Once upon a time, the English were not poncey fucks who were assumed to be buggering boys at private school...
Meet Major Digby Tatham-Warter. During Market Garden, he led a bayonet charge wearing a bowler hat and carrying an umbrella.
He believed that radio calls were unreliable, so he trained his battalion to use bugle calls from the Napoleanic wars... and during Market Garden when the wrong crystals were installed in all the British radios... his soldiers communicated with bugles.
He used his umbrella to save a Chaplin... using it to cover a withdrawl. And disabled a German armored car by poking his umbrella through the drivers slit, blinding the driver... and forcing the crew to surrender.
Captured after being wounded at Arnhem, he jumped out of a hospital window... rounded up another 150 or so British troops and escaped with the help of the 101st... back to Allied lines.
For all this... he was denied a VC... but got a DSO. Sort of like a kiss from a cousin.
After the war, he helped put down the MauMau rebellion. And helped the Safari industry take off in Africa in the 1950's.
There are still Englishmen like this... Most of them live near the boathouse.
Never be conventional...
Sirhr