I think that you can honour the sacrifices of a common soldier without glorifying war.
I remember when I was a private soldier. I remember the days when I was taken care of and when I was not taken care of.
Avoiding combat duty was and is an unforgivable sin for a professional soldier.
Sometimes we might feel that a soldier’s duty is to protect us and he doesn’t have any emotions, but he has. He is vulnerable and close to his family just like us. But what makes him different from us is the fact that he has the will to die so that we are safe.
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
I think women in general, we just soldier on. Whatever it takes, you just have to do it. It’s your job. Whatever it is.
In the final analysis, I believe that an atheist chaplain would be the last person in the world that we would want a dying soldier who needs that last moment counselling in their life.
Somehow I feel a little bit odd in Tiananmen Square because I was a soldier, in a uniform, watching those leaders and tanks, and I was part of them.
There is not a single injustice in Northern Ireland that is worth the loss of a single British soldier or a single Irish citizen either.
Everything starts and finishes with the soldier.
When I was a child, my mother said to me, ‘If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as the Pope.’ Instead, I became a painter and wound up as Picasso.
I would have been a disastrous soldier.
Moreover, broad plans commensurate with our national purpose and resources would bring conviction of our power to every soldier in the front line, to the nations associated with us in the war, and to the enemy.
I always played a soldier, sailor, or policemen.
