Dad's Lesson, On Amateurs and Professionals, Leadership at Monte Cassino

My father was in the American army that was held up for months before Monte Cassino. He had found a feather bed in a ruined farmhouse and dragged it into his foxhole. One day the American Colonel, a fearless man who had been a bank Vice President when the war started and who was ready to volunteer his men for anything as long as he remained two miles behind the lines, showed up with the British General. That was probably Alexander as the British were in command in the Mediterranean. The Colonel exploded at my father, threatening to put him on report and demanding that everything be cleaned up according to regulations. After the Colonel went off to make someone else miserable the English General, whose family had probably been doing that job for hundreds of years, came over with his swagger stick in one hand and his monocle in the other. He peered at my father's foxhole and raised his stick and cried out, "That's the spirit man. Forage man. Forage."