Quotes About Warfare

More than 700 million artillery and mortar rounds were fired on the Western Front between 1914 and 1918, of which an estimated 15 percent failed to explode. Every year these leftover shells kill people—36 in 1991 alone, for instance, when France excavated the track bed for a new high-speed rail line.

The French government employs teams of démineurs, roving bomb-disposal specialists, who respond to calls when villagers discover shells; they collect and destroy 900 tons of unexploded munitions each year. More than 630 French démineurs have died in the line of duty since 1946. Like those shells, the First World War itself has remained in our lives, below the surface, because we live in a world that was so much formed by it and by the industrialized total warfare it inaugurated.

when the barrage reached its crescendo, 224,221 shells in the last 65 minutes, the rumble could be heard as far away as Hampstead Heath in London. More shells were fired by the British this week than they had used in the first 12 months of the war; some gunners bled from the ears after five days of nonstop firing.

Looming over this entire story is one of the most enigmatic of American presidents. A visionary internationalist, he staked his political fortune on his hopes for the League of Nations, where countries would settle their disputes by negotiation instead of warfare. Yet he presided over the greatest assault on American civil liberties in the last century and a half. And, despite his skill as an orator and writer, he showed few regrets over that contradiction

Of the 120,000 British troops who went into battle on July 1, 1916, more than 57,000 were dead or wounded before the day was over—nearly two casualties for every yard of the front. Nineteen thousand were killed, most of them within the attack's first disastrous hour, and some 2,000 more who were badly wounded would die in hospitals later.

The tank suffered, too, from the era's strange mismatch between firepower and communications: it carried no radio, only homing pigeons, which could be pushed out a small opening in hopes they would fly back to headquarters.

The total of British dead and wounded at Passchendaele, officially the Third Battle of Ypres, is in dispute, but a low estimate puts the number at 260,000; most reckonings are far higher.

every shell fired at the Boers, Lloyd George thundered, carried away with it an old-age pension.

et lorsque les armées victorieuses d'Annibal et de ses puissants alliés semblaient devoir apporter à Rome, d'un moment à l'autre, la destruction ou la servitude.

One day the fighter pilot guided from the ground will chase, at supersonic speed, the atom-bomb carrier for scores of miles high up in the stratosphere. But science must not become an aim in itself. Only the spirit of attack borne in a brave heart will bring a success to any fighter aircraft, no matter how highly developed it may be.

Commander against commander, brother against brother, enemy against enemy, I will take my stand. Quick, bring my greaves to protect against spears and stones!

With a shock, the trooper who had arrived to render aid to his fallen comrade recognized the one whose life was now bleeding out inside his armor. They had trained together. Shared meals, stories, experiences together. Now they were sharing death together.

As all foot soldiers have known for thousands of years, there's nothing noble about dying. Only an irritating finality.

When it's done, only our enemies leave roses.

War is delightful to those who have not experienced it.

War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.

In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.

British antiaircraft units stationed at the field, and that was the first time I'd ever seen any real emotion from a limey. They actually had tears in their eyes. You could see that they felt like hell standing there watching us go into battle even though

later learned that the aircraft carrying Lieutenant Thomas Meehan, 1st Sergeant William Evans, and most of the headquarters element, flew steadily onward, and then did a slow wingover to the right. The plane's landing lights came on as it approached the ground. It appeared they were going to make it, but the aircraft hit a hedgerow and exploded, instantly killing everyone on board. If I survived the jump, I would be the company commander.

one-quarter of the world's land surface changed hands between 1876 and 1915,

overwhelmed the Scots. The Prince's lack of skill as a commander

In his mind's eye, though, he sees— —Taliban moving like scorpions across a similar landscape his own caravan blown to shit blood streaming from buddies Now I'm one of them He sights in again. No time for Lack of PTSD He only hopes that Gentle Ben Increase-the-Peace Ben is one of them, too, now. Now, Ben. Find your inner Taliban.

Conquistaron el fuerte, utilizando morteros y cargas explosivas de gran potencia, mataron a sesenta soldados y capturaron al resto. Las FARC cortaron la principal autopista que comunica los distritos del sudoeste con el resto del país.

Sighted sub, sank same.