1) Do not talk about Lord Lovat. 2) Do NOT talk about Lord Lovat. 3) "CANADIANS" is not spelled "JAPANESE". (In Italian it rhymes.) Otherwise the result of D-Day would have been bizarre at best. 4) "BRIGADE" is not spelled with an "N". Otherwise Lord Lovat's 1st Special Service BRIGADEN would have passed en masse to the enemy. (oops) 5) Friends swear they heard me say absent-mindedly "the landings on Lumbardy" instead of "Normandy". I was born and live in Lumbardy, and the last time this place saw the sea was some million years ago. 6) Be glad to have narrowly avoided falling in love with Rommel, only to fall in love with Lord Lovat who at least lived to old age (and was not a carrier ship, like the other time. Anyway I'm still calling my first two baby girls Hiryu and Soryu). 7) Atolls are circular islands in the Pacific (see Midway). Atholls are a Scottish family, I don't know how circular. 8) When you listen to a war documentary, the "Arr Ay Eff" is not a pirate terrorist group. Don't waste half an hour trying to scramble it, only to discover il spells RAF. 9) Okay, I give up. Lord Lovat was young, handsome, Scottish, was called "The Mad Bastard" with good reason, wore a white jumper UNDER his uniform and not OVER it (like Peter Lawford portrays him in the vid I posted below). And he is the only WWII commander I know who, among all these generals and captains and Oberstsomethings, not only is addressed as LORD Lovat, but sometimes even as THE Lord Lovat. Ike who? 10) But truly, I admit, it was a short-lived romance. It lasted just about until this sentence on Wikipedia: "Brigadier Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat... commonly known as the 17th Lord Lovat." No thanks. I have trouble enough telling my two painters apart. Seriously. To all those who didn't make it out, to those who did, and to those who never really made it out: this little soldier salutes you, fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, friends. |