friend to friendless

[Ria Yue]

Мне просто так нравится контраст

Джек О’Коннелл в "Северных водах" —

Джек О’Коннелл в "Северных водах" —

Джек О’Коннелл в "SAS" —

Джек О’Коннелл в "SAS" —


Похоже на новую любовь)

Пара выкладок для себя из книги SAS: Brothers in Arms —

Standing six-­feet-­two-­inches tall and built like the powerful rugby player that he was, Lieutenant Robert Blair Mayne was blessed with a shock of sandy hair above laughing, slightly mocking grey-­blue eyes. Though he was only twenty-­six years old, Mayne was a comparative veteran in No. 11 Commando, for the average age of the officers was just twenty-­one. Working as a qualified solicitor before the war, he’d earned a towering reputation as a world-­class sportsman – he was the 1936 Irish Universities heavyweight boxing champion, and a rugby player of international acclaim. Selected multiple times for both the Irish team and the British Lions, his ‘quiet, almost ruthless efficiency’ on the field, combined with his ability to play on through injury had won him high praise.
<...>
Fortunately, the founder of No. 11 Commando had seen something quite different in Mayne’s spirited, somewhat irregular approach to soldiering. Indeed, those very ‘unruly’ qualities – recast as self-­possession, independence and initiative – were just the kind of things valued in the commandos, Churchill’s much-­vaunted ‘butcher and bolt’ raiders.
<...>
Oddly perhaps, for a figure with such a tough reputation on the sporting field and in the boxing ring, Mayne was rarely to be seen without a book close to hand, more often than not a collection of works by his favourite poets – James Elroy Flecker, Omar Khayyam and Siegfried Sassoon. Indeed, he’d been something of a shy child, his head forever stuck in novels. As his physique had matured he’d earned the reputation at school of being a gentle giant. For sure, Mayne was a complex, multi-­faceted character.



И про Оуэна —
(в сериале он не то чтобы оставил меня равнодушной, совсем нет, но с ним пришлось слишком рано проститься, а я не большой фанат посмертных пейрингов)

He shared that duty with another young recruit and crack shot, who likewise was commanding a troop of heavily laden commandos that June morning. Fellow Irishman Lieutenant Eoin (pronounced ‘Ian’) McGonigal was dark-­haired, dark-­eyed, strikingly handsome, whippet-­fit and fleet of foot. Though he was six years Mayne’s junior, they had struck up a close friendship, one forged in and around the rugby fields of Belfast, at Queen’s University’s various bars, and absolutely irrevocably when they had decided to volunteer for No. 11 Commando, hungering for action.
On paper, their camaraderie appeared all the more remarkable in that McGonigal was a southern Irish Catholic, and Mayne was a Northern Irish Protestant. But frankly, neither man put much store in niggling sectarianism, especially when there was a war to be fought, and particularly when that war was going so very badly for Great Britain, then the only world power still standing against the fire and vitriol and the blitzkrieg emanating from Berlin. On many levels the two friends were strikingly different – ‘like chalk and cheese’, as a fellow soldier would remark. But what united them was their fierce, fiery, rebellious spirit, and their determination to fight the Nazi onslaught, no matter the odds.
McGonigal had the charm of the southern Irish and his taste in ladies was more for blondes, while Mayne favoured the raven-­headed look. McGonigal’s foremost sporting talents lay in both rugby and cricket, while Mayne dominated the rugby field. A teller of ‘tall tales’ and blessed with the gift of the gab, McGonigal’s garrulousness contrasted sharply with Mayne’s quieter, contemplative, still-­waters-­run-­deep mien. Despite being considerably younger, McGonigal ‘was far more eloquent’, remarked Sergeant Joe Welch, a future elite forces comrade, ‘whereas Paddy was more like Ares, the Greek God of War. It was a dangerous combination. Eoin could talk them into all sorts of trouble, and Paddy could get them out of it. A perfect friendship.’
There was one other compelling element that fused the two Irishmen together. McGonigal knew how to handle Mayne in his cups. Known as a soft-­spoken and courteous figure when not on the field of battle – or sports – Mayne’s chief weakness was drink. Realising this, McGonigal was perfectly prepared to take no prisoners. <...> Likewise, on the occasion when Mayne had been drinking and threatened to get out of hand, McGonigal would simply turn a pistol on him. ‘I’ll shoot you, Blair,’ he would threaten. Being the commando’s weapons officers, there was never a shortage of live ammunition lying around their digs, nor youthful high spirits for that matter, and the walls of Landour, the private house in which they were billeted, had ended up peppered with bullet holes.
In short, No. 11 Commando’s two weapons officers exuded a wild martial spirit and a sense of devil-­may-­care invincibility that made those under their command – their ‘Jocks’, as the ranks were known – keen to follow them into the heart of battle. There was another stand-­out quality that united the two Irishmen. The esprit de corps of No. 11 (Scottish) Commando was defined by the saying: ‘Look after your Jocks.’ Few had a stronger sense of care or devotion to those under their command than McGonigal and Mayne, and it hadn’t gone unnoticed by their men.
<...>
During his time with the RUR, Eoin had nurtured a love of writing. This was one of the quiet passions he shared with Blair Mayne, for both cherished a dream of one day becoming writers. Eoin penned short stories with a dramatic, rebellious, romantic bent. In one, the village beauty spurns the offer of marriage and an easy life from a respectable local man, choosing instead to run off with a one-­legged, wild-­eyed, crude-­spoken seaman, who whisks her away with the ‘promise of impassioned argument and adventure’. In another, entitled ‘The Escape’, Eoin’s main protagonist discovers that his wife, a former cabaret dancer, is having a wild love affair with a dashing, Casanova-­type character named . . . Mayne.



И ещё из того, что в ознакомительном куске было —

As a bonus for Mayne, in that Alexandria hospital he met a pretty Irish nurse, who seemed to make it her special duty to nurture this feverish, war-­worn and beguiling young officer who had fallen under her care. Jane Kenny was a thirty-­one-­year-­old Nursing Sister from Longford, a town lying well to the south of the border. She’d been drawn to Mayne’s Irishness, and especially once he loaned her his copy of the Works of Percy French, for she was as homesick as anyone. Mayne asked her to write to his big sister, Barbara, to let her know how he was faring. Now, Mayne was as fine a letter-­writer as any. None better, one could argue. He didn’t need any Irish nurse to pen his missives for him. But as a means to woo Jane Kenny, it was a subtle and endearing come-­on.
Mayne was known to be especially shy with women. As a sixteen-­year-­old, with typical teenage angst, he’d bemoaned in his diary about not being able to compose a decent love letter. His overtures to Jane Kenny seemed to have proven far more effective. In due course she did indeed write to his sister, opening with the line: ‘I’m sure you will be surprised to get a letter from somebody you never heard of – so I must introduce myself.’ After doing just that, she explained that when she had told Mayne ‘how well he looked’, he’d asked her to ‘write and tell my sisters’, because ‘I know they worry about me . . .’