In Which We Swerve

If you want to start a fight in a British pub, just step up to the bar, next to a Scot of the Gordon Highlanders, and ask the barmaid for a half pint of broken squares.* A similar but more up-to-date casus belli might be to ask a seaman off H.M.S. Churchill about the Battle of Lasola Island.

In August 1941, Prime Minister Churchill visited his namesake vessel, a former U.S. four-stack destroyer, and promised to come aboard again if the Churchill ever sank a U-boat. The destroyer's crew did not forget. One night last June, as the Churchill patrolled off Venezuela, a dark shape loomed ahead. The battle signal sounded. Men sprang to action stations. The Churchill swerved, tried to ram the foe. Luckily, she missed. What looked like a hulking U-boat turned out to be tiny Lasola Island, ten feet high, 200 feet long.

-A slurring reference to the Gordon Highlanders' part in the Battle of Tamai (1884), where the Mahdi's fanatic tribesmen momentarily broke the British defensive squares.

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