Quotes About Military

I've been giving free money seminars for the troops at Walter Reed Hospital and one of the Iraqi War Vets realized that the military wouldn't pay for the dental work he needed.

In fact, the name 'rook' derives from ruhk, the Persian word for chariot. Pawns were footsoldiers, bishops were elephants, knights were mounted cavalry, and speeding along at the edges of the board were the swift and deadly chariots.

Some lasting terms of military organization owe their origin to Spain: colonel comes from cabo de colunela, or head of a column; infantry most likely comes from infante, the name for a Spanish prince, who often led these formations of foot soldiers.

At Arnhem, the British fielded too many gentlemen and not enough players.

In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services—each with its own air force—pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru

The prime principle of employing force in pursuit of national objectives is to ensure that it is effective.

The Russians eventually killed more than 4.5 million German soldiers, while American and British ground and air forces accounted for only about 500,000.

Many more Nazi battlefield triumphs lay ahead, but some generals privy to their Führer's intentions already understood the Third Reich's fundamental difficulty: anything less than hemispheric domination threatened disaster; yet Germany's military and economic capability to achieve this remained questionable.

Between 20 and 23 August, 40,000 French soldiers died. By 29 August, total French casualties since the war began reached 260,000, including 75,000 dead.

William Slim, a shrewd, rugged Gurkha officer who would eventually show himself to be Britain's ablest general of the

Though these had been used earlier in the Spanish Civil War, it was in Finland that the soubriquet "Molotov breadbasket," then "Molotov cocktail," first entered the military lexicon.

The Soviet Union suffered 65 percent of all Allied military deaths, China 23 percent, Yugoslavia 3 percent, the United States and Britain 2 percent each, France and Poland 1 percent each.

One Russian soldier in four died, against one in twenty British Commonwealth combatants and one in thirty-four American servicemen.

David Rees' Korea: The Limited War

Some Americans responded brutally to such docility: in two separate incidents on 14 July, an officer and an NCO of the U.S. 45th Division murdered large groups of Italians in cold blood. One, Sgt. Horace West, who killed thirty-seven with a Thompson submachine gun, was convicted by a court-martial, but later granted clemency. The other, Capt. John Compton, assembled a firing squad which massacred thirty-six Italian prisoners.

Churchill or Roosevelt was he qualified to direct vast military operations. Ignorant of the concept of defence in depth, he rejected strategic retreat.

Possession of armed might can be corrupting: it feeds an itch among those exercising political authority to put it to practical use. Successive Washington administrations have been seduced by the readiness with which they can order a deployment, and see this promptly executed. It is much easier to commit armed forces, especially air power, in pursuit of an objective than to grapple the complexities of social and cultural engagement with an alien people.

Germany's highest commander succumbed to a disease common among senior soldiers of many nationalities and eras: he wished to demonstrate to his government and people that their vastly expensive armed forces could fulfil their fantasies.

Here was a manifestation of a huge, historic British folly, repeated over many centuries including the twenty-first: the adoption of gesture strategy, committing small forces as an earnest of good intentions, heedless of their gross inadequacy for the military purpose at hand.

But although Australia was also involved in the Vietnam conflict, I can remember my dad telling us that if we were in Australia, we wouldn't be drafted until we were 20.

I'm Sgt. Gee Santini of the US Air Force, and we're here to take you home, Ma'am.

The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations, except the revivified courage and resolution, the result of sudden success after despair.

Who was the only U.S. president with less managerial, military, financial, and foreign policy experience than the current one?" Netanyahu, though a proficient historian, looked stumped by the answer: "Abraham Lincoln.

In America, though, where less than half of a percent of the population volunteers for the armed forces, the gap between the military and civilian cultures can be glaring.