Quotes About Soldiers

One scandalized British soldier complained that the American riflemen "conceal themselves behind trees etc. till an opportunity presents itself of taking a shot at our advance sentries, which done, they immediately retreat. What an unfair method of carrying on a war!

With a presidential election in the offing, Grant was drawn into a controversy over whether soldiers in the field should be allowed to cast ballots.

In the words of Howell Cobb of Georgia, who helped to create the Confederacy, "The day you make soldiers of [slaves] is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong—but they won't make good soldiers.

May 1780, he had fresh cause to meditate on the failings of Congress when news came of a calamitous defeat: the British had taken Charleston, capturing an American garrison of 5,400 soldiers, including John Laurens. The year 1780 was to be a dismal one for the patriots.

This early experience made Grant tend to view war as a hard-luck saga of talented, professional soldiers betrayed by political opportunists plotting back in Washington.

The sudden wealth of young businessmen such as Rockefeller fed envy among returning soldiers, who wished to emulate their good fortune.

dark, with a mustache and a deep, resonant voice. In Kamel's opinion, Sadat wore "eccentric clothes"—a dark gray suit, a red-checked waistcoat, and an especially notable pair of white leather shoes, quite an outfit for a man on the run. Sadat immediately understood how he could employ Kamel's little "murder society," as he called it. Shooting a handful of British soldiers

Both were military. That was clear.Reacher could tell by their haircuts. No civilian barber would be as pragmatic or as brutal.

But you think it because you don't trust your colleagues. Not all of them. You don't believe in them. Which leaves you isolated. It's all down to you. But the army is different. Whatever else is wrong with it, you can trust your brother soldiers. And believe in them.

He was listed as right-handed. The army needed to know that because bolt-action sniper rifles are made for right-handers. Left-handed soldiers don't usually get assigned as snipers. Pigeonholing starts on day one in the military.

Infantry. That stuff matters over there.

Annoyed that although outlawed in Rome, astrology was nevertheless alive and well, Cicero noted that at Cannae in 216 B.C., Hannibal, leading about 50,000 Carthaginian and allied troops, crushed the much larger Roman army, slaughtering more than 60,000 of its 80,000 soldiers. "Did all the Romans who fell at Cannae have the same horoscope?" Cicero asked. "Yet all had one and the same end.

All the time they were playing the Queen never left off quarrelling with the other players, and shouting 'Off with his head!' or 'Off with her head!' Those whom she sentenced were taken into custody by the soldiers, who of course had to leave off being arches to do this, so that by the end of half an hour or so there were no arches left, and all the players, except the King, the Queen, and Alice, were in custody and under sentence of execution.

I want to practice my marksmanship," she said. "Touch those rifles and I'll tan your hide," Caleb warned. Lily squared her shoulders. "I'll just have to do it on my own, I guess. Though I daresay there are plenty of soldiers on this post who would be glad to help me." Caleb had poured himself a drink, and the look in his eyes was deadly. "I'll personally horsewhip the man who tries," he said in a dangerous undertone. Lily

I'd rather have ten soldiers to guard than a single scholar.

This was Special Forces' rule number one: let men experience failure so they never fail again. And by failing, they will learn how to be successful soldiers.

With soldiers coming home, trained to shoot guns, there was a marked increase in hunting and fishing. Many veterans wanted to take a well-earned month or two for recreation. In 1945, eight million hunting licenses were issued, an increase of one million licenses since the start of the war.

Worse, the Nazis turned the blitzkrieg soldiers into an army of supermen, plying them liberally with crystal meth—speed—in pill form, shipping thirty-five million tablets to their three million troops. This drug allowed soldiers to advance for days without sleep, dulled their sense of empathy, made them feel euphoric and invincible, and turned them into aggressive, reckless killing machines.

How many times had politicians, elected solely on charisma and domestic policy expertise, made tragic blunders, totally avoidable tragic blunders, leaving the soldiers in the field to twist in the winds of political expediency? Spilling

Dress it as we may, feather it, daub it with gold, huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?

I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. I now close my military career and just fade away.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

At the gatehouse of the town cemetery, a sign said, "All persons using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost rigor of the law." This sign had been put up long before the war came to Gettysburg. The words were ignored by soldiers on both sides for the next three days.

The U.S. Armed Forces are the best trained, best equipped fighting forces in the world.