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A Regimental Motto (Robert Gibbs, USA, 04/11/17 1:45 pm)My Regiment's motto is Primus aut nullus.
My personal motto has been ...I need more coffee and a good cigar.
JE comments: I Googled Primus aut nullus (First or not at all) and found this insignia for the US First Field Artillery Regiment, of which Bob Gibbs is a retired Lt Colonel. Now all we need is an insignia for Coffee and a Good Cigar.
Send more mottos! I've always been intrigued by Stanford's German motto (Die Luft der Freiheit weht). Here's a question nobody will know without Googling. What other US university has a German motto? I would have guessed Johns Hopkins, which was founded on the German educational model, but I would have been wrong. The JH motto is mundanely Latinate: Veritas vos liberabit.
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More Mottos
(John Heelan, -UK
04/13/17 4:04 AM)
RAF: "Per Ardua ad Astra" (sometime changed by RAF conscripts versed in Classics (like me) to "Ad culus per asbestos" (or "Fireproof your ass!").
Royal Artillery (formal): "Ubique Quo Fas Et Gloria Ducunt."
RA (informal) according to my father--a long term professional RA soldier: "llegitimi non carborundum" (Don't let the bastards grind you down!").
Isle of Wight motto ""All this beauty is of God."
JE comments: Ad culus per asbestos should be the motto of modern workplaces everywhere: CYA. I always assumed that "asbestos" was an Arabic word, but its origins are Greek: unquenchable.
John, if I may ask: did your father sacrifice his hearing to the Royal Artillery? This was the fate of most artillerymen.
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Deafness: Fate of the Artilleryman
(John Heelan, -UK
04/14/17 6:52 AM)
John E asked me, "Did your father sacrifice his hearing to the Royal Artillery? This was the fate of most artillerymen."
No--his hearing was probably saved by his being seconded to Infantry units at various stages in WWII to act as "spotters" for artillery bombardments. However, one of my university friends was an ex-Lt Commander (Guns) Royal Navy, whose inevitable deafness forced him to sit in the front row for all lectures.
He put me in my place once when we were travelling by coach somewhere and the coach door kept springing open. I ribbed him, saying that he should fix it as I thought all sailors automatically carried a knife and a piece of string in their pockets at all times. Upon which, he produced a piece of string and a penknife and secured the coach door. As Punch punchlines at the end of its jokes often commented, "Collapse of stout party!" It was true in this case!
JE comments: Col. Robert Gibbs of the US First Field Artillery wrote that he has a hearing aid to prove it. The artilleryman's disease, Bob quips, is known as "gunnereia."
I would think a Navy gunner would be at an even greater risk of hearing loss, with the enclosed spaces and all that metal for the sound to bounce around.
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Deafness: Fate of the Artilleryman
(John Heelan, -UK
04/14/17 6:52 AM)