Military Service and Death
In June 1940 Steer joined the British Army and led an Ethiopian Forward Propaganda unit when British troops began to fight Italian troops in the country. After the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia in 1941, Steer was influential in restoring Haile Selassie to the throne. Later Steer was sent to India to lead a Field Propaganda Unit in Bengal. The unit tried to break Japanese morale by loudspeakers with speeches and sentimental music.
George Steer died in the crash of an Army Jeep, which he was driving, in Burma on 25 December 1944.
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Famous quotes containing the words military, service and/or death:
“The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.”
—Sean O’Casey (1884–1964)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)
“To die, to sleep—
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to—’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream. Ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)