Thursday, May 1, 2014

Adrian.


This is coolbert:

Add the name of this man to the list of those most senior combat commanders leading from the front during battle, wounded repeatedly, nonetheless continuing to enter the fray over and over leading troops forward from the front, heedless to danger and possessing and admirable physical courage and valor.

Adrian Carton de Wiart!

"Adrian Carton de Wiart was a Belgian aristocrat who survived 11 wounds across three wars, led infantry charges on three continents, survived a couple plane crashes, was shot in the face at least three times, lost an eye, a hand, and a lung, accumulated enough shrapnel in his body to set off every metal detector from here to Berlin, made friends with basically every world leader from Pope Pius to Chiang Kai-Shek, and still spent the majority of his 80s hunting ducks one-handed on a massive estate where he lived with a woman half his age."


That list of valorous and very brave senior combat commanders, wounded repeatedly to include:

* Hyazinth von Strachwitz. Wounded fourteen times.

* Adrian Carton de Wiart. Wounded eleven times.

* Oskar Dirlewanger. Wounded eleven times.

* Bernard Freyberg. Wounded nine times.

* Robert Frederick. Wounded nine times.

Behavior and comportment on the battlefield understood within the context of the Heroic Age and being the type of "stuff" of which the immortal Homer might have dedicated as an epic!

Some might disagree of my including Oskar Dirlewanger in that list of the esteemed. Oskar in command of a SS anti-partisan battalion during the Second World War and noted for habitual betrayal of flag of truce or safe conduct passage agreement.

Such battlefield heroics by senior commanders during the modern era as understood rare indeed, almost non-existent, unusual, uncommon and very rare. AND ALWAYS ADMIRABLE!

coolbert.







1 comment:

  1. Read Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger. German infantry officer WWI wounded more than 20 times including his last, which he survived and lived till in his late 90s, a rifle bullet that passed through his chest. Book still in print since 1919.
    Dan Kurt

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