Subject: LMF - I thought you'd never ask
From: Robert Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Apr 26 2002 - 03:18:59 EDT
He was a cocky little Welsh shit, with hand-stitched suits
& silvery winged hair & a lot of discreet gold accessories:
cuff links & cigar cutters & propelling pencils & so on.
Eventually, I think, he became one of the Knight Physicians
to the Queen.
During the war - which was long before I knew him - he'd
been appointed to the RAF psychiatric branch as a civilian
neurological consultant because of his research work on head
injuries. This involved strapping a monkey into a chair & then
knocking him out with the carefully calibrated swing of a lead
weight on a pendulum. Years later, he would reduce his more
sycophantic students to giddy laughter re-enacting the way
the monkey, having learned the cause of his suffering, would try
to twist round to see when the blow was about to fall.
He was very exuberant & had many similar jokes.
He was eventually - God knows why - consulted on more genuinely
psychiatric matters, such as the failing morale of bomber crews
whose job it was to fry several thousand Huns every night until
their own fortitude failed or they were themselves fried.
This was, on average, around the twelfth night. In the old days,
of course, we executed those where the first event preceded
the second. But now the proceedure was to demote the culprit,
post him immediately to the most remote, uninviting station available
& stamp his medical documents with the code that would brand
him for the rest of his time in the service - & in his own mind,
no doubt, ever after.
Denis - for that was his name - was the bloke who came up with
the code. 'We probably can't call them cowards,' he said. 'What
they're really suffering from is a Lack of Moral Fibre.' And so
it was established: LMF. The set of initials any member of
the Royal Air Force dreads the most.
What a pleasure it is to recall the one or two occasions I was able
to put him down. But, then, my own intrepidity was not being put
to the test, nor was my career in any way dependent on his goodwill.
I still can't forget the good men, braver than him by several
wing-spans, whose reputation he laughingly fouled up.
He's long dead & gone, of course. But if I were Dante I'd have spent
many a happy hour trying to decide in which of my Circles he truly
belonged.
Scottie B.
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