In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.
In the mid-nineties, I quit my job as a senior feature writer at ‘The Mail’ on Sunday in the U.K. and became a ‘ghost writer,’ collaborating with politicians, pop stars, psychologists, soldiers and sporting legends who needed help in penning their autobiographies.
Our soldiers have nobly fought to protect freedom since our country’s birth, and have fought to protect those that could not protect themselves, even in foreign lands when called upon.
In the Fall of 1774 & Winter of 1775, I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed ourselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers, and gaining every intelligence of the movements of the Tories.
It sounds strange to say it, but you can be in a war zone and have a lot of fun. Even though war is essentially pain on all sides, human beings have the capacity to enjoy themselves. The soldiers are mostly young people, full of enthusiasm and energy, and that’s an exciting thing for an old guy like me.
Don’t think our soldiers are weak. Give them a free hand, and no power on the earth can defeat them.
It is always an eerie experience to sit among Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers.
I usually play toffs and soldiers, with a sideline in mass murderers.
My son is not wild about going back to Iraq, but he’d sure rather do that than sacrifice all that he and his fellow soldiers have accomplished by leaving too early and inviting chaos.
I met children who want to be social workers, lawyers, doctors, community activists and soldiers so they can help their people rise above still difficult economic circumstances.
Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
Trauma is not the sole province of victims. If that were true, soldiers returning from Afghanistan wouldn’t suffer from PTSD.
I basically wrote five books with ‘Night Soldiers,’ called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.
Still, I love a campaign. I’m never happier than when I’m fighting shoulder to shoulder with our growing army of foot soldiers.
She performed for the Dutch Resistance, not just to raise money but also to entertain people and to take their minds off the horrors they were living through. They would do plays and little musicals, trying to be discreet and not bring the attention of the soldiers.
The soldiers’ last meal is generally served out about five o’clock in the afternoon, sometimes earlier; and a stretch of fourteen hours intervenes between then and breakfast.
Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon.
Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.
Soldiers are the biggest heroes. No one can be a bigger hero than them.
Traveling to the Middle East and playing music for people on the street, for soldiers, for people in hospitals, and for people who lost their homes, and seeing people open up through the experience of music really restored my faith in music, in art, and in culture to change things.
Personally, it was a big honor for me meeting so many families of the fallen soldiers and hearing their stories.
I thought that that mission and the mission of taking care of those soldiers were my priorities, and I stand by the same today. There wasn’t a lot of support for those soldiers.
Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
I have seen heroics – soldiers saving other soldiers’ lives – and horrors.
My calling was first of all to ensure there was peace in the country, because we could easily have gone back to war. In the midst of the country, there were still warlords; there were many child soldiers who had never gone to school – they were part of the social setting – compromises had to be made.
The majority of soldiers and officers of the Soviet Army and the allied armies treated the local population humanely.
With soldiers, their wives are so fundamental in their relationships, and yet there’s this kind of other war happening back in the States, where wives of soldiers don’t quite understand what their husbands have been through, because their husbands won’t really talk about it, and that’s really the hidden war.
9/11 was a deliberate, carefully planned evil act of the long-waged war on the West by Koran-inspired soldiers of Allah around the world. They hated us before George W. Bush was in office. They hated us before Israel existed. And the avengers of the religion of perpetual outrage will keep hating us.
The worst… was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.
The experts who managed the original Marshall Plan say Afghanistan needs a commitment of at least $5 to $10 billion over 5 to 10 years, coupled with occupation forces of 250,000 Allied soldiers to keep the peace throughout the country.
First we attacked the Russian soldiers with our gases, and then when we saw the poor fellows lying there, dying slowly, we tried to make breathing easier for them by using our own life-saving devices on them.
It’s somewhat disquieting that the same parents and educators who are horrified by the notion of child soldiers have bestowed upon ‘The Hunger Games’ a double mantle of critical praise and global bestsellerdom.
And while national military forces have historically resisted the full participation of women soldiers, female talent has found plenty of scope in revolutionary and terrorist groups around the planet.
You have two options when you approach a hostile checkpoint in a war zone, and each is a gamble. The first is to stop and identify yourself as a journalist and hope that you are respected as a neutral observer. The second is to blow past the checkpoint and hope the soldiers guarding it don’t open fire on you.
I investigated post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve been to a unit where people are suffering from it, and I read a lot of literature. I looked at footage of soldiers in the combat zone. I found ‘Restrepo’ to be unbelievably useful.
Combat stress isn’t the only problem for soldiers isolated in Iraq – there are family issues, re-integration issues when soldiers go home on leave, loneliness.
You’d have to put yourself back in the 1960s to understand how separate from the mainstream of American life soldiers felt themselves to be, because we knew that students and others were demonstrating pretty violently against what we were doing.
While researching ‘Horse Soldiers,’ I conducted over 100 interviews in the U.S. and in Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, I walked and studied key sites that appear in the book. I was able to capture not only the Americans’ point of view but the Afghans’ as well.
I made the song ‘Sandese aate hain’ for the soldiers to sing in their bunkers.
Actors are just soldiers who follow commands.
From the depths of the Pacific to the deserts of Iraq, more than a million American soldiers, Airmen, midshipmen, and Marines have laid down their lives for their friends, their families and our nation.
That soldiers do terrible things during wartime should not surprise us.
We managed to put together a compilation that had some creativity to it. In the meantime I was listening to the free radio stations and I noticed that during their war coverage they were playing these songs born out of the Vietnam War that were all critical of the soldiers.
So the whole of war, when you look at it is probably run by professional soldiers, and the rest of them are just recruits, or people who are just forced to join the army.
Ch’in Shih-huang is the first emperor of China. He united seven separate kingdoms into a single nation. He built the Great Wall and was buried with the terra-cotta soldiers. The Chinese have mixed feelings about him. They’re proud of the nation he created, but he was a maniacal tyrant.
U.S. soldiers, with whom I now have more than a passing acquaintance, joke that they track my movements in order to know where they will be deployed next.
Under Donald Trump, our deals will be smarter, our soldiers will have what they need, and our veterans will have what they earned. We will secure our borders, protect our nation. In all this, we will be more serious. And when we do, this nation will start winning again.
For security you need more soldiers, you need more policemen, you need more vehicles, you need more planes, you need more guns, you need more communications.
Music played at weddings always reminds me of the music played for soldiers before they go into battle.
American soldiers wore khaki uniforms during World War II. Men’s khaki trousers became fashionable after the war, as homecoming GI’s decided to continue wearing the soft, comfortable pants in their civilian capacities.
But it’s been a great, humbling – and I’ve been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it’s been the greatest honor of my life.
If any man’s money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can, and will, hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists.
