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41 " Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields. "
― Winston S. Churchill , Memoirs of the Second World War
42 " She died in my arms saying, “I don’t want to die.” That is what death is like. It doesn’t matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn’t matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore. "
― Jonathan Safran Foer , Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
43 " For the senior officers in Iraq, at least in 2005-2006, the responsibility was to the men at the top, the media, the message, the public back home - anything and everything, it seemed, but the soldiers under their command. And that's the ultimate betrayal of Iraq, the one that disillusioned me in Baghdad and Nineveh and keeps me outraged today. "
― Luis Carlos Montalván , Until Tuesday: A Wounded Warrior and the Golden Retriever Who Saved Him
44 " The grand castle in Cartigo, the capital city of Cierith, stood high against the full moon and cast a heavy shadow across the city. The forest surrounding the city whispered eerily throughout the night, and the townspeople bolted their doors shut in fear of the soldiers who patrolled the streets looking for an excuse to arrest someone. The man responsible for this tyranny, on the other hand, sat comfortably on his stolen throne and ruled the land with an iron fist. "
― Brittany Comeaux , Deliverance
45 " Soon I was weeping---for the reservists who put their entire lives on hold when called to duty, for the military mothers who had to keep their families together all alone, for the parents, spouses, sons, and daughters who were beset with worry, for Mike, and for the soldiers who would never come home. I only meant to buy a shower curtain, and now, quite unexpectedly, right when I least wanted it, months of pent-up loneliness, fear, and frustration were pouring out in an endless churn of hot, silent tears. "
― Lily Burana , I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles
46 " Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August.I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of.Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'.Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means.So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of h "
47 " But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical military parlance, reflecting the ever more precise and technically removed means of killing, the 'enemy' becomes the 'target'. But for the soldiers who personally 'engage' these 'targets', these objects are colloquially 'slotted', 'dropped', 'hit', 'fragged', 'sawn in half', 'smashed' or just plain 'shot'.Then the soldier will have achieved the noun of a 'kill'. The author's supposition is that such words are used by the soldier in combat as an attempt to mentally dissociate himself from the reality of his actions, so he can continue to operate as a soldier - and perhaps, when all is finally said and done, as a human being back home. "
― Jake Wood , Among You: The Extraordinary True Story of a Soldier Broken By War
48 " Hundreds of men crowded the yard, and not a one among them was whole. They covered the ground thick as maggots on a week old carcass, the dirt itself hardly anywhere visible. No one could move without all feeling it and thus rising together in a hellish contortion of agony. Everywhere men moaned, shouting for water and praying for God to end their suffering. They screamed and groaned in an unending litany, calling for mothers and wives and fathers and sisters. The predominant color was blue, though nauseations of red intruded throughout. Men lay half naked, piled on top of one another in scenes to pitiful to imagine. Bloodied heads rested on shoulders and laps, broken feet upon arms. Tired hands held in torn guts and torsos twisted every which way. Dirty shirts dressed the bleeding bodies and not enough material existed in all the world to sop up the spilled blood. A boy clad in gray, perhaps the only rebel among them, lay quietly in one corner, raised arm rigid with a finger extended, as if pointing to the heavens. His face was a singular portrait of contentment among the misery. Broken bones, dirty white and soiled with the passing of hours since injury, were everywhere abundant. All manner of devices splinted the damaged and battered limbs: muskets, branches, bayonets, lengths of wood or iron from barns and carts. One individual had bone splinted with bone: the dried femur of a horse was lashed to his busted shin. A blind man, his eyes subtracted by the minié ball that had enfiladed him, moaned over and over “I’m kilt, I’m kilt! Oh Gawd, I’m kilt!” Others lay limp, in shock. These last were mostly quiet, their color unnaturally pale. It was agonizingly humid in the still air of the yard. The stink of blood mixed with human waste produced a potent and offensive odor not unlike that of a hog farm in the high heat of a South Carolina summer. Swarms of fat, green blowflies everywhere harassed the soldiers to the point of insanity, biting at their wounds. Their steady buzz was a noise straight out of hell itself, a distress to the ears. "
― Edison McDaniels , Not One Among Them Whole: A Novel of Gettysburg
49 " I knew right then and there that I would become as courageous as I needed in order to keep him safe. I thought of the soldiers and bullets that I hid from in Asmara. I would stand and fight them to keep Fili safe. "
― , Become Courageous Abeba: A Story of Love, Loss, War and Hope
50 " You led the soldiers right to my family's door. You're the reason they're dead. "
― Marie Lu , Prodigy (Legend, #2)
51 " Screams and laughter simultaneously rent the air. Women were being physically harassed by the soldiers who had just killed their husbands, fathers and brothers. After the battle, men would win but the women always lost. "
― Sandeep Sharma , Let The Game Begin
52 " The macabre who lived through the war have a story they loved to tell about the soldiers of the Foreign Legion giving a ball in the expanses around Verdun and dancing with the corpses. Alabama's continued brewing of the poisoned filter for a semiconscious banquet table, her insistence on the magic and glamor of life when she was already feeling its pulse like the throbbing of an amputated leg, had something of the same sinister quality. "
― Zelda Fitzgerald , Save Me the Waltz
53 " Twenty-three D," he said, as a boarding-pass spooled from a different slot. He pulled her passport out and handed it to her, along with her ticket and the boarding pass. " Gate fifty-two, blue concourse. Checking anything?" " No." " Passengers who've cleared security may be subject to noninvasive DNA sampling," he said, the words all run together because he was only saying it because it was the law that he had to.She put her passport and ticket away in the special pocket inside her parka. She kept the boarding pass in her hand. She went looking for the blue concourse. She had to go downstairs to find it, and take one of those trains that was like an elevator that ran sideways. Half an hour later she was through security, looking at the seals they'd put on the zippers of her carry-on. They looked like rings of rubbery red candy. She hadn't expected them to do that; she'd thought she could find a pay-station in the departure lounge, link up, and give the club an update. They never sealed her carry-on when she went to Vancouver to stay with her uncle, but that wasn't really international, not since the Agreement.She was riding a rubber sidewalk toward Gate 52 when she saw the blue light flashing, up ahead. Soldiers there, and a little barricade. The soldiers were lining people up as they came off the sidewalk. They wore fatigues and didn't seem much older than the guys at her last school." Shit," she heard the woman in front of her say, a big-haired blond with obvious extensions woven in. "
54 " Cheers for the sailors that fought on the wave for it Cheers for the soldiers that always were brave for it Tears for the men that went down to the grave for it Here comes the Flag! "
55 " Brains will always conquer brawn, in the end. The soldiers can flex their muscles all they want, but the well-thought-out tactics of the generals are what win the war. "
56 " In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one. "
57 " The whole point of me doing a Christmas record and what I centered it around was the song 'Christmas with You' from the point-of-view of the soldiers in Iraq. "
58 " I didn't get into writing to make money or get famous or any of that. I got into it to hit hearts, and man, when I get letters not just from the soldiers but from their kids, especially their kids, it makes it all worthwhile. "
59 " The Israeli public's willingness to enlist, the warm embrace for the soldiers and the residents of the south, and the desire to contribute and to give at any given moment really warm the heart, and it gives all of us strength. "
60 " Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy. "
