Word: slessor
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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There Is No Defense. Such plain speak ing in Britain is most unfashionable. It represents a considerable victory, won in disregard of popular British opinion, for a group of professional strategists led by a famed airman: Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir John Cotesworth Slessor...
Cockpit & Goggles. Slessor's convic tions hardened, as he did, in the school of experience. The son of a British major in the Indian army, he grew up with a cruel impediment: a "gammy leg" that kept him off the rugger field, gave him a lifelong limp. Nerve alone won his commission in the Royal Flying Corps, but once in the air, Slessor proved a topflight pilot. In the Sudan in 1916, he swooped down on a dervish cavalry outfit, routed it with Lewis gunfire and bombs, and "by this unexpected method of assault," wrote the official R.A.F. historian...
...Jack Slessor still misses his World War I biplane. "Flying isn't nearly as much fun as it was when you had an open cockpit and goggles." As chief of a bomber group in World War II, he was often compelled to decide how many airmen's lives it was worth to destroy an enemy target. "He would sit down on one of the kitchen chairs in the operations room," wrote one of those who watched. "For anything up to ten minutes, he would quite literally do nothing at all. He simply sat there and thought. Everyone instinctively...
...Honorable Hugh Stanley, 24, brother of the Earl of Derby, informed Fox-Strangways that Minister of Labor Aneurin Bevan, rabid Socialist and ex-coal-miner, was being entertained at White's. Bevan's host was Sir John Slessor, Air Chief Marshal, who had invited the minister in for a drink after a meeting on R.A.F. manpower problems...
...White's committee, which apologized to Bevan. Then the club announced Fox-Strangways' resignation. Said one well-born Briton: "I'm afraid they're awfully upset about it at White's. I mean to say, you should never kick a guest. Might have kicked Slessor for taking the fellow there, though-damned odd thing...