Christopher Vokes (1904 – 1985)
Canadian soldier.
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In Ceylon I had a black nurse who wet - nursed me.
Years later I was told by my father that she said of me:"This boy plenty belly, big stick."
I believe that one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear.
One has to up among the forward brigade commanders, even as far as battalion commanders, especially if one is fighting a defensive action. One simply has to know what is going on.
The most important thing, my father told me, which I have never forgotten, and which I have often put unto practice was: If you get into a quarrel with anybody, hit him first. "If you hit first, the battle is half-won," my father always said "Don't let him hit first. You hit him first."
"What's more," he never forgot to say, too "Usually one blow is all you need."
I found this to be true.
Command is often not what you do but the way you do it.
Among the mouldering bones there was the head of a flaxen haired girl. One side of her face was well preserved, almost mummified. She must have been a beauty. But the other side of her face was all bone and a horrifying sight, not the sort of thing one likes to think about after.
I wanted people who wouldn't become too worried about casualties. One always should be concerned about casualties, but the risk of incurring casualties can't be allowed to affect decisions, unless it's evident casualties will be prohibitively heavy. There may be no safe way to write this.
The meek are a hell of a long way from inheriting the earth.
Generals do not always run wars the way they would like to, nor the troops under them.
Some more of Monty's boys came up, soon after Malone had left but they, too, spent their time getting shelled by the ever-persistent Germans. Likewise, they departed, their minds expanded and their sphinctres contracted.
I looked for certain attributes in a soldier. I know the modern method is to put the attributes into a computer and see what comes out. But as far as I am concerned, the computer is the worst damn instrument devised by man to screw up man-management.
I said, "Right. Now you and I are getting into an aircraft. We are going over to London. We are going to see "Murch" (Maj. General J. C. Murchie) and we are going to see Mr. Massey (Vincent Massey, Canadian High Commissioner) and tell them what this is all about."
My recollection is that most of the crap coming out of the trial via the media had Meyer condemned even before the trial was over.
I was not going to go to bed forever with his unwarranted death on my conscience.
I reckon that the Bailey Bridge and the bulldozer were the greatest advances in military engineering in the years between World War I and World War II.
No one's reputation is quite what he himself perceives it ought to be.
Perhaps if Hitler had had the wisdom to withdraw his troops and prepare for the defense of his own country, Germany, despite the loss of face this would entail in the losing of all Italy, then the course of the war, if not the outcome, would have been quite different.
But now I salute you who follow me,
It is my time to stand at ease ... content.
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