Quotes About Men During War That Will Make Us All Feel Tightness In Our Throat & Hate War Even More.
Posted: Saturday, August 06, 2011
by Fran Larson
http://www.franniesquotes.com/
I just finished reading "Dream When You’re Feeling Blue" by Elizabeth Berg. Though it was an easy read, it was one of the best books I have ever read. It paints a picture of both America and our Soldiers during World War 11.
The difference in today’s war from World war 11 is that America does not sacrifice things such as meat, sugar, a new bike, nor do we work in a factory or put together bandages. Perhaps by not being involved, the war doesn’t seem real to us
To those people who sill wonder why we have to be in it, (war) I would say it’s because of our idealism. How can you look at what’s going on and not step up to the plate?
Kitty hated the eggless, milkless, butterless recipe so prevalent now (Make-do cake). She longed for the burnt sugar cake with caramel icing they used to have for dessert every Sunday dinner.
We’re fighting an idea, a wrong and deadly idea in the form of a person and I know, too, a soldier’s duty, he does what he’s told without questioning, but a guy’s face is different from an insignia, an enemy soldier’s wallet falls out and there are his photos of his girl.
Such an amazing fact, that in the middle of a war, the mail came. That a man took time from trying to kill-and not be killed-to read a letter about how his son had learned that day to walk…
Frank explains to his daughter about men dying in the war: “We live but a short time at the longest. How do we make our lives mean something? If we die in glory, with our minds and our hearts fixed on achieving a great goal, we have lived a life that mattered.”
For a few hours after a battle..everything the men looked at seemed caressed by their eyes. They were such young boys. They were such old men.
It’s funny how some guys know they’re going to get it that day, they just wake up knowing it and oftentimes they’re right…..
Their lives went from crushing boredom to bloody chaos, how when they fought it was sometimes for days at a time. They went without sleep, often with nothing more to eat than emergency K rations,...... just big candy bars full of vitamins.
“There was a German soldier who tried to surrender when we were in North Africa. His own men shot and then one of them shouted, “Now you know Hitler.”
No one can draw a blue pencil down the middle of the page and call one side the fighting front and the other side the home front. For the two of them are inexorably tied together.
In regard to President Eisenhower’s speech after D-Day: “..I got gooseflesh when he asked for the blessing of Almighty God on ‘this great and noble undertaking.’ But how to reconcile that with spilled guts on a beach and flies in the eyes of some dead nineteen-year old kid who traded his life for some words on paper?
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Fran, I look forward to your book review. I just picked up our local paper with the headline: Helicopter shot down; 30 Americans killed. I am a recipient of : http://www.facebook.com/pages/Honor-to-the-Troops/209368255762757 .
It is hard to be daily mindful of losses and casualty. Being mindful is such a small token of support compared those who are fighting on our behalf. I am a medical courier contractor for the Biloxi VA-Keesler Air Force Base--so, I see the evidence of past wars, present losses. I am ever mindful that the young men and women I pass by with a smile and nod of the head may be in the face of danger soon.
Then, each of us close a day with the possiblity we may not see the morning, or if we do--we may not complete that day. We just have increased odds if we are not involved in a war.
What I hate the most is the politics. That our troops can be in the position of not being fully supported morally and emotionally.
What a book, and what a fabulous review. Thank God for books like these that forever will memorialize the greatest collective act of will every fought. Thanks for your efforts.
Yours, CUF
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