#soldier

I took the thin magazine from the pouch in front of me and began to thumb through it. I felt self-conscious, as if I shouldn't be there. My mind began to wander, as I knew it would, back to the boonies. I was on patrol again. Monaco was on point. Peewee and Walowick followed him. Lobel and Brunner were next, then Johnson, the sixty cradled in his arm as if it were a child. We were walking the boonies, past rice paddies, toward yet another hill. I was in the rear, and for some reason I turned back. Behind me, trailing the platoon, were the others. Brew, Jenkins, Sergeant Dongan, Turner, and Lewis, the new guys, and Lieutenant Carroll. I knew I was mixing my prayers, but it didn't matter. I just wanted God to care for them, to keep them whole. I knew they were thinking about me and Peewee. ↗

— Walter Dean Myers

#fallen-angels #my-feels #soldiers #vietnam #war

I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive. ↗

— Guy Sajer

#fortune #life #love #soldier #survive

The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them. ↗

— Guy Sajer

#humanity #soldier #war #world-war-ii #world-war-ii

Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#germany #indignation #inspirational #literature #reality

I've spent enough time with soldiers to know that once they get to know you and they loosen up and become themselves, they are some of the biggest hams and most charismatic, cocky, fun, humorous guys I've ever met. ↗

— Peter Berg

#biggest #charismatic #cocky #enough #ever

Being a soldier, fighting for this country, is neither Republican nor Democrat. ↗

— Max Cleland

#country #democrat #fighting #neither #nor

Much as soldiers come back, they've been in combat or the edge of it and suddenly that adjustment back to civilian life is a real challenge. ↗

— Mark Dayton

#back #been #challenge #civilian #combat

When we got down from the ambulances there were sharp cracks about us as bursts of shrapnel splashed down upon the Town Hall square. Dead soldiers lay outside and I glanced at them coldly. We were in search of the living. ↗

— Philip Gibbs

#bursts #coldly #cracks #dead #down

It wasn't a new idea. During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers. ↗

— Hanoi Hannah

#broadcast #during #french #had #idea

Here's a news flash: No soldier gives his life. That's not the way it works. Most soldiers who make a conscious decision to place themselves in harm's way do it to protect their buddies. They do it because of the bonds of friendship - and it goes so much deeper than friendship. ↗

— Eric Massa

#bonds #buddies #conscious #conscious decision #decision