“Half memoir, half travel, A Yank Back to England...is an absolutely wonderful book, not only about going home again but also about love and family and tradition and the passage of the years.”
—Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning literary critic (Washington
Post)
To see the entire quote, click here.

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

A math lesson to remember

“I was good at maths,” Lew said, casually.
“You what?” I blurted,
“Didn’t I tell you? When I was in the artillery, I calculated gun angles, so the shell would land on the target. Six guns, I had. Different elevations, different targets, distances... Lot of things to take into account. Logarithms – did all the calculations an’ that in my head. We had a contest. I had my guns set up and ready to fire when everyone else was farting about trying to calculate the range. I won. Monty himself came up to me personally, congratulated me, he did.”
“You never told me.”
“About Montgomery?”
“About the math.”
“It was a long time ago. Mind you, I can still do all your mother’s bets.”

4 comments:

Mike said...

Love it! Did he really meet Monty?

The Prodigal Tourist said...

Hi Mike,
Glad you like this one. Indeed my dad did meet Montgomery, he was a professional soldier before the war, joined the Royal Artillery in 1929, served in India, then in Monty's 8th army for the duration. Yes, he was at Alamein, then the Sicily Landings, then Normandy.

Maggie said...

WOW! Now that is cool!

Anonymous said...

Logarithms in the head, I couldn't do them on paper. Impressive.

AV