Shut the fuck up, Sir.

[substitute]

Okay, this Canadian war hero is just too cool. Not so much because he blew up some tanks at close range and saved a lot of his friends, but because he was demoted back to private from corporate nine times because of his dislike of authority and ended up being their only private to get the Victoria Cross.

Comments

Re: Shit, I didn't know Smokey died...

[halfjack.livejournal.com]

Mark Zuehlke's book, Ortona is also excellent even though Smokey himself only gets a couple of paragraphs (in fact, pretty much exactly the Christmas incident I related, brev).

Ortona is a terribly under-studied battle (well, series of battles really) and for reasons that are hard to grasp. It was important (securing the port at Ortona was critical to progressing further up Italy), it was under manned, and it was (as gcrumb points out) probably the origin of many life saving tactics in future urban conflicts. The unit names are colourful (Hasty Pees, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, the Van Doos, and of course our own Seaforth Highlanders), the people are three dimensional, and the battle had at no time a certain outcome.

The author begins and ends the book with a plea to talk to and record the recollections of veterans of the second world war while we still have them, which is an opportunity that slips further away every day that passes. Smokey at least got himself heard every chance he could. :)

When I heard Smokey died I broke out my copy for a ninth or tenth reading, as well as a new bottle of scotch.