This is based on a private email I sent to a few friends.

Occasionally you hear of people who achieved and experienced lives so far
outside the norm as to be staggering. Here's one such.

Copied to the list because I know that at least a few will enjoy just
reading through the Wikipedia page and that  a few will be enough inspired
by a life of such madness, bravery, madness, adventure, madness, range of
activities and involvements, and madness, to want to read more about him.

He was a soldier and probably by most definitions "a warmonger",but this is
not about war per se - although war and fighting and conflict utterly
defined him. I wouldn't say that the world would be a better place if more
people were more like him - but our world needs a few people like this -
plus a lot more who are very very very different - or else.

An utterly stunning life.
_____________________________

Churchill mentioned a name I'd never noticed before.
Not in the index.
Looked him up on web.
Agh!!!!!!!!!!!

How can I never have heard of this man !!! ????
He's even in the staged Cairo (Casablanca?)  photo(s) :-) (along with WC,
FDR, CKS) .

An utterly utterly utterly unbelievable superhero type.
Utterly.
Churchill bestows him and Freyberg, and them only, with the title
"Salamander".
Living in the fire.
Hacked, shot, beaten, bloodied, unbowed.
In 1920 Churchill describes Freyberg as having 27 visible wounds and/or
ordnance entry/exit points.
Goes with a VC and 2 x DSOs at that stage apparently.
This man probably looked worse by then.

Carton de Wiart.
Autobiography: Happy Odyssey.

Stunning

                     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Carton_de_Wiart

VC. Of course.

I have his autobiography on 'watch' on the local auction site.
--=20
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