Quotes About Soldiers

As castles went, this one looked as though it could be taken by a small squad of not very efficient soldiers. For defence, putting a blanket over your head might be marginally safer.

Yesterday you spoke of power as if it were a good thing. You said you wished we had some kind of magic that could rid us of the Japanese soldiers. I have never seen it used for good. Think of the Japanese soldiers with all their power. It has eroded their hearts and their souls.

Anyone can practice some nonviolence, even soldiers. Some army generals, for example, conduct their operations in ways that avoid killing innocent people; this is a kind of nonviolence.

Grunts on the line, where the enemy wants them dead, still goof off - even knowing that by letting their guard down they might die.

Peas were for pussies. Real soldiers used mashed potato. With extra gravy.

A young American woman I meet has been a UN observer in Kuito for more than a month. She speaks no Portuguese and gladly admits she knows nothing about Angolan history. She is surveying the scene, admiring the tough-looking UNITA soldiers, and suddenly announces, 'I like UNITA's style. They're strict, but they're cool too.' I wonder where the United Nations finds such people for so important an assignment.

But the soldiers would have gladly given up their beds to a woman." "Yes, and I hate them for it." She pushed him away. "It's the arrogance of men that leads them to sacrifice themselves. Not real consideration.

This state of lively tension, the jolly noise that surrounds brides, call to mind that accidentally deafening music and beating of drums by which soldiers are led into mortal combat.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

Are these soldiers really our enemy, or only the worst reflection of our own selves?... We made them. We have to unmake them, not just defeat or kill them.

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right.

Humor can inform and break down stigma, which is a huge issue in the military.

Confederate soldiers were consistently brave, white Southern women were unquestioningly loyal, and "the cause" was indisputably noble.

Nearly all the best soldiers out there, if you scratched the surface, they all had a little bit of psychopath hidden somewhere in there. With some of them, you didn't have to scratch the surface real deep. A completely sane and balanced man is a fish out of water on a battlefield.

More American servicemen were killed in Vietnam in 1968—nearly 17,000—than in any other year of the war.

For untaught soldiers it was rough, and men fought blindly, not knowing what they were doing; an officer came on one man who was loading his musket feverishly, firing straight up into the air, reloading and firing again, an automaton acting entirely by blind instinct.

At other times he just wanted to hold casual conversations that had no military importance at all. The soldiers saw these friendly visits, albeit brief, as evidence that he cared for them.

The numbers seemed overwhelming. By the end of the summer, there were, in fact, four thousand more British soldiers in New York than the entire population of Philadelphia, America's largest city.

It is one of the Texas Revolt's dark little secrets that, even after the Mexican "invasion"—or perhaps because of it—the great mass of Texians and Tejanos wanted nothing to do with Travis or the Alamo or fighting Mexican soldiers. Most had never wanted to revolt in the first place.

BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN.

Police, I learned over the years, are like soldiers, normally good-natured people, but part of a culture of obedience to orders and capable of brutal acts against anyone designated as "the enemy"—in this case, the antiwar movement.

Is there a "national interest" when a few people decide on war, and huge numbers of others—here and abroad—are killed or crippled as a result of such a decision? Should citizens not ask in whose interest are we doing what we are doing? Then why not, I came to think, tell the story of wars not through the eyes of the generals and diplomats but from the viewpoints of the GIs, of the parents who received the black-bordered telegrams, even of "the enemy.

It was a fury that exploded in the soldiers' faces against Great Britain, which was willing to hang one of them for possessing a knife, but couldn't hear the sound of bombs falling on them in broad daylight.

I took a trip in 2004, a year after the war started in Iraq. I played music on the streets of Baghdad for Iraqi civilians. I'd also play for U.S. soldiers at night when they were off duty in the bars. Then I would talk to people, and I would film them and ask them about their life and the conflict.