Painting With Words

… He was clean-shaven, thin-lipped, and deeply religious, with untidy gray hair, small eyes, and – one American officer noted – “an air of grinning preoccupation.” He was said to lack “the jutting chin that gives force to personality”; a British acquaintance wrote that “he looks more like a moderately successful surgeon” than a soldier … Certainly he was the sort of gauche, abrasive Scot invariably described as “dour.” A sardonic subordinate nicknamed him Sunshine, while his American code name was GROUCH. Fluent in French and Italian, he could be silent in any language. Even his rare utterances were to remain private: he soon threatened to expel from North Africa any correspondent who quoted him.

- An Army at Dawn by Rick Atkinson, page 173


A whole book-worth’s description of Lieutenant General Kenneth A.N. Anderson, commander of the British First Army in Algiers, November 1942, in a half-dozen well-honed sentences.