Word: martinet
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...world that survives him thinks of George, father of the Duke, as an amiable successor to the gay and worldly Edward VII, and of his mother, Queen Mary, as the ruler of the family. But the Duke describes his late father as a stern sea dog, a domestic martinet who lived on a clockwork schedule and refused to let David go to public (private) schools lest they teach him bad habits. (" 'The Navy will teach him all that he needs to know...
George Patton, able General and chronic martinet, stood on the steps of a medieval English manor and sounded off to his staff: "... I mean business when I fight. I don't fight for fun and I won't tolerate anyone on my Staff who does. . . . Ahead of you lies battle. ... It is inevitable for men to be killed and wounded in battle. But there is no reason why such losses should be increased because of the incompetence and carelessness of some stupid son-of-a-bitch. I don't tolerate such men on my Staff...
Lieut. General John C. H. Lee had had enough. Last week, just a month after Scripps-Howard Columnist Robert Ruark called him a martinet who made life miserable for G.I.s in his Mediterranean Theater command (TIME, Aug. 25), frosty-eyed "Courthouse" Lee announced his retirement from the U.S. Army...
...cruisers" (we were steaming at 12 knots as specified by naval defense plans), but the crux of all insults was the inference in your article that the men in command of the individual ships were not of the caliber to hold such responsibilities. ... If there was ever an unreasonable martinet, a Captain Bligh of the U.S. Navy-Captain Bode was it, but when it came to naval warfare, logical thinking, cool judgment and action, he was all the Navy and its traditions could boast. Later, for reasons unknown to us, he found it necessary to take his life...
There is less suggestion in the book than in the film that the seagoing proletariat is getting the life squeezed out of it for the satisfaction of a martinet and of the shipowner's wallet. The original account, in fact, is milder but more interesting, and obviously the work of a levelheaded and observant young man who had a sober interest in setting down neither more nor less than...