Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been done.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes unwavering commitment and loyalty to a task, reflecting the values of duty and courage.
John Keegan highlights the profound dedication that soldiers embody when they commit to a mission. This unwavering commitment is characterized by a refusal to compromise, showcasing a deep sense of duty and courage that drives them to prioritize loyalty to others and see their tasks through to completion, regardless of the challenges faced.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a military ceremony to honor the dedication of servicemen and women.
Of whatever class or nation, however, all successful participants in the repetitive and unrelenting stress of aerial fighting came eventually to display its characteristic physiognomy: skeletal hands, sharpened noses, tight-drawn cheek bones, the bared teeth of a rictus smile and the fixed, narrowed gaze of men in a state of controlled fear.
Men killing other men really is an extraordinary phenomenon. Why does it happen? And how long has it gone on? And have the motives changed?
The Second World War is the largest single event in human history, fought across six of the world's seven continents and all it oceans. It killed 50 million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization.
The works of mercy are the opposite of the works of war, feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, nursing the sick, visiting the prisoner. But we are destroying crops, setting fire to entire villages and to the people in them. We are not performing the works of mercy but the works of war.
Have you ever been hated, or discriminated against_x000D_ I have, I’ve been protested and demonstrated against.
The IWW [Industrial Workers of the World] has been accused of pushing women to the front. This is not true. Rather, the women have not been kept in back, and so they have naturally moved to the front.
He may be a very nice man. But I haven't got the time to figure that out. All I know is, he's got a uniform and a gun and I have to relate to him that way. That's the only way to relate to him because one of us may have to die.
I'm tired of being treated like a second-class citizen.
I know some really outstanding Turkish journalists, and have been pleased and honored to be able to join with them a few times in their courageous protests against state terror and repression.
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