Читать книгу Notes From a Small Military - I Commanded and Fought with 2 Para at the Battle of Goose Green. I was Head of Counter Terrorism for the M.O.D. This is my True Story - Major-General Chip Chapman - Страница 6

‘Please understand there is no depression in this house and we are not interested in possibilities of defeat: they do not exist.’

– Victoria R I (and the maxim on the desk of General James Mattis, Commander US Central Command, Tampa, 2010 – 2013)

Everything written here is false. If it were true, you would think it false. Galileo discovered by observation that the world was round and revolved around the Sun. Until his discovery, and beyond, many people believed the world to be flat. That was false but it was not a lie. So, everything here is true – otherwise it would be a lie. I will leave you to make up your own mind on that account.

Miss D V House wrote on my school report, aged 11: ‘Chapman has discovered much from books, films, talks and general observation. He assimilates the knowledge before presenting it in his very own way, conscientiously and in a clean attractive style.’ I hope you might in part agree. Some names have been changed to protect the living and the dead, those guilty and those who were innocent. Whoever they were, they have given me a rich tapestry of experiences.

The great British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, was once told by a foreign national that, ‘If I were not a Frenchman, I should wish to be an Englishman.’ Palmerston replied, ‘If I were not an Englishman, I should wish to be an Englishman.’ It has been a privilege to serve in two great institutions: the British army at the macro level, and the one that is even stronger than the British army at a lower level: the Parachute Regiment, an exemplar of the best of the regimental system and cohesion between men in adversity.

The wonderful collection of characters represented in the pages that follow are largely from the annals of airborne forces. To paraphrase Palmerston, if I were not in the British army, I should have wished to be in the British army. And if I were not a paratrooper, I should have wished to be a paratrooper. In my meanderings around the globe and throughout the world of defence, I have had the privilege of not needing to wish on either account.