genuinely wanted
independence. The great majority of blacks were, he decided, happy
under benevolent white rule. [ They KNOW they
were better off with Sir Ian but the BBC won't be telling you that -
Editor ]
Smith
feared that Britain would eventually transfer Rhodesia to black
majority rule and abandon the 230,000 white settlers.
UNQUOTE
Believe
that if you want. It was written by another Blair. Rhodesia was
subverted by followers of Antonio
Gramsci, the chief theoretician of the communist party. One was
Roy Welensky,
a Jew from Poland. More were Jews from Lithuania like Joe
Slovo. Getting Mugabe into power was the pay off for them. The
Telegraph was owned by a thieving Jew. He is gone but they haven't
cleaned up their act. I will not be paying money to read their left
wing propaganda again.
Leo
Marks
QUOTE
LEO MARKS, who has died
aged 80, was the chief cryptographer of Special Operations Executive
during the Second World War; later he wrote the script for Peeping
Tom, the film which destroyed the career of its director Michael
Powell...... While still in his early twenties he revolutionised the
construction and security of SOE's cyphers. And by his re-invention
of the "one-time pad" he eventually influenced code systems
used by secret services the world over....
n his
memoir Between Silk and Cyanide (1998) Marks drew a vivid and often
angry portrait of an organisation capable of both brilliance and
lethal carelessness. It was also one in which Marks, as a
quick-witted Jew, often felt an outsider.
UNQUOTE
Brilliance
shines out. His most famous code poem is rather special:-
The
Life That I Have
The life that I have
Is all that I have
And the life that I have
Is yours
The love that I
have
Of the life that I have
Is yours and yours and yours.
A
sleep I shall have
A rest I shall have
Yet death will be but a
pause
For the peace of my years
In the long green grass
Will
be yours and yours and yours.
Colonel
Peter Ormrod MC
QUOTE
Colonel Ormrod
won an MC at the Battle of the Imjin River.
UNQUOTE
A Master of
Otter Hounds which is a rare distinction in this foul Year of Our
Lord.
Major-General
Harry Grimshaw DSO
QUOTE
Major-General
Grimshaw won a DSO in Burma and saw repeated front-line service in a
career which ranged from the North West Frontier of India in 1932 to
the EOKA operation in Cyprus in 1956...... the brigade was flown to
Dimapur on the northern front and held the Japanese at Kohima. During
the siege, Grimshaw took command of 1st Battalion 1 Punjab Regiment
(1/1PR) and they played a notable part in the fighting and in the
pursuit of the Japanese 33rd Division in monsoon weather through the
wild country to the Chindwin river.....
He was the
last British soldier to leave Port Said after handing over to the UN
Force Commander. He was awarded a CBE for his part in the
operation.
UNQUOTE
There aren't many North West Frontier men
left. He might even have been the last.
Roy
Wallace
QUOTE
Roy Wallace, who has died
aged 80, developed stereophonic sound recording for the Decca company
and designed the famous “Decca tree” microphone array
which became the standard way across the industry of recording
orchestral and operatic sound.
UNQUOTE
Engineers don't normally
get remembered but stereo was a good first.
Barbara
Dainton
QUOTE
Barbara Dainton, who has
died aged 96, was the last but one British survivor of the Titanic
disaster; as Barbara West, and at just 10 months old,........ but her
father, Arthur West, aged 36, drowned along with some 1,520 other
passengers and crew when the "unsinkable" White Star liner
RMS Titanic, bound for New York on her maiden voyage, struck an
iceberg shortly before midnight on April 14 1912.
UNQUOTE
Some
talk. Some don't. She didn't.
The
Right Reverend Graham Chadwick
Bishop
deported from South Africa for opposing apartheid who continued his
ministry in Wales and Liverpool. This little piece does not tell us
what he thought of the damage that he did by getting rid of halfway
decent government.
Vice-Admiral
Sir Arthur Hezlet DSO DSC
QUOTE
Hezlet
then took temporary command of Unique, the sole survivor of three
submarines sent to patrol the shallow waters off Tunisia which
attacked a convoy bound for North Africa. He sank the 11,400-ton
troopship Esperia, but was counter-attacked and, not knowing that
Unique was leaking fuel from an external tank which gave away his
position, he was bombed repeatedly by an Italian flying
boat.......
UNQUOTE
A good submariner makes a lot of
difference.
Sir
Oliver Chesterton MC
QUOTE
After
demobilisation Oliver returned to Chesterton & Co and became
senior partner — a post he held for 35 years, during which the
firm consolidated its position in the upper strata of the London
property scene, expanding beyond its traditional residential
portfolio into the commercial sector and the City.
UNQUOTE
A
good war to miss. London had to be better.
Captain
Denis Jermain DSC
QUOTE
It was while
commanding a motor torpedo boat.... that Jermain devised a technique
for sinking surface ships using depth charges....... Two months later
his MTB was the only survivor of a flotilla which ran into a convoy
off the Scheldt. Jermain's torpedo-firing mechanism failed but,
selecting the largest target, he made a depth-charge attack while his
gunners fired upwards at anyone who put his head over the merchant
ship's gunwales........ his carefully placed depth charges exploded
amidships, sinking the 6,000-ton vessel.
UNQUOTE
He had plenty
of excitement.
Lord
Michael Fitzalan Howard MC
QUOTE
In
August 1944 both young men were tank officers at Caumont, aiding the
breakout from Caen in Normandy...... Looking back on a campaign that
covered 1,500 miles and cost 956 killed and 545 missing, Adair wrote:
"Special mention must be made of the two brigade majors –
the Fitzalan Howard brothers."
UNQUOTE
He had a lively war
and uncles who didn't get back from the previous one.
Rosenberg's
Soviet spy overseer dies
QUOTE
MOSCOW
(AP) Alexander Feklisov, the Soviet-era spy chief who oversaw the
espionage work of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and helped mediate the
1962 Cuban missile crisis, has died, a Russian official said
Friday....
Born March 9, 1914, in Moscow to a railroad signalman's family, Feklisov was trained as a radio technician and was recruited into the American department of the KGB's predecessor, the NKVD, according to his official biography posted on the Foreign Intelligence Service's Web site.....
Years later, he published an autobiography "The Man Behind the Rosenbergs" in which he described his work guiding the intelligence-gathering work of the couple. The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 after being convicted of supplying the Soviet Union with top-secret information on U.S. efforts to develop the atomic bomb....
He was
later dispatched to London, where he made contact with Klaus Fuchs,
the German-born scientist who worked at the U.S. atom bomb project as
well as at Britain's Harwell nuclear research laboratory....... In
1950, Fuchs was sentenced to 14 years for disclosing nuclear secrets.
UNQUOTE
He was definitely one of theirs and trusted too. His
spies were not lucky though.
Brigadier
General Paul Tibbets
QUOTE
Brigadier-General Paul Tibbets,
who died on Thursday aged 92, commanded the USAAF bomber Enola Gay,
which dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 1945....... The
bomb to be used was codenamed "Little Boy".....
The detonation occurred at an altitude of 1,900ft with a power of 13 to 16 kilotons (estimates vary). Tibbets considered it to be a normal bombing operation until he turned to see the effect, which he described as "unbelievable". It was estimated that 70,000 died in the blast, but many more died over the following days from radiation.
Tibbets was
often in demand to comment on his wartime experiences. He had no
regrets, regarding the dropping of the bomb as necessary, and he
would say: "Why be bashful? That's what it took to the end the
war."
UNQUOTE
I had one friend with a one way ticket to
Japan who was ever grateful.
Victor
Grayevsky
QUOTE
The 26,000-word speech, delivered on
February 25 1956, denounced Stalin's regime of terror. Grayevsky had
been able to obtain a copy [ of Khrushchev's
speech ] with the help of
his lover, Lucia Baranowski, wife of Poland's deputy prime
minister....... Lucia allowed Grayevsky to remove the booklet for a
couple of hours, and he took it to the Israeli embassy in Warsaw,
where it was photocopied.
For
many years after coming to Israel Grayevsky also worked as a double
agent, posing as a Soviet spy but in fact serving the Israelis by
feeding disinformation to Soviet intelligence officers. His Soviet
handlers in Israel were KGB officers working under diplomatic cover
or posing as clergy from the so-called Russian Orthodox Red Church in
Israel.
UNQUOTE
Treachery is a very Jewish
thing. So is cunning. He was a fornicator too. Albeit he did one job
as a freebie.
Michael
Spurway
QUOTE
Dashing officer in both the RAF and the
Colonial Service with a wide range of business interests.
UNQUOTE
Air
Vice-Marshal Peter Howard
QUOTE
Air Vice-Marshal Peter
Howard,....... was one of a small group of RAF doctors specialising
in aviation medicine with the task of testing and analysing human
tolerance of flight......On March 13 1962 Howard fired himself from
the rear seat of a modified Meteor jet fighter. The aircraft was
flying at 250ft, at 290mph. The rocket pack strapped to the seat
generated 3,600lbs of thrust over less than a fifth of a second,
giving a peak force of 16G (16 times the pull of gravity), propelling
the seat from the aircraft at a velocity of 80ft per
second.
UNQUOTE
Ejecting is not a lot of fun. The alternative
is worse.
Arthur
Kornberg
QUOTE
Arthur Kornberg, who died on Friday aged
89, was the first person to synthesise DNA in a test tube, in 1967;
eight years earlier, he had, with Severo Ochoa, won the Nobel prize
for medicine for his insights into the mechanism of DNA.
UNQUOTE
His
son got a Nobel too and a real one at that. Not bad for the son of a
Jewish(?) tailor.
Christopher
Seton-Watson MC
QUOTE
Christopher
Seton-Watson, who has died aged 89, was an authority on Italian
politics of the 19th and early 20th centuries; he also won an MC and
Bar in the Second World War.......
The citation for the Bar to his MC pays tribute to the part he played in beating off two counter-attacks near Perugia, and states that at Castiglione, near Arezzo, when a 75mm shell landed beside him in a slit trench that he was using as an OP and failed to explode, he calmly continued to send fire orders to his guns.......
As a talent
scout for the security services, however, he sometimes became
irascible when his recommendations were not followed; on one occasion
he threatened to "send them his Burgesses and Macleans"
instead of the prodigies he usually put forward.
UNQUOTE
He got
about and had brains too.
Lim
Goh Tong
QUOTE
Lim was one of a number of hard-driving
Malay-Chinese entrepreneurs who made colossal fortunes as their
country developed and prospered..... he had the idea of developing a
mountain resort closer to the capital, Kuala
Lumpur.
UNQUOTE
Enterprise and hard work can pay off.
RB
Kitaj
QUOTE
RB Kitaj, who died on Sunday aged 74, was an
American painter domiciled for 40 years in England.........he raised
the stature of English painting to one of international
significance.... Kitaj's affection for England was sorely tested in
1994, when there was a major Tate Gallery retrospective of his work.
The verdict of the critics in the British press was savage, and Kitaj
was deeply distressed.
UNQUOTE
Any one who takes modern art
seriously should be treated with suspicion. Art dealers are
different. They are trading on the gullible.
Sammy
Duddy
QUOTE
Sammy Duddy, who died on October 17 aged 62,
had a rather unusual curriculum vitae for a member of the Loyalist
paramilitary Ulster Defence Association in having been a drag artiste
who went by the stage name of Samantha.
UNQUOTE
It seems that
he didn't murder Pat Finucane or get involved in the Kincora Job.
Adams would say the same no doubt.
Paul
Raven
Bass guitarist with post-punk band
Killing Joke who found a place in the group after the Apocalypse
failed to materialise. He flaked out at 46 so maybe the name paid
off.
Squadron
Leader Harry Scott
QUOTE
Squadron
Leader Harry Scott, who has died aged 89, started his RAF career as a
teenage aircraft apprentice and, after training as an air observer,
became one of a small group of specialist navigators who pioneered
the use of the blind-bombing aid "Oboe" with the Pathfinder
Force.
Scott had
already survived two tours on bomber operations when, in October
1942, he joined the newly-formed No 109 Squadron equipped with the
fast and high-flying Mosquito. Oboe was a ground-controlled,
blind-bombing system developed by the Telecommunications Research
Establishment and based on the German Knickebein beam bombing
system......
UNQUOTE
Being the navigator is not so glamorous
but it is just as important.
General
Sir Richard Trant
QUOTE
General Sir
Richard Trant, who has died aged 79, played an important role in the
direction of the Falklands campaign as Land Deputy to the Commander
of the South Atlantic Task Force.
UNQUOTE
And that was about
it. Did he ever hear a shot fired in anger? It doesn't say.
John
Kent
QUOTE
Varoomshka was a comic
strip Candide for the 1970s, a wide-eyed, lissom innocent abroad, who
defined the second coming of Harold Wilson and the dog-eared
hypocrisies of the Heath and Callaghan years...........
Her
creator, John Kent, who has died aged 65, was a New Zealander, the
son of a lawyer. Arriving in England, he found the ways of old Europe
cunning beyond his imagination..... The culture shock gave him the
clarity of vision to cut through the cant and the double
standards..... She [ Varoomshka ] was a concept to enrage feminists
of the day, which she duly did.
UNQUOTE
She sounds like fun.
Sefanaia
Sukanaivalu VC
Was a corporal from Fiji
who let himself be shot by the Japanese because his men would never
fall back while he was alive. He really did give his life.
Deborah
Kerr
QUOTE
Deborah Kerr,.... was the
unfadingly [ sic ] ladylike and prototypical English rose whose
red-haired, angular beauty and self-possessed femininity
distinguished more than 50 films in four decades of cinema.
She made
serenity dramatic; and though her poise might be ruffled at critical
moments in scenes of passion (most famously exemplified by her
encounter on the beach with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity
in 1953), her well-bred airs and social graces made her a model of
British womanhood in Hollywood.
UNQUOTE
We all get older and
maybe wiser.
Andrée
de Jongh
QUOTE
Countess Andrée
de Jongh, who has died in Brussels aged 90, founded and organised the
Comet Escape Line, the route from Belgium through France to Spain
used by hundreds of Allied airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied
Europe......
Dédée de Jongh made more than 30 double crossings and escorted 116 evaders, including more than 80 aircrew. But on the night of January 15 1943 she was sheltering at Urrugne with three RAF evaders when she was betrayed.....
The escape
line survived, and by the time the Allies invaded France in June 1944
more than 500 men had passed down the line to safety.
UNQUOTE
She
was a genuine heroine. The Gestapo were nearly as nasty as Mossad.
The
Earl of Harrowby
Moderniser who helped to
make Coutts a model for success in private banking. He was with 5
PARA in Java.
Bob
Denard
QUOTE
Bob Denard, the French
mercenary who has died aged 78, was one of the soldiers of fortune to
profit from the upheavals of Africa of the 1960s.
He came to
prominence during the early conflicts in the Congo, when he led a
raid on Stanleyville (now Kisangani) to rescue white civilians
besieged by rebel forces. The ruthless efficiency with which his
group of mercenaries carved through the rebel army earned them the
soubriquet "Les Affreux" (the fearful
ones)....
UNQUOTE
Interesting times if you were in the right
places.
Brigadier
Mike Harvey MC
QUOTE
In April
1951,.... Harvey, then a captain... attached to 1st Battalion the
Gloucestershire Regiment (1st Glosters), was in command of D Company,
which was defending high ground above the Imjin.
UNQUOTE
Not
many men of the Glosters are left. Now there is one less.
Cynthia
Pitman
QUOTE
Cynthia Pitman, who has
died aged 94, was a lifelong hunt follower who was still riding to
hounds in her mid-eighties, always at the head of the field and
undaunted by weather or terrain; in her hunting colours and black top
hat, she cut a slight but unique figure as the oldest woman in
Britain regularly to ride in pursuit of the fox.
For some 70
years in season, she hunted for three days a week, rain or shine, and
always rode out side-saddle........
UNQUOTE
She did what she
wanted. Lucky her.
David
Muffett
QUOTE
David Muffett, who has
died aged 88, applied the skills he had honed when dealing with
cannibals in colonial Africa to battling education ministers and
teaching unions in his role as chairman of Hereford and Worcester
County Council education committee.
He spent 16 years in the colonial service in northern Nigeria, where he claimed to have been one of only two Britons whose name passed into the native Hausa language: "Aka yi masa mafed" (literally "One did to him Muffett"), meaning "Justice caught up with him"......
In 1960 he
apprehended the Tigwe of Vwuip, a northern Nigerian tribal chief who
had eaten the local tax collector. The Tigwe had apparently been so
impressed by the man's ability to acquire money on demand that he had
— understandably — decided to try to assimilate his
powers. It was not so much this particular misdemeanour that bothered
Muffett; what really worried him was the fact that a UN delegation
was due to visit the area, and "I wasn't about to have one of
them eaten. I considered that it would be a highly retrogressive
step."
UNQUOTE
Our empire was not the worst in the world
as the Americans are busy proving this day.
Captain
Kenneth Lockwood
Was on the Escape
Committee at Colditz pretty much for the duration.
Sir
Alan Campbell
QUOTE
Sir Alan Campbell,
who died on Sunday aged 88, was ambassador to the Court of Emperor
Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and later to Italy.
Every now and then Campbell caught himself behaving uncannily like Sir Samson Courtney, the British ambassador to the Empire of Azania in Evelyn Waugh's novel Black Mischief, indulging in little absurdities of opinion and pomposities of manner. Campbell found Black Mischief — which was unmentionable in Ethiopia at the time — to be a very shrewdly observed satire....
He joined
the Army in 1940, serving briefly in the ranks of the Suffolk
Regiment before receiving a commission in the Devonshire Regiment. He
ended the war as a staff officer in SOE.
UNQUOTE
It sounds like
fun.
José
Luis de Vilallonga
QUOTE
José
Luis de Vilallonga, who has died aged 87, was a Spanish nobleman,
playboy, wastrel, author, fortune-hunter and bit-part actor who
appeared briefly with Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's; late
in life he achieved notoriety when he confessed to having cruelly
mistreated his first wife, an English aristocrat...... Having fought
for Franco during the Spanish civil war, Vilallonga was himself
obliged to go into exile after writing a series of anti-Franco novels
in the 1950s..... he was sentenced in absentia to imprisonment for
sedition — and every three months thereafter was retried and
had his sentence increased. By the time he returned to Spain his
sentence was said to have amounted to more than 300 years..... In his
vainglorious and — in the opinion of some — highly
unreliable memoirs, he described himself as "a hardened
alcoholic who, without ever taking precautions of any kind, has slept
with more whores than a porcupine has quills".
UNQUOTE
A
better man to know about than know; the sort who make the Trots see
red.
Graham
Clarke
QUOTE
Graham Clarke,... fought
in the Korean War as a Fleet Air Arm pilot and in 1968 co-piloted a
hovercraft on the dangerous Negro and Orinoco rivers in South
America; the need to negotiate treacherous rapids made it one of the
most difficult journeys ever undertaken by a hovercraft.
The journey
was intended to demonstrate that the craft — an SRN6 of the
British Hovercraft Corporation — could successfully travel
2,500 miles from Manaus, in Brazil, to Port of Spain,
Trinidad......
UNQUOTE
He did get about.
Professor
Durward Cruickshank
QUOTE
Durward
Cruickshank , who has died aged 83, was an eminent mathematical
crystallographer and Professor of Chemistry at the Unive