ABSTRACT
To begin with, both my father and my mother were “fearless ones.” My father was decorated for bravery in WWI but, more importantly, he carried an aura of fearlessness about him. My mother lived in a tent just behind the front lines when my father was a front-line officer. My father assigned two troopers to look after her and each day the three of them would ride across the recent battlefield where they would locate the dead for the burial details. … My mother died when I was 4 and my father later married an ex-Army nurse. She was tough as nails and very quick tempered, frequently hitting me … I got pretty fed up with this sort of treatment and, one day when I was about 9, she hit me a vicious backhander across the face; I stood perfectly still with, I hope, no expression on my face but rather defying her to hit me again, looking her straight in the eye. She raised her hand again and I stood perfectly still, then her eyes widened and she snapped “Oh you are a little devil, get out of my sight!” and she never hit me again. It was a very good lesson for me as I later won several fights with bigger boys because I wouldn’t show any fear or give up or show any pain when I was hit. When I boxed in the navy I sometimes lowered my guard and let my opponent hit me in the face because I found it discouraged them when they found they apparently couldn’t hurt me.
