Terry Cavender

Tell it like it wasn't. Part 2. (The Art of Military Communication) Terry Cavender

This Second Part of 'Tell it like it wasn't is based along similar lines as the first; it is a work of fiction with a lot of known historical facts added into the mix. Anyone who has tried to recall the details of a conversation will understand what we are trying to do here, because no-one, but absolutely no-one, in the history of mankind, can accurately recall any of the precise details of a conversation that happened more than two minutes previously. Throw the excitement and fear of battle into the equation and each protagonist probably wouldn't even remember their own name, let alone any other details of a particular tete-a-tete, no matter how important. In Part One we covered the imagined dialogue between King Henry V and his chaps at Agincourt, then the conversation between the Duke of Wellington and Napoleon Bonaparte after the Battle of Waterloo, right the way through to what Colonel Tibbetts could have told his 'Enola Gay' B29 Aircrew just after dropping an Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima Japan in 1945. In Part Two, we have concocted some more rather ridiculous conversations, including that between a Roman Centurion Traffic Officer and an arrested Queen Boudica of the Britons, who has had a minor traffic accident on the A12 just outside Colchester Garrison. As if that wasn't bad enough, the authors have also ridden rough-shod over King George the Third, King Harold Godwinson of the Battle of Hastings fame, General Custer, Gonville Bromhead, Florence Nightingale, Lord Haw Haw - even Lt Col Sterling SAS doesn't get away Scot (pardon the pun) free. So, as in the words of the great Chinese leader Mao Zedong, (who also comes in for some mickey taking), 'read on MacDuff'