Martin O'Malley

used to send my mother food parcels during WWII. He looks a WASP type, doesn't he.

She'd been a captain in the RAF, herself, commissioned with Wavell's daughter, so my leaving the army as a kind of Duane Doberman-career doppelganger, Private II Class in the Motor Pool, must have been a disappointment to her. I aimed low and didn't quite get there, I suppose. But I think she must have got most of her disappointment out of her system though, when she read one of my school reports. Well, she quite tearfully reproached me for it, and I felt pretty bad about that.

PS: Ho Chi Minh being my cousin was in another incarnation. When his mother hissed at me really venomously and told me that I'd be the last person she'd consult about her son's future career prospects. She'd set her heart on him becoming head waiter, or even Maitre D at that French hotel he'd been waitering at. But you know... And the cream of the joke was she was convinced I was always the one who led her Little Lord Fauntleroy into trouble! How about that! The big, bad guerrilla leader being led by the nose by Duane!