But its commander lay dead in the dirt beside him, the troops were fleeing and, from a mud building in front, the 26-year-old British officer was being raked by Taliban fire.His response, for which Lieutenant Illingworth received Britain's second-highest award for gallantry, was to grab the dead Afghan's grenade-launcher and fight back.
He replied with the gallantry, flirtatiousness and sheer cheek for which he was famous: "I am always ready, sweetie".
He is eloquent on subjects from the gallantry of the "Glorious Glosters" staving off the Chinese hordes at Imjin in Korea to the undersung heroism of North Sea oilmen.
But before that it was "a cemetery where thousands are buried, with heroism and gallantry on both sides".
Congress is not about to relinquish its say in foreign policy: which means that Mr Clinton's gallantry in Mexico will be tempered by ruder voices that trundle in his wake.
At the launch of his book, "Britain's Everyday Heroes", and as floods in central and southern England threw up countless examples of quiet gallantry and solidarity, the prime minister said that more should be done to celebrate such unsung service.
As Mr Menoret discovers, their peculiar blend of motorised daredevilry, Bedouin gallantry, joyful homoeroticism and petty criminality is more than a product of boredom, testosterone and cheap petrol.
Assuming gallantry would take precedence over tactical advantage, he sent a note of exquisite politeness to the captain of an American frigate, challenging him to sail out to engage him in battle, since "we are short of provisions and water, and cannot stay here for long".
Accordingly, Matthew Warchus, the director, honours the quality of gamesmanship implicit in the very title "Endgame", turning Sir Michael Gambon's Hamm and Lee Evans's Clov into vaudevilleans who, separately and together, must face down a considerable void.The two men do so with gallantry and grace, a sly wit and very real wisdom.
No newspaper printed his gallantry about the 62-year-old Mrs Albright.
A memorial plaque to this fiasco, hailing the gallantry of those involved, hangs in Carisbrooke Castle, just below the room where local bigwigs locked Charles I after the civil war.
