The British Way Of War

Dashing but modest, understated and self-deprecating — that's the approach to war the British admire most. Even in a conflict that has claimed more British lives than any since the Falklands, Her Majesty's soldiers have a gift for underplaying their daring: the colonel who swaps his helmet for a tam-o'-shanter to walk an az-Zubayr street just liberated from Iraqi control; the sergeant who, after storming a building to rescue two terrified, badly beaten, captive Kenyan drivers, comments: "They were happy to see the boys. They'd had a stressful couple of days." In the same tradition, on Day 14 of the war,...