Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy Gurney, 53, High Commissioner for the United Kingdom to the Federation of Malaya, was a man who seemed to be precisely what he was — a stern and incorruptible servant of Empire. Like a hundred colonial administrators before him, he was a public-school man (Winchester) and an Oxford graduate. He served his apprenticeship in jungles from Jamaica to the Gold Coast, and everywhere earned a reputation as "a man who got things done." The conversation of friends discussing Sir Henry in clubs near Whitehall was seldom if ever leavened with warm, personal anecdote, but words like "courage," "imperturbable" and "dogged determination" invariably punctuated it.
Left : The resting place of Sir Henry Gurney in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. Click on image to enlarge.
Defiant Pennant. In 1946 Henry Gurney was appointed to the ticklish post of Chief Secretary to the embattled British mandatory government of Palestine. He called for martial law, and applied the stringent methods he had learned in the jungle to Irgun's terrorists. Then in 1948, British High Commissioner Sir Edward Gent died in an airplane crash on his way home to London to report on the rising Red menace in the jungles of Malaya. Sir Henry Gurney was ordered to Malaya. In London, the Opposition questioned his fitness for the job (he had never been to Malaya), and the local planters were not reassured when he arrived, as he put it, "with an open mind and no knowledge of the country." But the rebels were more respectful. They threatened to kill him.
Sir Henry replied in kind:' "We are fighting militant Communism and we intend to finish it off." With calm assurance, he urged planters and tin miners to stay at their posts. He pleaded with Whitehall for more troops, built up the native army from four to six battalions, and launched a vast resettlement scheme to separate the Communists from their sources of supply. His men razed whole villages for aiding the Reds and penned up 120,000-Malayan Chinese. He constantly left his snug headquarters at Kuala Lumpur to roam the jungles in his car, his official red-striped pennant a conspicuous target for snipers. He became, as he intended, a symbol of British determination and doggedness.
At Marker 56. Last week, word flashed through the jungles that Sir Henry and his lady would take a weekend holiday at the British resort of Fraser's Hill, 64 miles north of the capital, deep in Communist country. For several days, police and soldiers combed the road in search of possible ambush points. They found none as far as they went, but unaccountably turned back at the 56-mile marker. (Had they gone half a mile farther, they might have found, along a 400-yd. S bend in the highway, 38 skillfully concealed positions, some of them constructed of firewood faggots.) Next day, with his pennant bravely flying and escorted by an armored truck and a radio van, Sir Henry's official Rolls-Royce set out. As they reached the double hairpin turn beyond the 56-mile marker, a volley crackled. Sir Henry's driver fell dead. Two tires squished flat and the governor himself felt the sting of a bullet. He pushed Lady Gurney to the floor of the car, told her to stay down, opened the door and staggered, badly wounded, along the road, deliberately drawing the fire away from the Rolls. A fusillade of shots followed his staggering figure; he fell face down in the road. For 20 minutes the police exchanged shots with the ambuscaders, then reinforcements arrived and the Communists fled. Sir Henry Gurney was past help by then. His wife was unhurt.
Five companies of British and Gurkha troops combed the vicinity but failed to turn up the bandits. Finally, in outrage and frustration, the R.A.F. flew in and bombed the whole area steadily for five hours. The source. Payback was sought and........ some of his killers were later killed.
