Through Stuyvesant, Kowal also takes on, at times pugnaciously, the classism, sexism and racism of the British Army brass of that time period.

“Who the hell says I can’t?” he thundered pugnaciously in a voice loud enough to rattle the whole building.

Rosy and Gosling were pugnaciously assertive: their future course of action would be unaffected by their fifty-mile excursion into adolescent blather.