Uniform Proud Quotes

Fathers are always so proud the first time they see their sons in uniform," she said. "I know Big John Karpinski was," I said. He is my neighbor to the north, of course. Big John's son Little John did badly in high school, and the police caught him selling dope. So he joined the Army while the Vietnam War was going on. And the first time he came home in uniform, I never saw Big John so happy, because it looked to him as though Little John was all straightened out and would amount to something. But then Little John came home in a body bag.

they're good fighters, i think proudly as i watch them duke it out. But as the oldest male in the house, it's my duty to break it up. I grab the collar of Carlos's shirt but on Louis's leg and land on the floor with them. Before I can regain my balance, icy cold water is pored on my back. Turning quickly, I catch mi'ama dousing us all, a bucket poised in her fist abouve us while she is wearing her work uniform. She works as a checker for the local grocery store a couple blocks from our house. It doesn't pay a whole heck of a lot, but we don't need much. "Get up" she orders, her fiery attitude out in full force. "Shit, Ma" Carlos says, standing Mi'ama takes what's left in her bucket, sticks her fingers in the icy water, and flicks the liquid in Carlos's face. Luis laughs and before he knows it, he gets flicked with water as well. Will they ever learn? "Any More attitude, Lous?" She asks. "No, ma'am" Louis says, standing as straight as a soilder. "You have any more filthy words to come out of that boca of yours, Carlos?" She dips her hand in the water as a warning. "No, ma'am" echos soldier number two. "And what abot you, Alejandro?" her eyes narrow into slits as she focuses on me "What? I was try'in to break it up" I say innocently, giving her my you-can't-resist-me smile. She flicks water in my face. "That's for not breaking it up sooner. Now get dressed, all of you, and come eat breakfast before school." So much for my you-can't-resist-me smile

Callum holds me tightly as we submerge under the water. Thin lines of air bubbles escape from his nose and mouth. He struggles to get back to the surface but to no avail—his heavy uniform and black boots weren’t meant for swimming.

She gave his fake boob a poke. "What the hell is in here?" He laughed and pulled the top down part of the way to reveal a grapefruit. She groaned onto her hands. "Hey, I know it's been a while since I've seen a real tit up close, but I think I remember the basic shape. What would you have used?" "Oh, hell, Michael,I have no idea what a man uses to stuff a maid's uniform. Where did you get it anyways?" Another of his shit-eating grins lit his face. "From the plus sized section of the lingerie store in Sweedesboro. I'm a woman's extra large." He was so proud of the fact that she laughed until her side ached.

Pym looked at the bugs, glanced at the sleeve of his proud uniform, stared again at the deadly parody of his insignia the creatures now bore, and shot Miles a look of heartbreaking despair, a silent cry which Miles had no trouble interpreting as, Please, m'lord, please, can we take him out and kill him now?

Today, Chanel sells nothing other than its griffe; the griffe is an absolute symbol for 'fashion' which, having become historical, is now able to sell this history better than it could sell fashion. Chanel's lasting success proves that fashion has become self-referential: the fetish of the mere name shows how it has begun to revolve around itself. The House of Chanel produces what Coco most abhorred: a thing of the past, dead. The visible, outwardly displayed griffe has become the opposite of individualized style: instead it confirms the latent uniform collectivity, which had always defined Chanel-wear; in the end, it signifies membership of an expensive club. The Chanel woman does not want to display her own taste, she wants to belong. In order to be certain, she is laden with Chanel signs and accessories, like amulets to protect against the evil eye; on the pocket, on the belt, on the dress buttons, on the watch, on costume jewelry, proudly stand the initials of the founder of the house, to which she knows she belongs.

Am I brave enough? What is brave? Is bravery counted by the medals, proudly on display on a soldier’s uniform or is it in laying down your life for something bigger than yourself. Is bravery in holding tight or letting go? For some, bravery is in standing against the world for your Principle …. For me bravery is living each day of my life for the sake of something greater than myself.

The war with Germany was an equalizer. Boiled down to the same uniform-hue as everyone else, he could hide his shame, once again play proud.

We had proudly worn our handsome and colorful uniforms, which could be seen glittering from a distance, yet we could no longer see our opponent. Invisible marksmen took aim from long range and unhorsed us. If we managed to reach them, we found them bedded in a web of wires, which cut through the fetlocks of the horses and was impossible to jump. This was the end of the cavalry. We had to dismount.

These rich, white Harvard types. Everything they said sounded like a speech from a candidate for Congress. It was a nice thought, but if so many Americans were already angry at the sight of a black man in uniform, standing tall and proud with a gun in his hand, Aubrey doubted whether a chest full of medals would make a difference.

a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy—but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits

Make the race proud," the elders used to say. But by then, I knew that I wasn't so much bound by a biological race as to a group of people, and these people were not black because of any uniform color or any uniform physical feature. They were bound because they suffered under the weight of the dream, and they were bound by all the beautiful things, all the language and mannerisms, all the food and music, all the literature and philosophy, all the common language that they had fashioned like diamonds under the weight of the dream. ... In other words, I was part of a world. And looking out, I had friends who too were part of other worlds. The world of Jews, or New Yorkers. The world of southerners or gay men. Of immigrants, of Californians, of Native Americans, or a combination of any of these worlds stitched into worlds like tapestry. And though I could never myself be a native of any of these worlds, I knew that nothing so essentialist as race stood between us. I had read too much by then, and my eyes, my beautiful precious eyes, were growing stronger each day. And I saw that what divided me from the world was not anything intrinsic to us, but the actual injury done by people intent on naming us. Intent on believing that what they have named us matters more than anything we could ever actually do. In America, the injury is not in being born with darker skin, with fuller lips, with a broader nose, but in everything that happens after.

Woodard was riding at the back of a Greyhound bus, because that is where Black people traveling through the South sat in 1946, no matter what they had done for their country. He proudly wore his green army uniform. Three stripes on each arm showed his rank. He had four medals pinned on his chest. There was a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. He was awarded the last one for bravery.

What is this you bring my America? Is it uniform with my country? Is it not something that has been better told or done before? Have you not imported this or the spirit of it in some ship? Is it not a mere tale? a rhyme? a prettiness?—is the good old cause in it? Has it not dangled long at the heels of the poets, politicians, literats, of enemies' lands? Does it not assume that what is notoriously gone is still here? Does it answer universal needs? will it improve manners? Does it sound with trumpet-voice the proud victory of the Union in that secession war? Can your performance face the open fields and the seaside? Will it absorb into me as I absorb food, air, to appear again in my strength, gait, face? Have real employments contributed to it? original makers, not mere amanuenses? Does it meet modern discoveries, calibres, facts, face to face? What does it mean to American persons, progresses, cities? Chi- cago, Kanada, Arkansas? Does it see behind the apparent custodians the real custodians standing, menacing, silent, the mechanics, Manhattanese, Western men, Southerners, significant alike in their apathy, and in the promptness of their love? Does it see what finally befalls, and has always finally befallen, each temporizer, patcher, outsider, partialist, alarmist, infidel, who has ever ask'd any thing of America?

This is simply the long history of the origin of responsibility. That task of breeding an animal which can make promises, includes, as we have already grasped, as its condition and preliminary, the more immediate task of first making man to a certain extent, necessitated, uniform, like among his like, regular, and consequently calculable. The immense work of what I have called, "morality of custom", the actual work of man on himself during the longest period of the human race, his whole prehistoric work, finds its meaning, its great justification (in spite of all its innate hardness, despotism, stupidity, and idiocy) in this fact: man, with the help of the morality of customs and of social strait-waistcoats, was made genuinely calculable. If, however, we place ourselves at the end of this colossal process, at the point where the tree finally matures its fruits, when society and its morality of custom finally bring to light that to which it was only the means, then do we find as the ripest fruit on its tree the sovereign individual, that resembles only himself, that has got loose from the morality of custom, the autonomous "super-moral" individual (for "autonomous" and "moral" are mutually-exclusive terms),—in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will, competent to promise, and we find in him a proud consciousness (vibrating in every fibre), of what has been at last achieved and become vivified in him, a genuine consciousness of power and freedom, a feeling of human perfection in general. And this man who has grown to freedom, who is really competent to promise, this lord of the free will, this sovereign—how is it possible for him not to know how great is his superiority over everything incapable of binding itself by promises, or of being its own security, how great is the trust, the awe, the reverence that he awakes—he "deserves" all three—not to know that with this mastery over himself he is necessarily also given the mastery over circumstances, over nature, over all creatures with shorter wills, less reliable characters? The "free" man, the owner of a long unbreakable will, finds in this possession his standard of value: looking out from himself upon the others, he honours or he despises, and just as necessarily as he honours his peers, the strong and the reliable (those who can bind themselves by promises),—that is, every one who promises like a sovereign, with difficulty, rarely and slowly, who is sparing with his trusts but confers honour by the very fact of trusting, who gives his word as something that can be relied on, because he knows himself strong enough to keep it even in the teeth of disasters, even in the "teeth of fate,"—so with equal necessity will he have the heel of his foot ready for the lean and empty jackasses, who promise when they have no business to do so, and his rod of chastisement ready for the liar, who already breaks his word at the very minute when it is on his lips. The proud knowledge of the extraordinary privilege of responsibility, the consciousness of this rare freedom, of this power over himself and over fate, has sunk right down to his innermost depths, and has become an instinct, a dominating instinct—what name will he give to it, to this dominating instinct, if he needs to have a word for it? But there is no doubt about it—the sovereign man calls it his conscience.

Achievement ceremonies are revealing about the need of the powerful to punish women through beauty, since the tension of having to repress alarm at female achievement is unusually formalized in them. Beauty myth insults tend to be blurted out at them like death jokes at a funeral. Memories of these achievement ceremonies are supposed to last like Polaroid snapshots that gel into permanent colors, souvenirs to keep of a hard race run; but for girls and young women, the myth keeps those colors always liquid so that, with a word, they can be smeared into the uniform shades of mud. At my college graduation, the commencement speaker, Dick Cavett—who had been a “brother” of the university president in an allmale secret society—was confronted by two thousand young female Yale graduates in mortarboards and academic gowns, and offered them this story: When he was at Yale there were no women. The women went to Vassar. There, they had nude photographs taken in gym class to check their posture. Some of the photos ended up in the pornography black market in New Haven. The punch line: The photos found no buyers. Whether or not the slur was deliberate, it was still effective: We may have been Elis but we would still not make pornography worth his buying. Today, three thousand men of the class of 1984 are sure they are graduates of that university, remembering commencement as they are meant to: proudly. But many of the two thousand women, when they can think of that day at all, recall the feelings of the powerless: exclusion and shame and impotent, complicit silence. We could not make a scene, as it was our parents’ great day for which they had traveled long distances; neither could they, out of the same concern for us. Beauty pornography makes an eating disease seem inevitable, even desirable, if a young woman is to consider herself sexual and valuable: Robin Lakoff and Raquel Scherr in Face Value found in 1984 that “among college women, ‘modern’ definitions of beauty—health, energy, self-confidence”—prevailed. “The bad news” is that they all had “only one overriding concern: the shape and weight of their bodies. They all wanted to lose 5–25 pounds, even though most [were] not remotely overweight. They went into great detail about every flaw in their anatomies, and told of the great disgust they felt every time they looked in the mirror.” The “great disgust” they feel comes from learning the rigid conventions of beauty pornography before they learn their own sexual value; in such an atmosphere, eating diseases make perfect sense.

Woodard was riding at the back of a Greyhound bus, because that is where Black people traveling through the South sat in 1946, no matter what they had done for their country. He proudly wore his green army uniform. Three stripes on each arm showed his rank. He had four medals pinned on his chest. There was a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, a World War II Victory Medal, and a battle star Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal. He was awarded the last one for bravery. When the bus arrived at a rest stop in a South Carolina town now known as Batesburg-Leesville, Police Chief Lynwood Shull and his officers dragged Woodard off the bus. The bus driver hadn’t liked the way Woodard asked to use the restroom fifty-four miles back, outside of Augusta. So, when the bus got to the town, the driver called the police, even though he and Woodard hadn’t shared two words since that stop. The police demanded to see Woodard’s discharge papers. Then the cops forced him into an alley, where they beat him savagely. For good measure, the police chief used his baton to gouge Woodard’s eye sockets until both eyeballs ruptured beyond repair. Woodard was blind from that day forward. He was twenty-seven. And remember, all this happened while he was wearing the very uniform that identified his service to his country

We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud

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.

The most interesting aspects of the story lie between the two extremes of coercion and popularity. It might be instructive to consider fascist regimes’ management of workers, who were surely the most recalcitrant part of the population. It is clear that both Fascism and Nazism enjoyed some success in this domain. According to Tim Mason, the ultimate authority on German workers under Nazism, the Third Reich “contained” German workers by four means: terror, division, some concessions, and integration devices such as the famous Strength Through Joy (Kraft durch Freude) leisure-time organization. Let there be no doubt that terror awaited workers who resisted directly. It was the cadres of the German Socialist and Communist parties who filled the first concentration camps in 1933, before the Jews. Since socialists and communists were already divided, it was not hard for the Nazis to create another division between those workers who continued to resist and those who decided to try to live normal lives. The suppression of autonomous worker organizations allowed fascist regimes to address workers individually rather than collectively. Soon, demoralized by the defeat of their unions and parties, workers were atomized, deprived of their usual places of sociability, and afraid to confide in anyone. Both regimes made some concessions to workers—Mason’s third device for worker “containment.” They did not simply silence them, as in traditional dictatorships. After power, official unions enjoyed a monopoly of labor representation. The Nazi Labor Front had to preserve its credibility by actually paying some attention to working conditions. Mindful of the 1918 revolution, the Third Reich was willing to do absolutely anything to avoid unemployment or food shortages. As the German economy heated up in rearmament, there was even some wage creep. Later in the war, the arrival of slave labor, which promoted many German workers to the status of masters, provided additional satisfactions. Mussolini was particularly proud of how workers would fare under his corporatist constitution. The Labor Charter (1927) promised that workers and employers would sit down together in a “corporation” for each branch of the economy, and submerge class struggle in the discovery of their common interests. It looked very imposing by 1939 when a Chamber of Corporations replaced parliament. In practice, however, the corporative bodies were run by businessmen, while the workers’ sections were set apart and excluded from the factory floor. Mason’s fourth form of “containment”—integrative devices—was a specialty of fascist regimes. Fascists were past masters at manipulating group dynamics: the youth group, the leisure-time association, party rallies. Peer pressure was particularly powerful in small groups. There the patriotic majority shamed or intimidated nonconformists into at least keeping their mouths shut. Sebastian Haffner recalled how his group of apprentice magistrates was sent in summer 1933 on a retreat, where these highly educated young men, mostly non-Nazis, were bonded into a group by marching, singing, uniforms, and drill. To resist seemed pointless, certain to lead nowhere but to prison and an end to the dreamed-of career. Finally, with astonishment, he observed himself raising his arm, fitted with a swastika armband, in the Nazi salute. These various techniques of social control were successful.

One is wearing a uniform of green-and-gray camouflage, as if he were hunting deer in the woods. The other is wearing a uniform of brown-and-beige camouflage, as if he were hunting insurgents in the desert. These two clowns are standing in the driveway of a suburban home, about fifteen minutes from downtown, in a well-developed city of a million people, and they’re wearing camouflage. The sad and scary thing about this image is that these guys have no idea how stupid they look. Instead, they’re proud, arrogant. They’re on display, tough guys fighting bad guys. One of their brethren has been hit, wounded, fallen in the line of duty, and they’re pissed about it. They scowl at the neighbors across the street. One wrong word, and they might start shooting. Their fingers are on the triggers.

In the next five days, Bud Selig, the franchise’s proud new owner, changed the team name from the Pilots to the Brewers, in honor of the Milwaukee minor league team that he had cheered on as a boy. Though he was able to change the name, there was not enough time to order new uniforms with the navy and red colors from those Brewers teams of yesteryear. Instead, the newly minted Milwaukee Brewers were forced to adopt the blue and gold of the Seattle Pilots, a color scheme that the team still wears to this day,

Now, I’ve got a few things to say. You’re on your way to First Phase, so make me proud of you. After Hell Week, those of you who survive will still have to face the scuba pool comps in Second Phase and weapons practicals in Third Phase. I’ll want to shake your hand at graduation. When you get there, I want to think of you as one of Reno’s warriors.” There’s another roar from the class. Reno is very popular with Class 228. While he has frequently made them suffer, the trainees know that Reno and the other Indoc instructors have tried to give them what they need to survive in First Phase. “Be on time. Be alert. Be accountable for your actions in and out of uniform. You officers, look out for your men and your men will look out for you. Your reputation is everything in the teams. Remember this if you remember nothing else. For each of you, a chance to build on that reputation begins on Monday morning at zero five hundred in First Phase.” He looks around the class; every eye is on him. “For those of you who do get to the teams, I want you to take this on board. The guys in the teams are a brotherhood. You’ll be closer to them than you ever were to your friends in high school or college. You’ll live with them on deployment and some of you may even die with them in combat. But never, ever forget your family. Family comes before teammates. Most of us will grow old and die in bed, and the only people who will be there to help us die will be our family. Put your family first. I want you to never forget that.

Why don’t you get along with her?” His expression sobered. “Rava is who she is. Being older than me and of more importance, she was raised differently and never felt the need to have much of a relationship with me. That’s not to say she doesn’t care about me--she does. I think she’s even proud of me, in her own way.” He touched the officer’s insignia tacked to the shoulder of his black, asymmetrically cut uniform jacket. “I fought to achieve this rank, not an easy task, for men are not generally placed in command positions. We’re too hotheaded, as a group. Still, she has no trouble stepping on and over me, which you can probably appreciate.” “Perhaps,” I said, though his words confused me. Certain activities were not deemed appropriate for me since I was a woman, but for the most part, I did not resent my lot in life. But Saadi was strong, intelligent and extremely capable. In Hytanica, he would have been the pride of his family. How could he have been overlooked in Cokyri? Had Rava been the pride of his family instead? “This place. It’s so different from Cokyri,” he continued, content to accept my simple answer. “Not that different,” I replied with a short laugh. “We eat and work and sleep.” “That’s not what I mean.” He rolled his eyes. “It’s how people look at me. It’s not the same at all.” “People hate you because you’re Cokyrian. Did you expect to take pleasure in that?” “That’s not it, either.” He thought for a moment. “It’s strange, the level of fear in the eyes of your women. Belligerence I expect, from everyone, but the fear primarily radiates from the women.” He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “But what do I know? Listen, I haven’t even seen half of what there is to see in Hytanica. You could show me one day.” “You seem to be everywhere in this city,” I scoffed. “There can’t be much left for you to explore. Or have you just been following me around?” “Well, you’re the most interesting feature of the city I’ve come across.” He smirked, and I gave him a sideways glance. Was he admitting to stalking me? Then he chuckled. “As long as I’m assigned to oversee the city, we’re bound to run into each other. I would be lying, however, if I denied that I look forward to our encounters.” Heat again flooded my face. Saadi was making me uncomfortable. I was in danger of liking him too much.

February 17: Hanson Baldwin of the New York Times reports: “On two occasions troops rioted wildly and behaved like bobby-soxers in Times Square, not like soldiers proud of their uniform.

When dusk fell, my family, along with what appeared to be all the citizens of Hytanica, gathered at the military training field, where the Captain of the Guard’s body had been placed on a litter above a stack of firewood, ready to be burned, his soul already committed to God by our priests. Soldiers had stood guard around the site all day, and people had been coming in a steady stream to pay their respects. Many of them had left tokens of esteem at the base of the pyre--weapons of various types, coins, embroidered handkerchiefs, trophies won in battle or at tournaments, military medals and insignia. Even small children came forward, laying flowers, notes, toys and other items that had some special meaning to them among the other gifts. It made me both sad and proud when Celdrid walked forward and added his sword to the growing mound of mementos, the one that had originally been given to Steldor by our father, to be passed on by Steldor to my brother. It was perhaps Celdrid’s most coveted possession. He looked to Steldor as he came back to stand by us, and our cousin gave him a salute. When all the individuals who wanted to do so had paid homage to the captain, everyone stood in silence, the stillness of the large crowd itself a potent tribute. Grief could be a powerful, uniting force. Off to the side, separated from the masses, stood Steldor and Galen, their faces stoic, both wearing their military uniforms and holding lighted torches in preparation for setting the wood ablaze. King Adrik finally broke the silence, stepping forward as the appropriate representative of the royal family to say a few words. Queen Alera had not yet returned from Cokyri, another source of worry for the subdued throng. The former King cleared his throat and then began to speak, his deep voice easily carrying across the field. “We come together to honor a man of duty and devotion, strength and compassion, courage and wisdom. A man who put kingdom and family before all else, but who included within his family every citizen in need. A man of unwavering allegiance who steadfastly served his King and Queen for over thirty years. A man whose legacy will live on in his son and in every life he touched. A man I was proud to name my Captain of the Guard and to call my friend. And who, while serving the kingdom he loved, made the ultimate sacrifice. Let us celebrate his life this night, and may his funeral pyre burn as a bright beacon of hope in the darkness, letting the entire Recorah River Valley know that Hytanica is free once more.” Cheers went up from the crowd, then Steldor and Galen stepped forward and touched their torches to the pitch-soaked firewood. With a roar, flames shot into the air, befitting the man who had lived with an equally fiery passion.

You seldom see it in the papers. Once in a while some guys get put up for decorations and a ceremony takes place somewhere. You see them in dress uniforms, standing proud. But that’s politics and theater. You should see them as I have, downrange, in action. They’re amazing to watch, risking their lives to serve their country. I don’t like to talk about valor awards. I don’t think it’s useful to think about them. We just go to work, and it’s the work itself that tells us who we are. Our pride is no less without the fanfare.

Sagrib brought the saw up against the man’s throat and hacked it back and forth. The rusty blade chewed deep into the flesh and the chief gasped involuntary as the jagged teeth tore through his jugular and windpipe. Crimson blood spewed out of the horrific wound as Sagrib sawed through the spine, laughing like a mad man as the tribal elder gurgled. Garang screamed and thrashed against the men holding him. The baton returned, smashing his legs out from under him. The guards beat him savagely while Sagrib continued to hack at the once proud elder’s head. The old man died without so much as a whimper. The last thing Garang saw before he succumbed to unconsciousness was Sagrib holding the severed head aloft, his uniform drenched in blood, toothless mouth grinning.

Sir Graham walked to the window, very aware of two worshipful pairs of young eyes on his back. He knew well how to make himself noticed; he knew well how to draw a lady’s eye, and with this in mind—and despite the heat—he had purposely and cunningly exchanged his seagoing frock coat for his finest full-dress uniform. The dark blue coat was carefully brushed, with bright gold bars of lace at sleeve and lapel, more lace at collar, cuffs, and pockets, and the epaulets with the single star winking proudly from each shoulder; the waistcoat and breeches were snowy white, and a cocked hat was framed with even more gold trim. Uniforms—especially full-dress ones usually reserved for formal occasions—were a sure bet for winning female hearts and with this in mind, the admiral turned just so, knowing that the sunlight would—move a little more to starboard, Gray—he heard one of the girls gasp—yes, that's it—touch upon the gold fringe of his epaulets with blinding brilliance. With a private, wicked smile, he struck a deliberate pose, relaxed yet commanding all at once;

Clever feller,” a leather-skinned officer muttered before spitting out a slug of tobacco juice. He had a few marks of rank on his dark-blue United States Army uniform and was obviously the man in charge.  His matching cavalry hat had a few dirt streaks on it, but the distinct golden tassel still stood out proudly.  The week-old stubble on his face was a patchwork of gray and light brown.  He scratched his neck while considering the next move.

Muslim cemeteries aren’t like other cemeteries. There are no ornate flower arrangements laid on graves; no gilded tombstones that tower above the others, emblematic of the deceased’s status and wealth in life; and no engraved eulogies – ‘Loving father, husband, son’, for example – symbolising a legacy left behind, a proud heritage continued. Muslim burial plots make no delineation between their occupants. They are mostly plain, a single plaque marking each grave detailing the person’s name, date of birth and date of death. These uniform graves make no distinction between wealth and class; here, a vagrant may spend eternity next to a millionaire. In these cemeteries, the dead are all equal, just as they were intended to be in life.

The following day, I went to see Ho-chol. I’d decided to take him back home with me to Hamhung City. I told him how I’d tried to get him signed up at the recruitment center, but to no avail. His best chance would be to get away for a while and lie low until they forgot about him. Some young men wearing military uniforms stood in front of the station as we waited to board the train. They were new recruits, smiling and holding hands with their parents, looking very content with themselves. Some of them were taking souvenir photographs. I could picture the inscription, THE DAY OUR SON JOINED THE MILITARY. A happy memory. My son began to weep, but not tears of joy. The sight of him brought tears to my eyes as well. “Father! Please don’t cry too! You’ve done so much for me ever since I was born. I know that, and people in the village have told me as well. You’ve made it through so many hard times; I know you did everything you could.” At that, I broke down completely. I hugged him and started sobbing loudly, even though the station was full of people. The new recruits started walking proudly onto the platform. Suddenly, I had an idea. I told my son to get on the same train. I thought that maybe he could get swept along with them and end up in training with them. It also struck me that I might never see him again. I wanted to take a photograph with him, but of course that was impossible. I gave him ten won. It was all I had. “Look after yourself. I think the police will forget about you after a while, so try to make the best of it until then,” I said.

Unfortunately, it’s become ingrained in me, making me believe some-thing is wrong with me. My shape became more womanly the older I got. But my mom, she’s not used to curves, and in her mind, I'm overweight, simply because we don't share the same proportions. But I don’t know what she expected. Her husband, the other half of my DNA, looks nothing like the ginger hair, freckled, thin-framed side of my mom’s family. My parents couldn't be more different. Sure, there's the physical disparities. My dad is a black man, and my mom is a white woman. But more than that, their personalities are polar opposites. My dad is funny and kind, nurturing. My mom is cold, distant, and outright mean sometimes. I want to be proud that I’m half of a remarkable man, but it’s hard to be proud of anything when my own mother is disappointed in everything I do. And for some reason now, it seeps in more than it used to. As the bartender places my burger down in front of me, a quick regret paces through my mind. The more I think about my mother, the less appealing this food sounds. Maybe I should’ve ordered a salad with the dressing on the side. Maybe my uniform will fit a little better tomorrow if I eat that instead.

When I come into this clubhouse, if I am dejected and I am depressed and I am tired and my players see me that way, what is the attitude and the atmosphere of the clubhouse going to be? If I walk in full of enthusiasm, full of self-confidence, and proud to be putting that uniform on, all of those things are also contagious. That’s the attitude this team will have.” – Tommy Lasorda, 2-Time World Series-Winning Manager

The events of March 1848 roused in Ignác a measure of latent Magyar patriotism. Perhaps it was fueled by his growing antipathy for Viennese elitism. In any case, Ignác proudly joined the academic legion and had himself fitted for a uniform. And he took to sometimes actually wearing the uniform when giving lectures at the medical school.

She sometimes thought of herself as a sort of extraterritorial patriot: given a country, she would be proud, and given a uniform, she would serve. Instead, she was given Russia, which filled her heart with despair and her mind with the idea that life was not worth living.

What the judge was saying, in essence, was: We all agree that you were poor and scared when you did this violent, hurtful thing, and if you had been allowed to go on working five days a week at Old Country Buffet, refilling soup pots and mopping up frozen yogurt spills, none of us would be here right now. You might have been able to save enough to move to an apartment that was de-leaded and clean in a neighborhood without drug dealers and with safe schools. With time, you may have been able to get Bo-Bo the medical treatment he needs for his seizures, and maybe you could have even started taking night classes to become a nurse, like you always wanted. And, who knows, maybe you could have actually become a nurse, a real nurse with a uniform and everything. Then you could really give your kids a childhood that would look nothing like the one Shortcake gave you. If you did that, you would walk around this cold city with your head held high, and maybe you would eventually come to feel that you were worth something and deserving of a man who could support you other than by lending you his pistol for a stickup or at least one who didn’t break down your door and beat you in front of your children. Maybe you would meet someone with a steady job and get married in a small church with Kendal standing proudly up front by the groom and Tembi as the poofy-dressed flower girl and Bo-Bo as the grinning, toddling ring bearer, just like you always dreamed it, and from that day on your groom would introduce you as “my wife.” But that’s not what happened. What happened was that your hours were cut, and your electricity was about to be shut off, and you and your children were about to be thrown out of your home, and you snatched someone’s purse as your friend pointed a gun at her face. And if it was poverty that caused this crime, who’s to say you won’t do it again? Because you were poor then and you are poor now. We all see the underlying cause, we see it every day in this court, but the justice system is no charity, no jobs program, no Housing Authority. If we cannot pull the weed up from the roots, then at least we can cut it low at the stem.

The Zombie Firetruck by Stewart Stafford Sirens moan, grave duty's flash of red, A mortuary whiff of something dead, Hoses trained with brains they suck, Your friendly neighbourhood zombie firetruck! All that remained of the human fire team, From the zombie pandemic of 2017, Still in their uniforms, their only treasures, Apocalyptic times call for end-time measures. When they reached the fire, people did scoff, They lurched, staggered, body parts fell off, As they wandered around, fire hoses forlorn, These knightly living dead faced a blazing dawn. The chief, hat off to his skeleton crew, In a voice once alive, now croaky like flu: 'To the hydrant, my ghouls, let's save Gothik Town, Or they'll call Ghostbusters, we'll be the clowns!' A glowering inferno, a cremation scene, Zombie firefighters, brave and light green. Through smoke and ash, they gravely stand, Composed decomposition with skeletal hand. Axeman Bony Ed led their clattering charge, Into the smoke, his cadavers did barge, The townsfolk looked on in dead of night, And disbelief, tiredness and mild fright. There soon followed medic Cemetery Phil, Decaying Murphy, Old Salty, and Dead Drill, Slab Stevens, Madly Hyde and Molly Voodoo, Determined to shake their initial hoodoo. A mother and baby backed by burning drapes, Team Macabre charged up the fire escape, Saving both and getting everyone out, Drank Brainer Ade as they leaked like a spout. Somehow, undead teamwork saved the day, No lives were lost as the water sprayed, Doused the flames, cool flatlined heroes, Much zombie kudos, no longer scary zeroes. The crowd cheered, did they ever doubt it? High fives lost hands but new ones sprouted, Frankenstein proud in their flapping flesh, Sure to get medals at the HalloweenFest. With a final groan and a clatter of bones, The zombie firetruck headed back home. Rotten yet proud, in their reanimated way, The risen would fight fires another day. © 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.

The huge cop funerals with the uniforms and American flags only pound the reality of the loss in deeper. You see all those cops lined up coming to pay their respects and you feel proud for a moment, but then the pain hits you like a sledgehammer. You ask why, but there is never a good enough reason.

The Deliverator does not know for sure what happens to the driver in such cases, but he has heard some rumors. Most pizza deliveries happen in the evening hours, which Uncle Enzo considers to be his private time. And how would you feel if you bad to interrupt dinner with your family in order to call some obstreperous dork in a Burbclave and grovel for a late fucking pizza? Uncle Enzo has not put in fifty years serving his family and his country so that, at the age when most are playing golf and bobbling their granddaughters, he can get out of the bathtub dripping wet and lie down and kiss the feet of some sixteenyear- old skate punk whose pepperoni was thirty-one minutes in coming. Oh, God. It makes the Deliverator breathe a little shallower just to think of the idea. But he wouldn't drive for CosaNostra Pizza any other way. You know why? Because there's something about having your life on the line. It's like being a kamikaze pilot. Your mind is clear. Other people -- store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America -- other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster and better than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things. What a fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy -- but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits blazing proud numbers into the night: 12:32 or 15:15 or the occasional 20:43.

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an “insurgent,” whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, “No, it is you who are the insurgents!” and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on “the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class.” The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were “you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them.” To

Mon Dieu, it’s the little admiral,” she said cheerfully. “What are you doing here?” Ignoring the anguished scream inside his skull, Miles schooled his features to an—exquisitely—polite blankness. “I beg your pardon, ma’am?” “Admiral Naismith. Or . . .” She took in his uniform, her eyes lighting with interest. “Is this some mercenary covert operation, Admiral?” A beat passed. Miles allowed his eyes to widen, his hand to stray to his weaponless trouser seam and twitch there. “My God,” he choked in a voice of horror—not hard, that—“Do you mean to tell me Admiral Naismith has been seen on Earth?” Her chin lifted, and her lips parted in a little half-smile of disbelief. “In your mirror, surely.” Were his eyebrows visibly singed? His right hand was still bandaged. Not a burn, ma’am, Miles thought wildly. I cut it shaving . . . Miles came to full attention, snapping his polished boot heels together, and favored her with a small, formal bow. In a proud, hard, and thickly Barrayaran-accented voice, he said, “You are mistaken, ma’am. I am Lord Miles Vorkosigan of Barrayar. Lieutenant in the Imperial Service. Not that I don’t aspire to the rank you name, but it’s a trifle premature.” She smiled sweetly. “Are you entirely recovered from your burns, sir?” Miles’s eyebrows rose—no, he shouldn’t have drawn attention to them—“Naismith’s been burned? You have seen him? When? Can we speak of this? The man you name is of the greatest interest to Barrayaran Imperial Security.” She

In London, she'd overheard more than one matron decrying what they considered Esme Byron's inappropriate eccentricities, aghast that she was allowed so much personal freedom and the ability to voice opinions they considered unsuitable for an unmarried young woman barely out of the schoolroom. But her family always stood by her, proud of her artistic talent and uniformly deaf to the complaints of any critics who might say she needed a firmer hand. 'What must Ned and Mama be thinking now?' Were they regretting that they had not listened to those critics? Wishing they'd kept a tighter rein on her activities rather than letting her venture out as she chose? But she would have gone mad being constrained and confined the way she knew most girls her age were. She could never have been borne the suffocating restrictions, the smothering tedium of being expected to go everywhere with a chaperone in tow, or worse, being cooped up inside doing embroidery or playing the pianoforte.

for a while I was a bus conductor and one day my Dad got on my bus and sat on the long seat next to my cubby hole he was proud to see me in a uniform and a job and in a loud voice he said to everyone do you remember the bus conductor's outfit you had when you were a boy John? and I said no Dad but I remember how you used to enjoy beating me - On the bus

Metallica are too proud to dress up; their uniform is the uniform of their average fan, the teenage American slob: sneakers, ripped jeans, T-shirts.

A naval officer in a crisp blue uniform gave us a speech about the traditions of the sea, and how we were to uphold them throughout our upcoming careers. It all sounded glorious, but to us it seemed to drag on forever. There were others who added to these sentiments, also in glowing terms. In contrast to us, the officers all looked very professional and sharp in their dress uniforms. It made me very aware that I still didn’t even have my working boots, a belt or a white gob hat, but never mind, most of us were still out of uniform. I guess that’s why we were called muggs! Now with my right hand up, I swore to uphold the Constitution of the United States and obey the lawful orders of those appointed over me, which was just about everybody. Flash bulbs went off and suddenly, I was in the Navy! Wow! I was now a Midshipman in the U.S. Naval Reserve and did I ever feel proud. Unfortunately there wasn’t much time to bask in this solitary ray of light. The swearing in ceremony was hardly over and already I was late for lunch. I had to run double time between buildings, squaring all the corners along the way. So, doing my best to observe all of these new rules, I ran as fast as I could to the mess hall. Getting there just before they slammed the windows shut, I got the last two pre-made, soggy sandwiches. The sandwiches were wet and crushed, and I could swear they had greasy fingerprints on them. This sad excuse for food only looked appetizing because of my extreme hunger. With no time to waste, I washed lunch down with a glass of warm “jungle juice” reminiscent of Camp Wawayanda, before scurrying off to my next appointment, which was at the barbershop, also in the basement of Richardson Hall.

Was he proud that you became a soldier?” “No, it hurt him deeply. He was very angry with me, in his own silent, simmering way. “During the war I did what was expected of me when I pulled on the uniform. I can see now that he was afraid that was what would happen to me.

Once in a while some guys get put up for decorations and a ceremony takes place somewhere. You see them in dress uniforms, standing proud. But that’s politics and theater. You should see them as I have, downrange, in action. They’re amazing to watch, risking their lives to serve their country. I don’t like to talk about valor awards. I don’t think it’s useful to think about them. We just go to work, and it’s the work itself that tells us who we are. Our pride is no less without the fanfare.

For the greater part of human existence we went bare-breasted and were accustomed to the great diversity of breast shape. Now instead of feeling proud of their individuality, thousands of women yearn to conform to a ridiculous standard of uniformity.

As the banners passed, he read them one by one: Vigilance the Price of Liberty; No More Slave Territory; The Pilgrims Did Not Found an Empire for Slavery. But the sight that made his heart leap was the company of West Boston Wide Awakes: two hundred black men marching proudly in uniform, keeping stride in perfect tempo with their white comrades, under a banner that read God Never Made a Tyrant or a Slave.

Never before had I seen such a striking uniform. At the proud peak of the cap glittered a death’s-head and crossbones, while lightninglike signs embellished the collar. A red badge bearing the bold sign of the swastika cut across his sleeve.

A profession that I was once proud to serve in has become a militarized police state. Officers are quicker to draw their guns and use their tanks than to communicate with people to defuse a situation. They love to use their toys, and when they do, people die. The days of the peace officer are long gone, replaced by the militarized police warrior wearing uniforms making them indistinguishable from military personnel.

Ironically enough, when we returned to the zoo, the Dr. Dolittle cameo almost came true. We had to transfer a big female crocodile named Toolakea to another enclosure. Steve geared up for the move as he always did. “Don’t think about catching Toolakea,” he instructed his crew, me included, before we ever got near to the enclosure. “If you’re concentrating on catching her, she’ll know it. We’ll never get a top-jaw rope on. Crocs know when they’re being hunted.” For millions of years, wild animals have evolved to use every sense to tune into the world around them. Steve understood that their survival depended on it. So as I approached the enclosure, I thought of mowing the lawn, or doing the croc show, or picking hibiscus flowers to feed the lizards. Anything but catching Toolakea. It went like clockwork. Steve top-jaw-roped Toolakea, and we all jumped her. He decided that since she was only a little more than nine feet long, we would be able to just lift her over the fence and carry her to her other enclosure. Steve never built his enclosures with gates. He knew that sooner or later, someone could make a mistake and not latch a gate properly. We had to be masters at fence jumping. He picked up Toolakea around her shoulders with her neck held firmly against his upper arm. This would protect his face if she started struggling. The rest of us backed him up and helped to lift Toolakea over the fence. All of a sudden she exploded, twisting and writhing in everyone’s arms. “Down, down, down,” Steve shouted. That was our signal to pin the crocodile again before picking her up. Not everyone reacted quickly enough. As Steve moved to the ground, the people on the tail were still standing up. That afforded Toolakea the opportunity to twist her head around and grab hold of Steve’s thigh. The big female croc sank her teeth deep into his flesh. I never realized it until later. Steve didn’t flinch. He settled the crocodile on the ground, keeping her eyes covered to quiet her down. We lifted her again. This time she cleared the fence easily. I noticed the blood trickling down Steve’s leg. We got to the other enclosure before I asked what had happened, and he showed me. There were a dozen tears in the fabric of his khaki shorts. A half dozen of Toolakea’s teeth had gotten through to his flesh, putting a number of puncture holes in his upper thigh. As usual, Steve didn’t bother with the wound. He cleaned it out and carried on, but even after his leg had healed, he couldn’t feel the temperature accurately on his leg. Once, about a month after the incident, I got a drink out of the fridge and rested it on his thigh. “I can feel something there,” he said. “Hot or cold?” I quizzed. “I don’t know,” he said. The croc-torn khaki shorts he wore that day made an amazing souvenir for a lucky sponsor of the zoo. People who donated a certain amount of money to our conservation efforts received a bonus in return: one of Steve’s uniforms and a photograph of him in it. Steve was very proud to include his khakis with teeth holes in them as the gift for a generous supporter.

The croc-torn khaki shorts he wore that day made an amazing souvenir for a lucky sponsor of the zoo. People who donated a certain amount of money to our conservation efforts received a bonus in return: one of Steve’s uniforms and a photograph of him in it. Steve was very proud to include his khakis with teeth holes in them as the gift for a generous supporter.

At Westminster Abbey, Welsh Guards in crimson uniforms raised the casket to their shoulders. They took it down the long aisle of the church and placed it at the front of the altar. After laying a bouquet of white lilies at the foot of the coffin, Prince Charles and Prince Philip led William and Harry, Queen Elizabeth II, and the Queen Mother to seats in the front of the sanctuary. About two thousand mourners were seated behind them. Her brother Charles said, “Above all, we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister; the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana, whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds.” The dean of Westminster said, “Diana profoundly influenced this nation and the world.” At William’s suggestion, Elton John sang “Candle in the Wind,” in which he made specific reference to Diana: “Your footsteps will always fall here/among England’s greenest hills;/ your candle’s burned out long before/ your legend ever will.” The funeral procession made a two-hour trip to the Spencer family home. Along the way, crowds sobbed and threw flowers. Diana was buried on an island in the middle of a small lake on the family estate. The burial was private.

They were statues, apparently of iron, black and shining as if continually polished. They were life-size, depicting tall, lithely powerful men, with cruel hawk-like faces. They were naked, and every swell, depression and contour of joint and sinew was represented with incredible realism. But the most life-like feature was their proud, intolerant faces. These features were not cast in the same mold. Each face possessed its own individual characteristics, though there was a tribal likeness between them all. There was none of the monotonous uniformity of decorative art, in the faces at least.

Thus, to take an example directly connected with the subject of this book, the Pythagorean numbers, envisaged as the principles of things, are by no means numbers as understood by the moderns, whether mathematicians or physicists, just as principial immutability is by no means the immobility of a stone, nor true unity the uniformity of beings denuded of all their qualities; nonetheless, because numbers are in question in both cases, the partisans of an exclusively quantitative science have not failed to reckon the Pythagoreans as among their ‘precursors’. So as not unduly to anticipate develop- ments to follow, only this much need be said here, namely that this is but one more instance of the fact that the profane sciences of which the modern world is so proud are really and truly only the degenerate ‘residues’ of the ancient traditional sciences, just as quantity itself, to which they strive to reduce everything, is, when considered from their special point of view, no more than the ‘residue’ of an existence emptied of everything that constituted its essence; thus these pretended sciences, by leaving aside or even intentionally eliminating all that is truly essential, clearly prove themselves incapable of furnishing the explanation of anything whatsoever.

Once when he was slapping me back and forth, one hand holding my neck, the other whipping across my cheeks, I caught a glimpse of a picture of him on the mantel – ten years old in a Cub Scout uniform. He looked so proud; his grin was so sweet. Freckles, bright eyes, combed hair still wet. Adorable. I wanted to ask him; how did you grow up to be who you are? Who taught you to hit?

Lingering anti-Semitism meant the denial of visas en masse to Holocaust survivors crammed into the DP camps. Yet Nazi collaborators and even SS members in Hitler’s reign of persecution, men who had proudly worn the Nazi uniform, were often able to enter the United States as “war refugees.

Their uniforms are black and their boots are shiny. What proud descendants of Goethe and Schiller…and the German language rich with expressions we heard from their progeny: “Dreckige Juden” (Dirty Jews), “dreck zak” (shitbag) and more. And these people believed that they were “members of the superior race!