Quote Originally Posted by Ken White View Post
The Red Rat needs no help from me but the sideswipes merit my limited intrusion.
Ken, for an old soldier you are remarkably sensitive to perceived sideswipes.

Reminds of the story out of John Masters' wonderful book The Road Past Mandalay. Here is the extract from page 139 in my paperback:

… And I lured Bill out and to his tent. He collapsed on his camp bed and glared moodily at me. ‘You're all the same,’ he said. ‘Goddam British. Worse than Goldwyn. US, for Christ's sake.’

My own head was firm on my shoulders, but the little muzzy. ‘What?’ I asked.

‘US,’he repeated. ‘No goddam good. I ought to puch you all in the nose'.

At last I understood. Bill had been with us about two months. All that time he had been brooding about our army's habit of describing any article of equipment that had become useless as US. That's what it sounded like though in fact it was written u/s and stood for unserviceable. I had no time to explain. …
OK, so don't pull a 'Bill' on me now please.

I came from a unit which had; pommies (Brits), Aussies (Australians), Kiwis (New Zealanders), yanks (Americans), Cannucks (Canadians), porras (Portuguese), slopies (South Africans), frogs (French), krauts (Germans) etc etc... and of course 2/3 Rhodesians.

Each nationality displayed some or other obvious national characteristic which was seized upon by the rest and used to rib them. Boys will be boys.