Quotes About Sacrifice

An officer who lost an eye or a limb would receive a year's pay and medical expenses; the widows of officers killed in action would also get a year's pay, plus another third for each child. Those who died of their wounds within six months were "deemed slain in battle." No bonuses were announced for enlisted men.

blared "The Stars and Stripes Forever," clearly audible on the hillcrest, where a lieutenant who was immune to the prevailing confidence of his seniors murmured, "'Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.

Men at War: Best War Stories of All Time.

To make it perfectly clear to you: suppose you lose a hand or an ear is shot off, or perhaps a piece of your nose, and you think you should go back to get first aid. If I see you, it will be the last goddamn walk you'll ever take.

Morale problems could be seen in the decision of nearly ninety U.S. crews in March and April to fly to neutral countries, usually Sweden or Switzerland, to be interned for the duration. The

stirring of epitaphs, "Mort pour la liberté." After viewing a military cemetery near Ste.-Mère-Église, a soldier on August 28 scribbled lines from A. E. Housman in his diary: "The saviors come not home tonight: Themselves they could not save.

Congress also seemed to be moving toward a proclamation of independence. That would give Washington a clear strategic objective, an American definition of victory: formal separation from Britain and the creation of a new nation. Such clarity in war was invaluable. If the country was asked to sacrifice, the purpose would now be evident. If men were asked to die, they would know why.

Ernie Pyle, who was with them as usual, wrote: "They were dead weary, as a person could tell even when looking at them from behind. Every line and sag of their bodies spoke their inhuman exhaustion…. They were young men, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion made them look middle-aged." A sergeant wrote to his family in Iowa: "It'll soon be five months that a pup tent has been our home. Five months since I've even so much as sat at a table while eating.

A priest anointed the body with oil. Slovik would be buried outside a World War I cemetery at Oise-Aisne, near Soissons, in row three of Plot E—a hidden, unsanctified tract reserved for the dishonorable dead. 'Tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.

German general who had fought in both world wars now described the Normandy struggle as "a monstrous blood-mill, the likes of which I have not seen in eleven years of war." Omar Bradley lamented, "I can't afford to stay here. I lose all my best boys. They're the ones who stick their heads through hedges and then have them blown off.

Rick Atkinson

Where, precisely, was Private Anthony N. Marfione when he died on December 24, 1942? What were the last conscious thoughts of Lieutenant Hill P. Cooper before he left this earth on April 9, 1943? Was Sergeant Harry K. Midkiff alone when he crossed over on November 25, 1942, or did some good soul squeeze his hand and caress his forehead? The dead resist such intimacy. The closer we try to approach, the farther they draw back, like rainbows or mirages.

Allen left the academy, graduated from Catholic University, and took a commission in 1912. Wounded at Saint-Mihiel in 1918 and carried from the field on a stretcher, he regained consciousness, ripped off the first-aid tag, and dashed back to rally his men. The next bullet drilled him through the jaw, right to left, but not before he had broken his fist on a German machine-gunner's head.

Few commanders in this war could function without arriving at a sensibility in which thousands of dead and wounded men could be waved away as "insignificant.

When the trucks halted for a moment and GIs tumbled out to urinate in squirming echelons on the road shoulders, civilians rushed up to plead for cigarettes with two fingers pressed to the lips, a gesture described by Forrest Pogue as the French national salute.

In the first half of 1944, battle casualty rates for every 1,000 bomber crewmen serving six months in combat included 712 killed or missing and 175 wounded: 89 percent. By one calculation, barely one in four U.S. airmen completed twenty-five missions over Germany, a minimum quota that was soon raised to thirty and then thirty-five on the assumption that the liberation of France and Belgium and the attenuation of German airpower made flying less lethal.

USS Henry Gibbons.

The woman also tried to save me at lunchtime. We ate salads and fruit and whole-wheat everything, and I was not happy, but I did it for love. I lost a pound.

Talk of making a sacrifice is all fine and well until it is your time to be brought to the altar as an offering.

You do not defeat an enemy by just getting past him. You defeat fear by growing in faith. You defeat despair by growing in hope. You defeat death by growing in life. True life is only lived by those who no longer live for themselves, but for The King, and do all things for His sake and for those He gave His life for.

I stand before you as the governor of Texas but also stand before you the son of two tenant farmers. Ray Perry who came home after 35 bombing missions over Europe to work his little corner of land out there and Amelia who made sure that my sister Milla and I had everything that we needed, included hand sewing my clothes until I went off to college.

Go ahead, kill me! But live with this: All those people die! For the rest of your life, somewhere behind the feeds, that human part of you hiding down deep will always wonder how much pain you could have prevented if you hadn't been so weak!

Love passionately bears with others for as long as patience is needed; love doesn't demand others to be like itself, but is so focused on the needs of others that it bends over backwards to become what others need it to be; love is not ambitious, self-centered, or so consumed with itself that it never thinks of the needs or desires that others possess.…

But the chance of him taking a step toward God was well worth the risk of me feeling rejected. Because it's not about me. It's about God.