George MacDonald Fraser
Won’t be down to breakfast. Some Flashy links:
Flashman at Rugby; Bullies, Fags and Toadies
Flashman on Strumpets and Ploughing
Flashman’s Aliases
Flashman Macropaedia
Born in Carlisle, northern England in 1925, Fraser served as an infantryman with the British Army in India and Burma during World War II, and in the Middle East after the war. He worked as a journalist in Britain and Canada for more than 20 years before turning to fiction.
Fraser was the author of screenplays including “The Three Musketeers” (1973), an adaptation of his novel “Royal Flash” (1975) and the James Bond movie “Octopussy” (1983).
Fraser also wrote several works of nonfiction, including a wartime memoir, “Quartered Safe Out Here,” “Steel Bonnets: The Story of the Anglo-Scottish Border” and “The Hollywood History of the World.”
Here’s a scene from the end of the first novel, which I keep next to “Retreat from Kabul,” its inspiration. The only so-called fiction on shelves otherwise exclusively for purported reportage and memoir of the wars of those parts, past and present.
“You are exceedingly brown,” says one of the men, and the heavy German accent startled me. I’d noticed him out of the tail of my eye, leaning against the mantel, with one leg crossed over the other. So this is Prince Albert, I thought; what hellish-looking whiskers.
“You must be as brown as an Aff-ghan,” says he, and they laughed politely.
I told him I had passed for one, and he opened his eyes and said did I speak the language, and would I say something in it. So without thinking I said the first words that came into my head: “Hamare ghali ana, achha din,” which is what the harlots chant at passersby, and means “Good day, come into our street.” He seemed very interested, but the man beside him stiffened and stared hard at me.
“What does it mean, Mr. Flashman,” said the Queen.
“It is a Hindu greeting, marm,” says the Duke, and my guts turned over as I recalled that he had served in India.
Your own favorite Flashman quotes, treacheries, acts of brazen cowardice in comments. Or, scenes like this:
Beneath us, and about a mile away, lay a little cluster of huts, with smoke rising from them, that I guessed must be Gandamack village. Close by, where the road swung north again, was a gentle slope, strewn with boulders, rising to a flat summit about a hundred yards across. That whole slope was crawling with Afghans; their yells came clearly up the gully to us. On the summit of the slope was a group of men, maybe a company strong; at first, seeing their blue poshteens, I took them for Afghans, but then I noticed the shakos, and Sergeants Hudson’s voice, shaking with excitement, confirmed me:
“That’s the 44th! Look at ‘em, sir. It’s the 44th, poor devils!”
They were in a ragged square, back to back on the hilltop, and even as we watched I saw the glitter of bayonets as they levelled their pieces, and a thin volley crashed out across the valley. The Afghans yelled louder than ever and gave back, but then they surged in again, the Khyber knives rising and falling as they tried to hack their way into the square. Another volley, and they gave back yet again, and I saw one of the figures on the summit flourishing a sword as though in defiance. He looked for all the world like a toy soldier, and then I noticed a strange thing; he seemed to be wearing a long red, white and blue weskit beneath his poshteen.
I must have said something of this to Hudson, for he shouted out:
“By God, it’s the colours! Damn the black bastards, give it to ‘em, 44th! Give ‘em hot hell!”
“Shut up, you fool!” says I, although I needn’t have worried, for we were too far away to be heard. But Hudson stopped shouting and contented himself with swearing and whispering encouragement to the doomed men on the hilltop.
For they were doomed. Even as we watched the grey and black robed figures came charging up the slope again, from all sides, another volley cracked out, and then the wave had broken over them. It boiled and eddied on the hilltop, the knives and bayonets flashing, and then it rolled slowly back with one great wailing yell of triumph, and on the hilltop there were no figures standing up. Of the man with the colours there was no sign: all that remained was a confusion of vague shapes scattered among the rocks, and a haze of powder smoke that presently drifted off into nothing on the frosty air.
Somehow I knew I had just seen the end of the army of Afghanistan. Of course one would have expected the 44th to be the last remnant, as the only British regiment in the force, but even without that I would have known. This was what Elphy Bey’s fine army of more than fourteen thousand had come to, in just a week. There might be a few prisoners; there would be no other survivors. I was wrong, as it turned out; one man, Dr. Brydon, cut his way out and brought news to Jallalabad, but there was no way of knowing this at the time.
There is a painting of the scene at Gandamack, which I saw a few years ago, and it is like enough the real thing as I remember it. No doubt it is very fine and stirs martial thoughts in the glory-blown asses who look at it; my only thought when I saw it was, “You poor bloody fools!” and I said so, to the disgust of other viewers. But I was there, you see, shivering with horror as I watched, unlike the good Londoners, who let the roughnecks and jailbirds keep their empire for them; they are good enough for getting cut up at the Gandamacks which fools like Elphy and McNaghten bring ‘em to, and no great loss to anybody.
Topics: Flashman
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:08 pm on Wednesday, January 2, 2008
9 Responses to “George MacDonald Fraser”
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January 2nd, 2008 at 10:52 pm
i’ve never read any of the “Flashman” series, but the stories he wrote of life in the British Army, during and after the war, such as “The General Danced at Dawn” are priceless…… Soldiers are the same, throughout time, and the whole world over.
“To Absent Comrades”
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Oh man, one knew the day could not be far off, and I felt the books peaked a decade and a half ago, but still, I am sorry to hear that he has passed on, as improbable as it was that he was still here at all.
Much as I love the Flashman books, I think his best novel is Mr. American. Basically it’s kind of a play on the archetypal Henry James tale of innocence abroad; this time Daisy Miller is a westerner who goes to Europe with his fortune, impresses them with his gun-toting background, but turns out to be a naif next to those decadent Euros.
January 3rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
Too bad. A fine writer.
My favorite book of his is actually his WWII memoir, “Quartered Safe Out Here.” It’s a wonderfully wry and unheroic account of the day-to-day life of a young soldier–Fraser himself. Marvelous.
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:08 am
RIP. I came late to the works of Flashman, and enjoyed every well crafted turn of phrase . A sad loss to the literary world.
p.s. thanks for my Christmas Day link, Jules!
Tuscantony
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
My favorite scene is the one where he throws the Russian Princess overboard in “Flashman at the Charge”. Flashman is the best way to learn 19th Century Anglosphere history, bar none. You’ll get plenty of detail, lots of cultural observations, and Flashy, rogering and cowering his way through the 19th century.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 pm
Since I’m quoting from memory, it’s sure to be wrong, but I’ll never forget a line from the first novel: Recalling his sexual exploits, Flash said he’d “laid enough cane to build a bannister around Hyde Park.” That’s made me laugh for 25 years.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
His McAuslan books are terrific.
And
he wrote the best history ever of the AngloScot borders, and the subsequent Scotch Irish peoples:
“The Steel Bonnets, the story of the Anglo Scottish Border Reivers”. 1971. It has not been surpassed, even by David Hackett Fischer’s “Albions Seed.”
From the introduction:
“Lyndon Johnston’s is a face and figure that everyone in Dumfriesshire knows; the lined, leathery Northern head and rangy, rather loose jointed frame belong to one of the commonest Border types…. Richard Nixon, however, is the perfect example. the blunt, heavy features, the dark complexion, the burly body and the whole air of dour hardness are as typical of the Anglo Scottish Frontier as the Roman Wall. Take thirty years off his age and you could put him straight into the front row of the Kawick scrum and hope to keep out of his way. It is difficult to think of any face that would fit better under a steel bonnet….”
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:58 pm
agreed, re Quartered Safe Out Here.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
In one of the MacAuslan books, he discusses the role of the Commanding Officer of the battalion: which included periodically visiting the local school to check on the progress of “his children”, plus attendance at the school contests to ensure “his children” were being fairly assessed and graded.
Cheers