There are many great and understated quotes from British history. “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” is known around the world. Which child in the UK at least doesn’t smile at the supposed last words of King George and the famous “Bugger Bognor”. There is Captain Lawrence Oates with his amazing act of self-sacrifice on the Scott Expedition to Antartica who left his friends in the tent with the “I am going outside and I may be some time”.
There are a wealth of understated military quotes too that I’ve always liked not least the exchange in the midst of battle between Lord Uxbridge “By God Sir, I’ve lost my leg” and the Duke of Wellington “By God Sir, so you have”.
Few though can quite surpass the incredible understated words uttered by the Assistant Surgeon, William Brydon, during the First Anglo-Afghan War in what turned out to be the greatest British military humiliation of the 19th Century.
It was January 13, 1842, and the 30-year-old Scot was all that remained of the British force that had invaded Afghanistan three years earlier.
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