Army Fatigue Quotes

Maski hindi Valentine's Day nagpamudmod ang Malakanyang ng Valentine's package na may lamang five hundred pesos, tatlong latang sardinas, at isang torotot na kapag hinipan mo ay nagsasabing I love you, love mo din ba ako? Ang fatigue na uniform ng army ay ginawang pink para daw mapalapit sa sambayanan.

Leo looked like a Latino Santa’s elf, with curly black hair, pointy ears, a cheerful, babyish face, and a mischievous smile that told you right away this guy should not be trusted around matches or sharp objects. His long, nimble fingers wouldn’t stop moving—drumming on the seat, sweeping his hair behind his ears, fiddling with the buttons of his army fatigue jacket. Either the kid was naturally hyper or he was hopped up on enough sugar and caffeine to give a heart attack to a water buffalo.

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.

Everyone around us was gaping at these two giant guys in Army fatigues gabbing away about dick. Well, he was gabbing. I was reading Game Informer. Kai’s

Ma’am. I’ll have to restrain you if you don’t comply.” “You and what army?” Stratt asked. Five armed men in military fatigues entered the courtroom and took up station around her. “Because I have the U.S. Army,” she said. “And that’s a damn fine army.

Win looked at him. “Were you ever in the military?” he asked. Pants seemed confused. “No.” “You are a worthless punk,” Win said in the same tone he might use when discussing a mixed stock report. “A pitiful ectoplasm such as yourself wearing army fatigues is an affront to any man or woman who has ever experienced real combat. If I ever happen across you again donning any similar garb, I will hurt you severely. Do I make myself clear?

Hold on, Ms. Stratt,” said Justice Spencer. “This is still a court of law, and you will remain for the duration of these proceedings!” “No, I won’t,” said Stratt. The bailiff walked forward. “Ma’am. I’ll have to restrain you if you don’t comply.” “You and what army?” Stratt asked. Five armed men in military fatigues entered the courtroom and took up station around her. “Because I have the U.S. Army,” she said. “And that’s a damn fine army.

The bailiff walked forward. “Ma’am. I’ll have to restrain you if you don’t comply.” “You and what army?” Stratt asked. Five armed men in military fatigues entered the courtroom and took up station around her. “Because I have the U.S. Army,” she said. “And that’s a damn fine army.

General Taylor participated in the celebration of the Fourth of July, a very hot day, by hearing a long speech from the Hon. Henry S. Foote, at the base of the Washington Monument. Returning from the celebration much heated and fatigued, he partook too freely of his favorite iced milk with cherries, and during that night was seized with a severe colic, which by morning had quite prostrated him. It was said that he sent for his son-in-law, Surgeon Wood, United States Army, stationed in Baltimore, and declined medical assistance from anybody else. Mr. Ewing visited him several times, and was manifestly uneasy and anxious, as was also his son-in-law, Major Bliss, then of the army, and his confidential secretary. He rapidly grew worse, and died in about four days.

On a different (possibly irrelevant) level altogether, I was disturbed by the Cuban use of make-up (the first heavily made-up woman I noticed was a curvaceous young soldier in army fatigues who also had her hair in curlers) and have still to resolve my own feelings about, for example, a revolutionary woman who dyes her hair blond--as Haydee Santamarie (who was with the rebels at the Moncada Barracks as well as in the Sierra Maestra) did for several years--or who otherwise (through hair straighteners and whatnot) endeavors to look like someone other than herself. At first glance, it is actually cheering to see that women revolutionaries also paint their face and process their hair, but then one wonders: if a revolution fails to make one comfortable with what one is..., can one assume that, on a personal level, it is a success at all?

The air inside her room was thick with the scent of eucalyptus and lemon. He materialized near her dresser. His hand automatically turned her alarm clock to face the wall, then brushed across a tray filled with Vicks, cough syrup, aspirin, and a thermometer. He tenderly touched the lemon slices near an empty teacup. Could a simple illness have filled him with so much fear that he had risked coming to see her? A dim light from a purple Lava lamp cast an amber glow across the bed where Serena lay, the leopard-print sheets twisted in a knot beside her leg. Her long curly hair was half caught in a scrunchy that matched her flannel pajamas. The words Diamonds are a girl's best friend- they're sharper than knives curled around a dozen marching Marilyns in army fatigues on the blue fabric. Stanton had been with her when she bought the Sergeant Marilyn pajamas three months back.

The American Naming Authority, a collective of women studying the effects of names on behavior, decrees that a name should only have one user. The nearly 1 million American users of the name Mary, for example, do not constitute a unified army who might slaughter all users of the name Nancy, as was earlier supposed, but rather a saturation of the Mary Potential Quotient. Simply stated: Too many women with the same name produces widespread mediocrity and fatigue.

About the end of the American war, when the officers of Lord Cornwallis’s army which surrendered at Yorktown, and others, who had been made prisoners during the impolitic and ill-fated controversy were returning to their own country, to relate their adventures and repose themselves after their fatigues, there was amongst them a general officer, to whom Miss S. Gave the name of Browne, but merely, as I understood, to save the inconvenience of introducing a nameless agent in the narrative.

For instance, there's a college in northern California called Chico State, which is where guys like Reagan and Shultz [Reagan's Secretary of State] send their kids so they won't be infected by "lefties" at Berkeley. The place is right in the middle of four hundred miles of cornfields, or whatever it is they grow out there, a million miles from nowhere, and when you fly in you land at an airport that's about half the size of a house. Well, when I landed there, a student and a faculty member who were like the two local radicals at the school came out to meet me. And as we were walking to the car, I noticed we had to go a pretty long distance, because the airport was all surrounded with yellow police tape. So I asked these guys, "What's going on, are they rebuilding the landing strip or something?" You know what they said? "No, that's to protect the airport from Arab terrorists." I said, "Arab terrorists in northern California?" But they thought so. And when I got into the town, everybody was walking around in army fatigues and wearing yellow ribbons, saying "If Saddam comes, we're going to fight to the death," and so on.

And so begins the strangest campaign in military history : a competent general and a seasoned army of eighty thousand men chased like deer, in their own country, by an invader who used his vastly smaller forces more like a pack of hunting dogs than men; laying them on the scent rather than mapping routes, caring no more for their feelings, their fatigues, their lives, than a hunter who is rather fond of a good dog. Up and down the map of East Germany they ran, hunter and hunted, in an Alexandrian zig-zag of the best manner. The only strategical question in Charles’ science was “ Where are they ? ” Never, “ How many ? How entrenched ? ” At last Charles had made war into what schoolboys dreamed it ought to be.

Look,’ said Giovanni, as we crossed the river. ‘This old whore, Paris, as she turns in bed, is very moving.’ I looked out, beyond his heavy profile, which was grey—from fatigue and from the light of the sky above us. The river was swollen and yellow. Nothing moved on the river. Barges were tied up along the banks. The island of the city widened away from us, bearing the weight of the cathedral; beyond this, dimly, through speed and mist, one made out the individual roofs of Paris, their myriad, squat chimney stacks very beautiful and vari-colored under the pearly sky. Mist clung to the river, softening that army of trees, softening those stones, hiding the city’s dreadful corkscrew alleys and dead-end streets, clinging like a curse to the men who slept beneath the bridges—one of whom flashed by beneath us, very black and lone, walking along the river. ‘Some rats have gone in,’ said Giovanni, ‘and now other rats come out.

When half his force advances and half withdraws he is attempting to decoy you. When his troops lean on their weapons, they are famished. When drawers of water drink before carrying it to camp, his troops are suffering from thirst. When the enemy sees an advantage but does not advance to seize it, he is fatigued. When birds gather above his camp sites, they are empty. When at night the enemy's camp is clamorous, he is fearful. They are boisterous to reassure themselves. When his troops are disorderly, the general has no prestige. When his flags and banners move about constantly he is in disarray. If the officers are short-tempered they are exhausted. When the enemy feeds grain to the horses and his men meat and when his troops neither hang up their cooking pots nor return to their shelters, the enemy is desperate. When the troops continually gather in small groups and whisper together the general has lost the confidence of the army. Too frequent rewards indicate that the general is at the end of his resources; too frequent punishments that he is in acute distress. If the officers at first treat the men violently and later are fearful of them, the limit of indiscipline has been reached. When the enemy troops are in high spirits, and, although facing you, do not join battle for a long time, nor leave, you must thoroughly investigate the situation.

We then reached a fork in the valley. Should we go left or right? Dad called it left. I had a very powerful intuition that right was the choice we should make. Dad insisted left. I insisted right. It was a fifty-fifty call and he relented. Within two hundred yards we stumbled across a snowy track through the woods and followed it excitedly. Within a mile it came out on a mountain road, and within ten minutes we had flagged down a lift from a car heading up the hill in the darkness. We had found salvation, and I was beat. The car dropped us off at the gates of the garrison thirty minutes later. It was, by then, late into the night, but I was suddenly buzzing with energy and excitement. The fatigue had gone. Dad knew that I had made the right call up there--if we had chosen left we would still be trudging into the unknown. I felt so proud. In truth it was probably luck, but I learned another valuable lesson that night: Listen to the quiet voice inside. Intuition is the noise of the mind. As we tromped back through the barracks, though, we noticed there was an unusual amount of activity for the early hours of a weekday morning. It soon became very clear why. First a sergeant appeared, followed by another soldier, and then we were ushered into the senior officers’ block. There was my uncle, standing in uniform looking both tired and serious. I started to break out into a big smile. So did Dad. Well, I was excited. We had cheated a slow, lingering hypothermic death, lost together in the mountains. We were alive. Our enthusiasm was countered by the immortal words from my uncle, the brigadier, saying: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you…” He continued, “The entire army mountain rescue team is currently out scouring the mountains for you, on foot and in the air with the search-and-rescue helicopter. I hope you have a good explanation.” We didn’t, of course, save that we had been careless, and we had got lucky; but that’s life sometimes. And the phrase: “I wouldn’t smile if I was you,” has gone down into Grylls family folklore.

But perhaps the best and most memorable way to explain the conflict that arose between honoring traditional honor, and honoring one’s individual psyche, can be conveyed in a story from World War II. In 1943, coming off his dazzling victories in the Sicily campaign, George S. Patton stopped by a medical tent to visit with the wounded. He enjoyed these visits, and so did the soldiers and staff. He would hand out Purple Hearts, pump the men full of encouragement, and offer rousing speeches to the nurses, interns, and their patients that were so touching in nature they sometimes brought tears to many of the eyes in the room. On this particular occasion, as Patton entered the tent all the men jumped to attention except for one, Private Charles H. Kuhl, who sat slouched on a stool. Kuhl, who showed no outward injuries, was asked by Patton how he was wounded, to which the private replied, “I guess I just can’t take it.” Patton did not believe “battle fatigue” or “shell-shock” was a real condition nor an excuse to be given medical treatment, and had recently been told by one of the commanders of Kuhl’s division that, “The front lines seem to be thinning out. There seems to be a very large number of ‘malingerers’ at the hospitals, feigning illness in order to avoid combat duty.” He became livid. Patton slapped Kuhl across the face with his gloves, grabbed him by his collar, and led him outside the tent. Kicking him in the backside, Patton demanded that this “gutless bastard” not be admitted and instead be sent back to the front to fight. A week later, Patton slapped another soldier at a hospital, who, in tears, told the general he was there because of “his nerves,” and that he simply couldn’t “stand the shelling anymore.” Enraged, Patton brandished his white-handled, single-action Colt revolver and bellowed: Your nerves, Hell, you are just a goddamned coward, you yellow son of a bitch. Shut up that goddamned crying. I won’t have these brave men here who have been shot seeing a yellow bastard sitting here crying…You’re a disgrace to the Army and you’re going back to the front lines and you may get shot and killed, but you’re going to fight. If you don’t I’ll stand you up against a wall and have a firing squad kill you on purpose. In fact I ought to shoot you myself, you God-damned whimpering coward.

Physical therapy has a high burnout rate. The long hours of intense one-on-one time is emotionally fatiguing. And while we universally love our patients, there’s always one rotten apple in the bunch who just breaks you down.

Mike turned his chair toward the hearth and put his feet up, enjoying the sound of Preacher’s voice telling the story by heart, Christopher adding lines that Preacher deliberately left out just for fun. My man Preacher, he was thinking—all soft and sweet, his voice rough and gravelly as sandpaper, holding a kid on his lap like he’d been doing it all his life. This was a guy who you didn’t want to see coming at you with a scowl on his face and his fists up. A picture of him in fatigues, toting an M16, a snarl on his face... The guy could take down a whole army. Mike looked at him now with new eyes. Transformed into a big, cuddly bear. Committed. Devoted. All in. It

For the one-armed army vet in camo fatigues: a spot up front, a body. And for you and Bethany, a body in row thirty, according to the bullhorned woman’s spreadsheet, where, sure enough, you find a coffin with

The Black Clouds He had trudged through tangles and trailed in steeps for two days scratching his face and extremities into blood. The sun was near to setting and he was not able to overcome the plumb rocks. He had hunger collywobles in his stomach. “Tomorrow I will easily reach the troops…” – he entered a familiar cave with these thoughts and emptying the pockets full of mushrooms picked on the road burnt a flame. He took from the internal pocket a flat bottle of moonshine and swallowed – it removed the fatigue and helped him to rid himself of remorse. He felt stick in his mouth – “As is, I have drunk of bile and smell like lathery horse…» His tousled beard hid all light lines on his face making him more terrible. His large shoulders and brawny arms proved him as a strong person. He almost had no neck – as though, his head was stuck into shoulders. His old and narrow dress fitted close to his body – under it he had military officer’s shirt. Although he avoided twists and turns of war, he was accustomed to the smell of blood and death – he was bright, fearless and volitional like a real fighter. “I could become a good fighter,” – he was sure in it and sometimes expressed this thought loudly watching the fighting troops. Besides everything, the war is ugly also because of the fact that pillagers not wasting the time pillage the dead fighters. When the fights get calm, the Sun illuminates the naked corpses – it is qiute common phenomenon. The most of people think that this action is done by the winner figthers. But they are wrong because the day-time heroes cannot turn into night hyenas. This action is done by pillagers wearing military dress and hang around the attacking troops and, some of them do it with entire family in horse carts. He also was fed by the war – he also wandered following the troops like dark shadow and emtied the dead fighters’ pockets. He often sold the robbed things to fighters. His accomplices robbed in dream even own fellow travellers. But he was more compassionate and never robbed the wounded fighters thinking that it would moderate his sins. He never took the dead figthers’ dress but emptied only their pockets. But the pillagers following him stripped the dead fighters naked. “Thy say that there is a lame necrophiliac pillager among them raping the dead people.” Once, checking the laying fighter’s pockets he saw that the fighter is alive but his leg is torn off and suspended on the skin. Sitting close he started to frankly speak to the fighter consoling him. The fighter asked him to cut his leg off and bury it. He implicitly fulfilled the fighter’s request; coming to consciousness in the evening the fighter cheerfully said that his leg called him to the beyond. At that moment he tried to think about the world above but immediately shook his hand thinking «That’s load of rubbish!» The fighter died in the night and, taking the fighters ring off his finger, he put into sack. The fighters didn’t think about them in the heat of the battle. However, if the fighter caught any of them they unreservedly killed them. Once he always was near to death – however, he could save his life saying that he was carrying the army’s battle to the troops and furthermore, tearfully implored a little reward from officer. Coming back, he emptied his killed accomplices’ pockets ad collected a lot of money and valuables. He hated retreating troops. “Troops should either self-destruct or destroy the enemies!" Rivers of blood, ditches full of human corpses, mothers’ tears – all of these notions were nonsensical rot in his comprehension. Both the victory and defeat also were considered by him as nonsense – he was interested only in trophies. The days when he succeeded to collect rich trophies he could neither sleep in nights nor eat for sake of protecting the robbed values from pillagers but it didn’t weaken him. He willingly studied information about bloody wars and was mostly amazed by the fight of Waterloo: «It

He watched the ghostly army on the march. Headlights swept the immigrants. The concrete gleamed wet and black beneath their boots and gym shoes. His countrymen covered their heads with hoods, baseball caps, newspapers, plastic bags. Or they simply hunched their shoulders, impervious to the rain, the fatigue, the roar and hiss of metal monsters rushing by a few feet away. The immigrants knew the freeway median was a reasonably safe limbo in some ways: no bandits, no Border Patrol, no rough terrain. Just put one foot in front of the other. Pray the cars stay in their lanes. Try not to think about the moment when you'll have to sprint across this cement deathscape hauling your wife, your kids, your worldly possessions. Maybe the moment can be postponed indefinitely. Maybe you can just keep walking north and the freeway median will take you where you want to go.

Paul Schrader drove past theaters in New York where the film originally played and were at once thrilled and sickened to see lines of young men dressed in Bickle’s familiar outfit of army fatigues and blue jeans, waiting to see the film for, presumably, second and third go-rounds.

synchronized movement, along with synchronized singing, has been a vastly underappreciated force in world history, fostering cohesion among groups as diverse as the builders of the pyramids, the armies of the Ottoman Empire, and the Japanese office workers who rise from their desks to perform group calisthenics at the start of each workday. Roman generals were among the first to discover that soldiers marching in synchrony could be made to travel for far longer distances before they succumbed to fatigue.

In the American South, there is a kind of lawman every decent cop instantly recognizes. His uniform is usually soiled and wrinkled, more like army fatigues or marine utilities, as though he has worked long hours in it. If allowed, he wears a coned cowboy hat. His posture and physicality exude a quiet sense of confidence, whether he’s leaning against a rail or gazing idly at something he doesn’t like. There is no moral light in his eyes. For reasons you cannot explain, he bears an animus toward the world, particularly toward people of color, no matter how poor or powerless they are.

Americans are acutely unaware of the past and the future. Also, the present. History is infinitely malleable for them. So is reality. Are they just undereducated, indoctrinated, chronically indifferent, hypnotised, or too damn busy makin’ a buck? Consumed by consumerism, they wallow in army fatigues and self-regard, coveting the next dynamite Apple doodad or an AK-47, plasma screen and some Nikes. They have worried everybody and ruined the earth, all so that they can prance around, effect insouciance, drink beer, watch football, guzzle Sloppy Joes and Oreos, wear pro-Auschwitz sweatshirts, make pipe bombs, absorb incessant rock music, object to positive discrimination and the public display of female nipples, wonder whether the mailman has shut the mailbox properly, and choose a new euphemism for excretion yearly.

Sergeant Dix told me that at Fort Bragg they found that two to three days of constant tension was what it took to figure out if a soldier was going to break. Most who made it to the Special Forces Qualification Course could take anything the Army cared to throw at them for forty-eight hours. But by day three, with reserves depleted and nothing but misery on the horizon, a soldier’s core became exposed. His baseline ability. His essence. Superficially, this was evidenced by the decision to quit or continue, a temptation the drill sergeants dangled every time they spoke.  The real game, of course, was mental. Beating the Q boiled down to a soldier’s ability to disassociate his body from his mind, his being from his circumstance. This was relatively easy during the mindless procedures — the hikes, runs, and repetitive drills that form the backbone of military training. Disassociation became much tougher, however, when the physical activity was paired with judgment calls and problem solving. If a soldier could engage his higher-order thinking while simultaneously ignoring the pain and willing his body to continue beyond fatigue, then he had a chance at making it to the end. If he couldn’t, then the strength of his back, heart, and lungs didn’t matter.  Dix had concluded that the Q-Course was as much about self-discovery as a prestigious shoulder patch.  Katya was in that discovery phase now.  The big question was what we’d do if she decided to quit. She broke the silence after a few miles. “Do you ever get used to it?” “The killing?” “Yes.” “We’re all used to killing — just not people. We kill when we spray for bugs, or squash a spider, or buy a leather bag, or order a hamburger. I don’t think of the individuals I’ve killed as people any more than you thought of the last steak you ate as Bessie.

They wore sandy- and light-green-colored camouflage fatigues, carried AK-47s, and wore army boots with red socks topped with white stripes tucked into their trouser legs. Veiled turbans covered their faces, but Issaka could still see the area around their eyes. Though clearly baked by the sun, most of these men had the toffee skin tone of Arabs. They were hell-bent on leaving a wake of destruction as they fled the French army. The trucks stopped and the men in the backs of the trucks held their guns in the air, bouncing the trucks on their tires as they chanted in Arabic, “There is no god but God! We stand up for Islam!” A tall militant in a deep-green turban and camouflage fatigues got out of the driver’s side of the truck closest to the house. He didn’t carry a gun. He pointed a finger at Issaka’s father. “You have some evil things we’ve been looking for, old man.

If men can do so much for a corruptible crown, how much more should you do for one which is incorruptible! Awake to a sense of the misery of being a slave. For fife, and happiness, and liberty, arise and fight. Fear not to begin and enlist under Christ’s banner. The great Captain of your salvation rejects none that come to Him. Like David in the cave of Adullam, He is ready to receive all who apply to Him, however unworthy they may feel themselves. None who repent and believe are too bad to be enrolled in the ranks of Christ’s army. All who come to Him by faith are admitted, clothed, armed, trained, and finally led on to complete victory. Fear not to begin this very day. There is yet room for you. Fear not to go on fighting, if you once enlist. The more thorough and whole-hearted you are as a soldier, the more comfortable will you find your warfare. No doubt you will often meet with trouble, fatigue, and hard fighting, before your warfare is accomplished. But let none of these things move you. Greater is He that is for you than all they that be against you. Everlasting liberty or everlasting captivity are the alternatives before you. Choose liberty, and fight to the last.

Beer gurgled through the beard. 'You see,' the young man began, 'the desert's so big you can't be alone in it. Ever notice that? It's all empty and there's nothing in sight, but there's always something moving over there where you can't quite see it. It's something very dry and thin and brown, only when you look around it isn't there. Ever see it?' 'Optical fatigue -' Tallant began. 'Sure. I know. Every man to his own legend. There isn't a tribe of Indians hasn't got some way of accounting for it. You've heard of the Watchers? And the twentieth-century white man comes along, and it's optical fatigue. Only in the nineteenth century things weren't quite the same, and there were the Carkers.' 'You've got a special localized legend?' 'Call it that. You glimpse things out of the corner of your mind, same like you glimpse lean, dry things out of the corner of your eye. You incase 'em in solid circumstance and they're not so bad. That is known as the Growth of Legend. The Folk Mind in Action. You take the Carkers and the things you don't quite see and put 'em together. And they bite.' Tallant wondered how long that beard had been absorbing beer. 'And what were the Carkers?' he prompted politely. 'Ever hear of Sawney Bean? Scotland - reign of James the First or maybe the Sixth, though I think Roughead's wrong on that for once. Or let's be more modern - ever hear of the Benders? Kansas in the 1870's? No? Ever hear of Procrustes? Or Polyphemus? Or Fee-fi-fo-fum? 'There are ogres, you know. They're no legend. They're fact, they are. The inn where nine guests left for every ten that arrived, the mountain cabin that sheltered travelers from the snow, sheltered them all winter till the melting spring uncovered their bones, the lonely stretches of road that so many passengers traveled halfway - you'll find 'em everywhere. All over Europe and pretty much in this country too before communications became what they are. Profitable business. And it wasn't just the profit. The Benders made money, sure; but that wasn't why they killed all their victims as carefully as a kosher butcher. Sawney Bean got so he didn't give a damn about the profit; he just needed to lay in more meat for the winter. 'And think of the chances you'd have at an oasis.' 'So these Carkers of yours were, as you call them, ogres?' 'Carkers, ogres - maybe they were Benders. The Benders were never seen alive, you know, after the townspeople found those curiously butchered bodies. There's a rumor they got this far West. And the time checks pretty well. There wasn't any town here in the 80s. Just a couple of Indian families - last of a dying tribe living on at the oasis. They vanished after the Carkers moved in. That's not so surprising. The white race is a sort of super-ogre, anyway. Nobody worried about them. But they used to worry about why so many travelers never got across this stretch of desert. The travelers used to stop over at the Carkers, you see, and somehow they often never got any further. Their wagons'd be found maybe fifteen miles beyond in the desert. Sometimes they found the bones, too, parched and white. Gnawed-looking, they said sometimes.' 'And nobody ever did anything about these Carkers?' 'Oh, sure. We didn't have King James the Sixth - only I still think it was the First - to ride up on a great white horse for a gesture, but twice there were Army detachments came here and wiped them all out.' 'Twice? One wiping-out would do for most families.' Tallant smiled at the beery confusion of the young man's speech. 'Uh-huh, That was no slip. They wiped out the Carkers twice because you see once didn't do any good. They wiped 'em out and still travelers vanished and still there were white gnawed bones. So they wiped 'em out again. After that they gave up, and people detoured the oasis. ("They Bite")

My dad took me along on one of these summer encampments, equipped with cut-down fatigues, a web belt, a canteen, the smallest helmet liner my dad could find, and even a small backpack. The first sergeant, the senior enlisted man in the unit, took a shine to me and let me carry his (unloaded) M1 rifle, or maybe he saw me as a convenient way to get out of having to carry it himself. Either way, it was a cool experience for an eleven-year-old, and undoubtedly something that can’t be done in today’s Army, even on Bring Your Child to Work Day. I was enamored with

The whole efficiency of the soldier presupposes physical vigour; in Caesar's levies more regard was had to the strength and activity of the recruits than to their means or their morals. But the serviceableness of an army, like that of any other machine, depends above all on the ease and quickness of its movements; the soldiers of Caesar attained a perfection rarely reached and probably never surpassed in their readiness for immediate departure at any time, and in the rapidity of their marching. Courage, of course, was valued above everything; Caesar practiced with unrivaled mastery the art of stimulating martial emulation and the esprit de corps, so that the pre-eminence accorded to particular soldiers and divisions appeared even to those who were postponed as the necessary hierarchy of valour. He weaned his men from fear by not unfrequently—where it could be done without serious danger—keeping his soldiers in ignorance of an approaching conflict, and allowing them to encounter the enemy unexpectedly. But obedience was on a parity with valour. The soldier was required to do what he was bidden, without asking the reason or the object; many an aimless fatigue was imposed on him solely as a training in the difficult art of blind obedience.

59. Creature Comforts Are Only Temporary It was one of the most painful lessons of my life. It was during the first time I attempted SAS selection. I was totally lost in a vast boggy wetland, torrential rain was driving down, and I was utterly spent. I was also way behind time, and I knew it. When I finally made it to the penultimate checkpoint, the corporals kept me there doing endless press-ups in the wet marsh with my heavy pack still on my back. I knew this was costing me even more valuable time and energy. I was feeling fainter and fainter; I knew things were bad. I was soon off again, wading across a fast-flowing, waist-deep stream, before climbing up through knee-deep mud towards the next 2,000-foot (600-metre) mountain ridge-line. I just had to keep going. Ten miles. Twenty miles. ‘Nothing good comes from quitting,’ I told myself, over and over again. ‘If I keep going, I will pass.’ But I was getting more and more delirious with fatigue. I didn’t know why this was happening, and I couldn’t control it. Maybe I hadn’t eaten or drunk enough, or perhaps it was just that the months of this relentless pace were finally taking their toll and I was at my limit. Every couple of paces, my knees would buckle. If I stumbled, I couldn’t stop myself from falling. Eventually I saw the trucks in the distance below me, symbolizing the end point. Wisps of smoke from army Hexi stoves curled upwards from the woods. Soon I would be warm, soon I would have a cup of hot tea. It was all I wanted. But when I reached the end checkpoint I was told I had been failed - I had been too slow. My world fell inwards. I was sent off to make camp in the woods and rest for the night. The remaining recruits would be heading out for the night march in a few hours. The next morning I would be returned to camp with the others who hadn’t made the grade. I was totally dejected. That night in those woods, warm and dry under my shelter, blisters attended to, dry socks on, and out of the wind and rain, I learnt an enduring lesson: warm and dry doesn’t mean fulfilled and happy.

The various privations of the encampment soon got to Dr. Albigence Waldo, an army physician who helped to inoculate the army against smallpox. He noted in his diary: I am sick, discontented, and out of humor. Poor food—hard lodging—cold weather—fatigue—nasty clothes—nasty cookery—vomit half my time—smoked out of my senses—the Devil’s in’t—I can’t endure it—why are we sent here to starve and freeze—what sweet felicities have I left at home! A charming wife—pretty children—good beds—good food—good cookery—all agreeable—all harmonious. Here all confusion—smoke and cold—hunger and filthiness—a pox on my bad luck. There comes a bowl of beef soup—full of burnt leaves and dirt, sickish enough such to make a Hector spew.

He was starting to attribute the fact that the Army wasn’t picking up on his gayness more to the fact that people in general were dumber than camel shit than to anything else. If it walked like a soldier and talked like a soldier and dressed in fatigues, it wasn’t going to want to fuck another guy. Bullshit