Silver bullet

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In such conditions, a sense of hopelessness overwhelmed many soldiers, leading them to believe that every incoming shell was inscribed with a man’s name. In the soldiers’ imagination, such a fate might be averted by having one’s name already engraved on a talismanic bullet — an especially poignant kind of trench art.

— Trench Art: A brief History and guide, 1914-1939, by Nicholas J Saunders.

It is said that combat troops would often carry with them a single bullet with their own name engraved on it. A superstitious amulet; a warder-offer of the soldier's deepest fear: the bullet with my name on it can't hurt me, because I’ve got it."

In financial services we have silver bullets, too. They are (frail) flesh and blood; they are survivors, the bullshit artists, who manage somehow to hang-on clutching dogged lichen to any rock on which they can anchor their mortal coil in the most inhospitable climes. He — who shall remain nameless, because I really don’t want to hex him — is my succour and my prayer for relief: as long as he is here, may own days may yet be without number, and my grim comfort is the belief that there is at least one warm body between me and the wall I will eventually be lined up and shot against.

The fact that this chap is still here while so many betters have fallen should give the lie to my belief of course.