Sir George John Younghusband

In all his years of soldiering at home and abroad, Major-General George Younghusband had never heard British soldiers talk like those in Kipling’s tales.

‘Tommy Atkins’ is the name given to the average British foot-soldier in the Great War. He is affectionately pictured as chirpy and a trifle insubordinate, always up to some lark, but brave as a lion when required. Major General Sir George Younghusband was in no doubt that Tommy was a literary fiction, but one that had become a living fact, and also that Rudyard Kipling had created him.

Read