Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser

The 12 books featuring Flashman feature some of the major engagements of the 19th century: the slave trade in Flash for Freedom (1971) the charge of the Light Brigade in Flashman at the Charge (1973) the Indian mutiny in Flashman in the Great Game (1975) Custer's last stand in Flashman and the Redskins (1982) the opium wars in Flashman and the Dragon (1985) and the raid by the abolitionist John Brown, on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in Flashman and the Angel of the Lord (1994).

Ten pages of notes again told the casual reader that he was getting much true historical gen among the comic cuts.īismarck and Schleswig-Holstein aside, Fraser's real interests were the British empire, the American civil war and the wild west. The book also featured Lola Montez, the fabulous beauty of the age, and her lover Ludwig I of Bavaria. Flashy gives the reader the true story, involving Bismarck and the Schleswig-Holstein affair. The idea was that Hope had used Flashman's adventures to invent the tale of Rudolf Rassendyll, the Englishman who was the double of the king of Ruritania. This was a double literary conceit, with Flashman, a character from one Victorian novel, getting involved in the plot of another, Anthony Hope's 1894 classic The Prisoner of Zenda. It was turned down a dozen times before Herbert Jenkins, the small independent house best known for publishing PG Wodehouse, brought it out.įraser followed it the next year with Royal Flash. The book's title is a quotation from Rudyard Kipling's 1890 poem ' Gunga Din', and is ironic since Fraser certainly was not 'quartered safe out here', while serving in Burma during one of the final campaigns of the war.It is hard now, with Flashman recognised as an international comic classic, to believe that Fraser had difficulty getting the book published. Fraser's book has also been praised by the English author Melvyn Bragg and the American playwright David Mamet. The military historian Sir John Keegan wrote: 'There is no doubt that it is one of the great personal memoirs of the Second World War.' Keegan gives similar praise to Norman Lewis' Naples '44 memoir, later produced as a movie.

This included his participation in the Battle of Meiktila and Mandalay and the Battle of Pokoku and Irrawaddy River operations. It describes in graphic and memorable detail Fraser's experiences as a 19-year-old private in The Border Regiment, fighting with the British 14th Army against the Imperial Japanese Army, during the latter stages of the Burma Campaign in late 19.

Quartered Safe Out Here was first published in 1993.

Quartered Safe Out Here: A Recollection of the War in Burma is a military memoir of World War II by George MacDonald Fraser, the author of The Flashman Papers series of novels.

Quartered Safe Out Here by George MacDonald Fraser