Winter Soldier Quotes

Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she said, crossing to him. “I didn’t know if you were dead or being held hostage, or if you’d been eaten by one of the queen’s soldiers. It’s been driving me mad not knowing.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. She scowled. “Don’t comment on that.” “I wouldn’t dare.

I'm with you until the end of the line.

I’m Hannah’s daughter. I’m Winter’s conduit. I’m a warrior, a soldier, a lady, a queen, and most of all, as I plunge across the snowfield toward Jannuari’s silent ruin, I’m Meira.

But you are crazy.” “I know.” She lifted a small box from the basket. “Do you know how I know?” Scarlet didn't answer. “Because the palace walls have been bleeding for years, and no one else sees it.” She shrugged, as if this were a perfectly normal thing to say. “No one believes me, but in some corridors, the blood has gotten so thick there's nowhere safe to step. When I have to pass through those places, I leave a trail of bloody footprints for the rest of the day, and then I worry that the queen's soldiers will follow the scent and eat me up while I'm sleeping. Some nights I don't sleep very well.” Her voice dropped to a haunted whisper, her eyes taking on a brittle luminescence. “But if the blood was real, the servants would clean it up. Don't you think?

Why is it always a prince?” asked Winter. “Why isn’t she ever saved by a top-secret spy? Or a soldier? Or a … a poor farm boy, even?” “I don’t know. That’s just how the story was written.” Evret brushed back a curl of Winter’s hair. “If you don’t like it, we’ll make up a different story tomorrow night. You can have whoever you want rescue the princess.” “Like a doctor?” “A doctor? Well—sure. Why not?” “Jacin said he wants to grow up to be a doctor.” “Ah. Well, that’s a very good job, one that saves more than just princesses.” “Maybe the princess can save herself.” “That sounds like a pretty good story too.

Suicide in the trenches: I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy, Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark. In winter trenches, cowed and glum With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again. * * * * * You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you'll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

The price of freedom is high, it always has been. And it's a price I'm willing to pay. And if I'm the only one, then so be it.

I wanted to be a soldier. Someone who would earn standing in Winter. Someone Sir would look at with pride. Someone Mather would look at and —

You and the Germans, you have your super- soldiers, your secret weapons... but we Russians, we have nothing but our winter.

It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.

Tis action moves the world....[in] the game of chess, mind that: ye cannot leave your men to stand unmoving on the board and hope to win. A soldier must first step upon the battlefield if does mean to cross it.

Cinder pressed a hand against the bars, but the soldiers pulled her away, forming a protective wall between her and the barricade. As if she was worth protecting. Cinder tried not to be annoyed.

He was a soldier. He was a shepherd. He was a beggar, and a king. He was a farmer, gleeman, sailor, carpenter. He was born, lived, and died Aiel. He died mad, he died rotting, he died of sickness, accident, age. He was executed, and multitudes cheered his death. He proclaimed himself the Dragon Reborn and flung his banner across the sky; he ran from the Power and hid; he lived and died never knowing. He held off the madness and the sickness for years; he succumbed between two winters. Sometimes Moiraine came and took him away from the Two Rivers, alone or with those of his friends who had survived Winternight; sometimes she did not. Sometimes other Aes Sedai came for him. Sometimes Red Ajah. Egwene married him; Egwene, stern-faced in stole of Amyrlin Seat, led Aes Sedai who gentled him; Egwene, with tears in her eyes, plunged a dagger into his heart, and he thanked her as he died. He loved other women, married other women. Elayne, and Min, and a fair-haired farmer's daughter met on the road to Caemlyn, and women he had never seen before he lived those lives. A hundred lives. More. So many he could not count them. And at the end of every life, as he lay dying, as he drew his final breath, a voice whispered in his ear. I have won again, Lews Therin. Flicker.

Yes, I am crying although I am a man. But has not a man eyes! Has not a man hands, limbs, senses, thoughts, passions? Is he not fed with the wine food, hurt by the same weapons, warmed and cooled by the same summer and winter as a woman? If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? And if you poison us, do we not die? Why shouldn't a man complain, a soldier weep? Because it is unmanly? Why is it unmanly?

You have a metal arm? Dude, that is so awesome!

They say a good soldier fights a battle, never a war. That's for civilians.

The truth is dark under your eyelids. What are you going to do about it? The birds are silent; there's no one to ask. All day long you'll squint at the gray sky. When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw. A meek little lamb you grew your wool Till they came after you with huge shears. Flies hovered over open mouth, Then they, too, flew off like the leaves, The bare branches reached after them in vain. Winter coming. Like the last heroic soldier Of a defeated army, you'll stay at your post, Head bared to the first snow flake. Till a neighbor comes to yell at you, You're crazier than the weather, Charlie.

Her soldiers? You mean, her mutant wolf soldiers? Are you insane?” Winter started to giggle. “I might as well be,” she said, placing a hand on Thorne’s cheek. “For everyone tells me so.

If the German armies had disintegrated like Napoleon’s Grande Armée in the winter of 1941, and the Third Reich had sued for peace, most of the soldiers and civilians who were to die in the Second World War would have lived.

Rostov was not listening to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes dancing above the fire and remembered the Russian winter with a warm, bright house, a fluffy fur coat, swift sleighs, a healthy body, and all the love and care of a family. “And why did I come here?” he wondered.

Wherever we went, the soldiers came to kill us, And it was all our own country. It was ours already when the Wasichus made the treaty with Red Cloud, that said it would be ours is long as grass should grow and water flow. That was only eight winter’s before, and they were chasing us now because we remembered and they forgot.

Citizens of Luna, I ask that you stop what you’re doing to listen to this message. My name is Selene Blackburn. I am the daughter of the late Queen Channary, niece to Princess Levana, and the rightful heir to Luna’s throne. You were told that I died thirteen years ago in a nursery fire, but the truth is that my aunt, Levana, did try to kill me, but I was rescued and taken to Earth. There, I have been raised and protected in preparation for the time when I would return to Luna and reclaim my birthright. In my absence, Levana has enslaved you. She takes your sons and turns them into monsters. She takes your shell infants and slaughters them. She lets you go hungry, while the people in Artemisia gorge themselves on rich foods and delicacies. But Levana’s rule is coming to an end. I have returned and I am here to take back what’s mine. Soon, Levana is going to marry Emperor Kaito of Earth and be crowned the empress of the Eastern Commonwealth, an honor that could not be given to anyone less deserving. I refuse to allow Levana to extend her tyranny. I will not stand aside while my aunt enslaves and abuses my people here on Luna, and wages a war across Earth. Which is why, before an Earthen crown can be placed on Levana’s head, I will bring an army to the gates of Artemisia. I ask that you, citizens of Luna, be that army. You have the power to fight against Levana and the people that oppress you. Beginning now, tonight, I urge you to join me in rebelling against this regime. No longer will we obey her curfews or forgo our rights to meet and talk and be heard. No longer will we give up our children to become her disposable guards and soldiers. No longer will we slave away growing food and raising wildlife, only to see it shipped off to Artemisia while our children starve around us. No longer will we build weapons for Levana’s war. Instead, we will take them for ourselves, for our war. Become my army. Stand up and reclaim your homes from the guards who abuse and terrorize you. Send a message to Levana that you will no longer be controlled by fear and manipulation. And upon the commencement of the royal coronation, I ask that all able-bodied citizens join me in a march against Artemisia and the queen’s palace. Together we will guarantee a better future for Luna. A future without oppression. A future in which any Lunar, no matter the sector they live in or the family they were born to, can achieve their ambitions and live without fear of unjust persecution or a lifetime of slavery. I understand that I am asking you to risk your lives. Levana’s thaumaturges are powerful, her guards are skilled, her soldiers are brutal. But if we join together, we can be invincible. They can’t control us all. With the people united into one army, we will surround the capital city and overthrow the imposter who sits on my throne. Help me. Fight for me. And I will be the first ruler in the history of Luna who will also fight for you.

Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Floyd Talbert wrote shortly before his death, “Dick, you are loved and will never be forgotten by any soldier who ever served under you. You are the best friend I ever had…you were my ideal, and motor in combat…you are to me the greatest soldier I could ever hope to meet.

Well, given that you’re so regrettably charming, and you did such a great job getting the wolf soldiers to join us, and everyone likes you so much…” “So many compliments in a row? I feel like I must be walking into a trap.

But I was ... someone! I was someone else. I was this person -I was James Barnes -I had a life and a country and a family! And you took that from me.

Do you have any idea how worried I’ve been?” she said, crossing to him. “I didn’t know if you were dead or being held hostage, or if you’d been eaten by one of the queen’s soldiers. It’s been driving me mad not knowing.” He quirked an eyebrow at her. She scowled. “Don’t comment on that.” “I wouldn’t dare.

Been thinking of my grandfather, whose wayward brilliance skipped my father’s generation. Once, he showed me an aquatint of a certain Siamese temple. Don’t recall its name, but ever since a disciple of the Buddha preached on the spot centuries ago, every bandit king, tyrant, and monarch of that kingdom has enhanced it with marble towers, scented arboretums, gold-leafed domes, lavished murals on its vaulted ceilings, set emeralds into the eyes of its statuettes. When the temple finally equals its counterpart in the Pure Land, so the story goes, that day humanity shall have fulfilled its purpose, and Time itself shall come to an end. To men like Ayrs, it occurs to me, this temple is civilization. The masses, slaves, peasants, and foot soldiers exist in the cracks of its flagstones, ignorant even of their ignorance. Not so the great statesmen, scientists, artists, and most of all, the composers of the age, any age, who are civilization’s architects, masons, and priests. Ayrs sees our role is to make civilization ever more resplendent. My employer’s profoundest, or only, wish is to create a minaret that inheritors of Progress a thousand years from now will point to and say, “Look, there is Vyvyan Ayrs!” How vulgar, this hankering after immortality, how vain, how false. Composers are merely scribblers of cave paintings. One writes music because winter is eternal and because, if one didn’t, the wolves and blizzards would be at one’s throat all the sooner.

One of the very striking life lessons from Game of Thrones. When Arya was blind; hopeless and helpless. The Waif lured her into multiple stick fights and the Waif would promptly beat Arya in every sparring match. But through those stick fight, Arya learned to cope with her blindness and how to fight “in the dark.” After Arya had regained her sight and Jaqen had granted the Waif’s wish to kill Arya. Arya confronted the Waif in a hideout and put out the only light in the room. Arya best the Waif due to her proficiency in fighting without sight (which, ironically, was trained by the Waif). Arya killed her adversary. ONE THING ABOUT CHALLENGES IN LIFE IS: THROUGH THEM, WE LEARN HOW TO OVERCOME THEM. Always Pay Attention!

What many people failed to do then (and continue to fail to do today) is admit what happened, understand the context, and make sure those circumstances never happen again. The winter soldiers showed us that redemption is possible when truth is spoken. Nothing can change until we acknowledge what is—as I have learned over time.

Sometimes I think if you didn't have me, there wouldn't be a single person in the world who really understood you...

Most people were more willing to talk about fighting than to do it, especially against soldiers.

This was the mark of an uncommon soldier, someone whose courage away from the battlefield was the same as that on it.

He is tired of surviving. He wants to live.

Was it worth it? You took my life and my past and my family and my country and my mind. Look me in the eyes and tell me you're proud of yourself.

A little while ago, I stood by the grave of the old Napoleon—a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity—and gazed upon the sarcophagus of rare and nameless marble, where rest at last the ashes of that restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world. I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine, contemplating suicide. I saw him at Toulon—I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris—I saw him at the head of the army of Italy—I saw him crossing the bridge of Lodi with the tri-color in his hand—I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids—I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagles of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo—at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster—driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris—clutched like a wild beast—banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, where Chance and Fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea. I thought of the orphans and widows he had made—of the tears that had been shed for his glory, and of the only woman who ever loved him, pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition. And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder, known as 'Napoleon the Great.

After ten months of infantry training, I realized my survival would depend on the men around me. Airborne troopers looked like I had always pictured a group of soldiers: hard, lean, bronzed, and tough. When they walked down the street, they appeared to be a proud and cocky bunch exhibiting a tolerant scorn for anyone who was not airborne.

Maybe the idea of the world as flat isn't a tribal memory or an archetypal memory, but something far older -- a fox memory, a worm memory, a moss memory. Memory of leaping or crawling or shrugging rootlet by rootlet forward, across the flatness of everything. To perceive of the earth as round needed something else -- standing up! -- that hadn't yet happened. What a wild family! Fox and giraffe and wart hog, of course. But these also: bodies like tiny strings, bodies like blades and blossoms! Cord grass, Christmas fern, soldier moss! And here comes grasshopper, all toes and knees and eyes, over the little mountains of the dust. When I see the black cricket in the woodpile, in autumn, I don't frighten her. And when I see the moss grazing upon the rock, I touch her tenderly, sweet cousin.

To be sure, the Finnish soldier was aware of the numerical odds against him, but he rendered those odds less terrible by cracking jokes about them: “They are so many, and our country is so small, where will we find room to bury them all?

Each man in his own way had gone through what Richard Winters experienced: a realization that doing his best was a better way of getting through the Army than hanging around with the sad excuses for soldiers they met in the recruiting depots or basic training. They wanted to make their Army time positive, a learning and maturing and challenging experience.

Only soldiers and labouring men can appreciate how glorious it really is to lie late in bed in winter-time. When your life revolves around having to to be at work at seven o'clock in the morning you know everything about that ghastly lep up still half asleep and the rush to put your head under a tap of ice-cold water with the barbarous object of shocking yourself awake.

The sword was called Kaledvoulc'h, which means hard lightning, though Igraine prefers to call it Excaliber, and I shall call it so as well because Arthur never cared what name his longsword carried. Nor, did he care about his childhood, for certainly I never heard him speak of it. I once questioned him about his early days and he would not answer. “What is the egg to the eagle?” he asked me, then said that he had been born, he had lived, and he had become a soldier, and that was all I needed to know.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; ’tis dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

I want so badly to help you realize, Elizabeth Anne, how difficult and puzzling and full of wonder it all is: some day I will tell you how I learned to watch the shifting light of autumn days or smelled the earth through snow in March; how one winter morning God vanished from my life and how one summer evening I sat in a Ferris wheel, looking down on a man that hurt me badly; I will tell you how I once travelled to Rome and saw all the soldiers in that city of dead poets; I will tell you how I met your father outside a movie house in Toronto, and how you came to be. Perhaps that is where I will begin. On a winter afternoon when we turn the lights on early, or perhaps a summer day of leaves and sky, I will begin by conjugating the elemental verb. I am. You are. It is.

Running to join them, he felt overwhelming joy. It was as if he were coming home from a lashing winter storm to the warmth of his living room. The sky seemed brilliantly blue and clear, although he knew it was overcast. If he didn't move his legs faster, his heart would outpace his feet and burst. His heart, his whole body, was overflowing with an emotion that he could only describe as love.

I walked past the lady in yellow robes and the maid bringing her a letter, past the soldier with a magnificent hat and the girl smiling at him, thinking of warm lips, brown eyes, blue eyes. Her brown eyes stopped me. It's the painting from whose frame a girl looks out, ignoring her beefy music teacher, whose proprietary hand rests on her chair. The light is muted, winter light, but her face is bright. I looked into her brown eyes and I recoiled. She was warning me of something-- she had looked up from her work to warn me. Her mouth was slightly open, as if she had just drawn a breath in order to say to me, "Don't!" I moved backward, trying to get beyond the range of her urgency. But her urgency filled the corridor. "Wait," she was saying, "wait! Don't go!" ... She had changed a lot in sixteen years. She was no longer urgent. In fact, she was sad. She was young and distracted, and her teacher was bearing down on her, trying to get her to pay attention. But she was looking out, looking for someone who would see her. This time I read the title of the painting: Girl Interrupted at Her Music. Interrupted at her music.- as my life had been, interrupted in the music of being seventeen, as her life had been, snatched and fixed on canvas: one moment made to stand still and to stand for all the other moments, whatever they would be or might have been. What life can recover from that? I had something to tell her now "I see you," I said. My boyfriend found me crying in the hallway. "What's the matter with you?" he asked. "Don't you see, she's trying to get out," I said, pointing at her.

Yes, Doctor, we remember her. She went to Kraków. No, she went to Jaroslaw. No, to Sambor. So to Stryj. She was from the mountains, Doctor, wasn't she? She was going home, she said. Perhaps if you go there, they will know. And on. And he would continue, a ghost searching for its flesh.

Some 2,500 of Washington’s Continentals perished that winter, roughly one in five of those who had entered Valley Forge just before Christmas. (In contrast, one in thirty American soldiers died in combat in the Battle of the Bulge, one of the nation’s costliest engagements in World War II.)

Every city has its gates, which need not be of stone. Nor need soldiers be upon them or watchers before them. At first, when cities were jewels in a dark and mysterious world, they tended to be round and they had protective walls. To enter, one had to pass through gates, the reward for which was shelter from the overwhelming forests and seas, the merciless and taxing expanse of greens, whites, and blues - wild and free - that stopped at the city walls. In time, the ramparts became higher and the gates more massive, until they simply disappeared and were replaced by barriers, subtler than stone, that girded every city like a crown and held in its spirit. Some claim that the barriers do not exist, and disparage them. Although they themselves can penetrate the new walls with no effort, their spirits (which, also, they claim do not exist) cannot, and are left like orphans around the periphery. To enter a city intact it is necessary to pass through one of the new gates. They are far more difficult to find than their solid predecessors, for they are tests, mechanisms, devices, and implementations of justice.

It's all prickles and spines and anger, covered in pretty, useless blossoms and fruit too bitter to eat. There is nothing in it worth loving." "How wrong you are." Zoya's gaze snapped to his, her eyes flashing silver- dragon's eyes. "Am I?" "Look at the way it grows, protecting everything within these walls, stronger than anything else in the garden, weathering every season. No matter the winter it endures, it blooms again and again." "What if the winter is just too long and hard? What if it can't bloom again?" He was afraid to reach for her, but he did it anyway. He took her gloved hand in his. She didn't pull away but folded in to him like a flower closing its petals at nightfall. He wrapped his arm around her. Zoya seemed to hesitate, and then with a soft breath, she let herself lean against him. Zoya the deadly. Zoya the ferocious. The weight of her against him like a benediction. He had been strong for his country, his soldiers, his friends. It meant something different to be strong for her. "Then you'll be branches without blossom," he whispered against her hair. "And you'll let the rest of us be strong until the summer comes." "It wasn't a metaphor." "Of course it wasn't.

War was simply a slaughterhouse on wheels, he thought. For most men, soldiering was tragedy expressed as a profession.

But then again, did a hero's death really matter if you died just the same? The only difference between a foxhole and a grave was the name you gave it in your won head.

As a leader, you obtain a sense of the better soldiers during training. They have a quiet confidence about them and a swagger that sets them apart.

Bucky did the things I couldn’t. I was the icon. I wore the flag… But while I gave speeches to troops in the trenches… He was doing what he’d been trained to do… and he was highly trained.

By the winter of 1916, German civilians were starving, even starving to death. Unless the war ended very soon, Germany faced catastrophe even if not a single Allied soldier advanced another step.

The weather was worsening, but winter was not the enemy of the Russian soldier; thirteen million pairs of fleece-lined boots stamped Made in the USA ensured that the Red Army marched in relative comfort.

In former days, when wars arose from individual causes, from the policy of a Minister or the passion of a King, when they were fought by small regular armies of professional soldiers, and when their course was retarded by the difficulties of communication and supply, and often suspended by the winter season, it was possible to limit the liabilities of the combatants. But now, when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individual severally embittered and inflamed—when the resources of science and civilisation sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, an European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

I was hostile to the white man…We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on our reservations. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to hunt. All we wanted was peace and to be let alone. Soldiers came…in the winter..and destroyed our villages. Then Long Hair (Custer) came…They said we massacred him, but he would have done the same to us. Our first impulse was to escape…but we were so hemmed in we had to fight. After that I lived in peace, but the government would not let me alone. I was not allowed to remain quiet. I was tired of fighting…They tried to confine me..and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken.

I Give You Back' I release you, my beautiful and terrible fear. I release you. You were my beloved and hated twin, but now, I don't know you as myself. I release you with all the pain I would know at the death of my daughters. You are not my blood anymore. I give you back the white soldiers who burned down my home, beheaded my children, raped and sodomized my brothers and sisters. I give you back to those who stole the food from our plates when we were starving. I release you, fear, because you hold these scenes in front of me and I was born with eyes that can never close. I release you, fear, so you can no longer keep me naked and frozen in the winter, or smothered under blankets in the summer. I release you I release you I release you I release you I am not afraid to be angry. I am not afraid to rejoice. I am not afraid to be black. I am not afraid to be white. I am not afraid to be hungry. I am not afraid to be full. I am not afraid to be hated. I am not afraid to be loved, to be loved, to be loved, fear. Oh, you have choked me, but I gave you the leash. You have gutted me, but I gave you the knife. You have devoured me, but I lay myself across the fire. You held y mother down and raped her, but I gave you the heated thing. I take myself back, fear. You are not my shadow any longer. I won't hold you in my hands. You can't live in my eyes, my ears, my voice, my belly, or in my heart my heart my heart my heart But come here, fear I am alive and you are so afraid of dying.

Far more humbling to me was a letter I received years later from Sergeant Talbert. Referring to the attack at the intersection, he wrote, “Seeing you in the middle of that road, wanting to move, was too much. You were my total inspiration. All my boys felt the same way.” “Tab” was far too generous with his compliments. His own action at Carentan personified his excellence as both a soldier and a leader. He helped clear that intersection and carried a wounded Lipton to safety. Later when the Germans finally counterattacked, Talbert was everywhere, directing his men to the right place, supervising their fire, before he himself was wounded and evacuated.

Almost everything people did throughout history was fuelled by solar energy that was captured by plants and converted into muscle power. Human history was consequently dominated by two main cycles: the growth cycles of plants and the changing cycles of solar energy (day and night, summer and winter). When sunlight was scarce and when wheat fields were still green, humans had little energy. Granaries were empty, tax collectors were idle, soldiers found it difficult to move and fight, and kings tended to keep the peace. When the sun shone brightly and the wheat ripened, peasants harvested the crops and filled the granaries. Tax collectors hurried to take their share. Soldiers flexed their muscles and sharpened their swords. Kings convened councils and planned their next campaigns. Everyone was fuelled by solar energy – captured and packaged in wheat, rice and potatoes.

The school year started in September, with a long vacation in the winter, not the summer, due to the difficulty of keeping the schools warm in North Korea’s harsh winters. My kindergarten had a large wood-burning stove in the middle of the classroom and walls painted with colourful scenes of children performing gymnastics, children in uniform, and of a North Korean soldier simultaneously impaling a Yankee, a Japanese and a South Korean soldier with his rifle bayonet.

Captain America: Damn you, you fool! Hasn’t there been enough death today? Colonel Karpov: You do not understand...you cannot. You and the Germans, you have your super-soldiers...your secret weapons...But we Russians...we have nothing but our winter.

Not many men ever saw Washington disturbed by bad news; it was much more likely to have the opposite effect on him, acting like a goad that brought out the best in his character, stiffening his resolve to win against odds that would have defeated a less resolute man before he began.

This is a man who has shown a complete disregard for human life, cynicism and hypocrisy, and a willingness to use war and the deaths of thousands of Russian soldiers and innocent civilians as a PR instrument in his election campaign. This is a man who raised a toast on the anniversary of Stalin’s birth, had the plaque commemorating former KGB head Yury Andropov restored to its place on the wall of the Lubyanka—Federal Security Service headquarters—and dreams of seeing the statue of butcher Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, stand once again in the center of Moscow.

One should not grow attached to other people, Doctor,” said Margarete, when he came to the door, and he didn’t know if she was speaking for him or for herself. Her eyes were red, and he wanted to comfort her, but he couldn’t think of what to say. He had thought he was inured to death by then, even prided himself on the calmness with which he absorbed the news of the most recent passing. He who had once stared in shock at the frozen soldier without a jaw. But the great Rzedzian’s body seemed horribly small, the stiffening fingers too familiar, and the way his lip drew back over his teeth reminded him of the corpse of an animal.

He laughed with a mix of amusement and surprised appreciation. She couldn’t win. She had to know that. Yet still she fought. He hadn’t known there was a Summerlander alive still willing to confront him with such spirited defiance. Entire armies had fallen before him, yet this slight wisp of a girl dared to grapple, barehanded and defenseless, with the Winter King, a man who could slay with a glance. He dodged a fist meant to break his nose and laughed again, enjoying himself for the first time in a very long while. How lucky for him so few of Verdan’s soldiers had possessed such raw, reckless courage! A thousand like her in their ranks, and the war might have ended quite differently. His humor apparently didn’t sit well with her. She snarled and aimed another blow at his chin, which he blocked, as well as a vicious kick to his groin. He managed to block that, too—barely—but the hard toe of her boot still came close enough, with enough force, that his balls tingled from the near miss. He quit laughing. There were some things a man just didn’t find funny.

so many white roses whose names won’t survive either, resistance groups and newspapers now as forgotten as soldiers waiting for the enemy veiled in snow, unknowingly digging their own graves in the forests, an entire infantry on alert among the pines and spruce, France, Belgium, elsewhere young German soldiers seeming to sleep, half-opened lips on the snow which likewise moulds itself to their boots and helmets, every one of them forever forgotten, dying for what or whom in these ice fields, oblivion or Hitler, even those still breathing on stretchers, statues of ice, petrified flesh outfitted in frost, this is the story of winter glory, cold and misery, men and horses finished off in the frigid fog, the young in uniform, hands raised and crying, I give up, enough, enough

In comparison to the church, with its constant clamor, the huts had the hushed, sacred air of deathbed scenes, the light barely illuminating the pallid faces of the soldiers, the village women moving slowly in their dark shawls, their children sitting in transfixed vigil by the beds. For these, Margarete always had a crust of bread, a piece of carrot. Sometimes Lucius entertained them by showing them his father’s hand shadows, other times by letting them listen to their hearts. Their wide eyes grew wider with the cold bell of the stethoscope, not seeming to understand what they were hearing, but astonished nonetheless. Manifestly, he did this out of kindness, or a sort of effort at improving relations, though in truth there was something fortifying in the chance to touch skin without gangrene, without fever, the bodies without a wound.

My meaning, is, that churchmen in peace and quiet pray to Heaven for the welfare of the world, but we soldiers and knights carry into effect what they pray for, defending it with the might of our arms and the edge of our swords, not under shelter but in the open air, a target for the intolerable rays of the sun in summer and the piercing frosts of winter. Thus are we God's ministers on earth and the arms by which his justice is done therein.

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathing in shallow streams on summer evenings; I felt the horror of war, the bitter nights in the trenches, the long marches on muddy roads, the battlefield with its terror and anguish and death. It was horrible and deeply moving. A cap lay at the singer's feet and the passengers filled it full of money; the same emotion had seized them all, of boundless compassion and of vague horror, for there was something in that blind, scarred face that was terrifying; you felt that this was a being apart, sundered from the joy of this enchanting world. He did not seem quite human. The soldiers stood silent and hostile. Their attitude seemed to claim as a right the alms of the travelling herd. There was a disdainful anger on their side and unmeasurable pity on ours; but no glimmering of a sense that there was but one way to compensate that helpless man for all his pain.

CAPTAIN. Yes, I’m crying, even though I am a man. But has not a man eyes? Has not a man hands, organs, senses, affections, passions? Does he not live by the same food, is he not hurt with the same weapons, is he not warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a woman is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? Why should a man not complain, a soldier weep?* Because it’s unmanly! Why is it unmanly? LAURA

Sailboat Table (table by Quint Hankle) The Voyage of the Narwhal, by Andrea Barrett Complete Stories, by Clarice Lispector Boy Kings of Texas, by Domingo Martinez The Marrow Thieves, by Cherie Dimaline A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James There There, by Tommy Orange Citizen: An American Lyric, by Claudia Rankine Underland, by Robert Macfarlane The Undocumented Americans, by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio Deacon King Kong, by James McBride The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett Will and Testament, by Vigdis Hjorth Every Man Dies Alone, by Hans Fallada The Door, by Magda Svabo The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth Fates and Furies, by Lauren Groff The Overstory, by Richard Power Night Train, by Lise Erdrich Her Body and Other Parties, by Carmen Maria Machado The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, edited by John Freeman Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore Mongrels, by Stephen Graham Jones The Office of Historical Corrections, by Danielle Evans Tenth of December, by George Saunders Murder on the Red River, by Marcie R. Rendon Leave the World Behind, by Rumaan Alam Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, by Ocean Vuong The Unwomanly Face of War, by Svetlana Alexievich Standard Deviation, by Katherine Heiny All My Puny Sorrows, by Miriam Toews The Death of the Heart, by Elizabeth Bowen Mean Spirit, by Linda Hogan NW, by Zadie Smith Being Mortal, by Atul Gawande Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Firekeeper’s Daughter, by Angeline Boulley Erasure, by Percival Everett Sharks in the Time of Saviors, by Kawai Strong Washburn Heaven, by Mieko Kawakami Books for Banned Love Sea of Poppies, by Amitav Ghosh The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje Euphoria, by Lily King The Red and the Black, by Stendahl Luster, by Raven Leilani Asymmetry, by Lisa Halliday All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides The Vixen, by Francine Prose Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison The Winter Soldier, by Daniel Mason

Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!  “Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth into battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended in the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames in summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it —   For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimmage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!   We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.   (After a pause.) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits.”  …

It was only when it came time for bathing that he left again. He could touch her forehead, auscultate her lungs, he could bear the weight of her breast against his hand as he listened to her heart. But bathe her as she had bathed the soldiers? When he had once touched the rim of his canteen just to feel where she had pressed her lips? No: once in her ravings, her shirt had lifted to reveal her navel, her iliac crest, a little curl of hair above the symphysis, and Lucius had frozen, unable to look away. No, the thoughts of undressing her, the complex mix of fear and yearning, were too much for him to bear. But she was burning up. Better Zmudowski, uxorious philatelist, responsible paterfamilias. Lucius stood outside the door and watched the sparrows, listening to the slosh of water, the squish of sponge. Day three: the fever broke. The wound looked better, less purulent, its color less exuberant. He felt himself buoyed, only to touch her head two hours later and sink. The mercury reached the highest notches on the glass. This was worse, he thought—it meant the infection was within, unseen, a witch’s hex.

Very Like a Whale One thing that literature would be greatly the better for Would be a more restricted employment by authors of simile and metaphor. Authors of all races, be they Greeks, Romans, Teutons or Celts, Can'ts seem just to say that anything is the thing it is but have to go out of their way to say that it is like something else. What foes it mean when we are told That the Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold? In the first place, George Gordon Byron had had enough experience To know that it probably wasn't just one Assyrian, it was a lot of Assyrians. However, as too many arguments are apt to induce apoplexy and thus hinder longevity, We'll let it pass as one Assyrian for the sake of brevity. Now then, this particular Assyrian, the one whose cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold, Just what does the poet mean when he says he came down like a wolf on the fold? In heaven and earth more than is dreamed of in our philosophy there are a great many things, But i don't imagine that among then there is a wolf with purple and gold cohorts or purple and gold anythings. No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof; Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof woof? Frankly I think it very unlikely, and all you were entitled to say, at the very most, Was that the Assyrian cohorts came down like a lot of Assyrian cohorts about to destroy the Hebrew host. But that wasn't fancy enough for Lord Byron, oh dear me no, he had to invent a lot of figures of speech and then interpolate them, With the result that whenever you mention Old Testament soldiers to people they say Oh yes, they're the ones that a lot of wolves dressed up in gold and purple ate them. That's the kind of thing that's being done all the time by poets, from Homer to Tennyson; They're always comparing ladies to lilies and veal to venison, And they always say things like that the snow is a white blanket after a winter storm. Oh it is, is it, all right then, you sleep under a six-inch blanket of snow and I'll sleep under a half-inch blanket of unpoetical blanket material and we'll see which one keeps warm, And after that maybe you'll begin to comprehend dimly, What I mean by too much metaphor and simile.

I ran again, losing myself amongst my water-wolves. Some of the soldiers were taking to the sky, flapping upward, backtracking. So my wolves grew wings, and talons, and became falcons and hawks and eagles. They slammed into their bodies, their armour, drenching them. The airborne soldiers, realising they hadn't been drowned, halted their flight and laughed- sneering. I lifted a hand skyward, and clenched my fingers into a fist. The water soaking them, their wings, their armour, their faces... It turned to ice. Ice that was so cold it had existed before light, before the sun had warmed the earth. Ice of a land cloaked in winter, ice from the parts of me that felt no mercy, no sympathy for what these creatures had done and were doing to my people. Frozen solid, dozens of the winged soldiers fell to the earth as one. And shattered upon the cobblestones. My wolves raged around me, tearing and drowning and hunting. And those that fled them, those that took to the skies- they froze and shattered; froze and shattered. Until the streets were laden with ice and gore and broken bits of wing and stone. Until the screaming of my people stopped, and the screams of the soldiers became a song in my blood.

The train company does not have that much to carry, but the rest of us are loaded down like pack animals—we carry the full kit with blanket and ground sheet, steel helmet and heavy winter coat thrown over it. We have a full ammunition pouch on the belt, on our backs the kitbag with the field canteen, and on the other side the folded entrenching tool. A gas mask is slung around our necks, resting on the chest, and the heavy rifle swings back and forth from its strap round the neck. Lastly, a ditty bag is carried in one hand, filled with clean socks, underwear and similar items. The whole lot weighs about 40lb.

Why are so many of their faces disfigured, if you don’t mind me asking? Is it the explosive shells they’re using over there?” “I’m told it’s the machine guns. Curious soldiers will often lift their heads out of the trenches, thinking they can dodge bullets in time, but there’s no way they can possibly avoid the hail of machine-gun fire.” She glanced over her shoulder. “We tend to also see several missing left arms because of the way they position themselves for shooting in the trenches. Their bones shatter into tiny fragments and their wristwatches become embedded in their wounds. There’s no way to save the limbs.

The person who really writes the minor work is a secret writer who accepts only the dictates of a masterpiece. Our good craftsman writes. He’s absorbed in what takes shape well or badly on the page. His wife, though he doesn’t know it, is watching him. It really is he who’s writing. But if his wife had X-ray vision she would see that instead of being present at an exercise of literary creation, she’s witnessing a session of hypnosis. There’s nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself, I mean. How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading. Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it’s knowledge and questions. Writing, meanwhile, is almost always empty. There’s nothing in the guts of the man who sits there writing. Nothing, I mean to say, that his wife, at a given moment, might recognize. He writes like someone taking dictation. His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from an exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter! Excuse the metaphors. Sometimes, in my excitement, I wax romantic. But listen. Every work that isn’t a masterpiece is, in a sense, a part of a vast camouflage. You’ve been a soldier, I imagine, and you know what I mean. Every book that isn’t a masterpiece is cannon fodder, a slogging foot soldier, a piece to be sacrificed, since in multiple ways it mimics the design of the masterpiece. When I came to this realization, I gave up writing. Still, my mind didn’t stop working. In fact, it worked better when I wasn’t writing. I asked myself: why does a masterpiece need to be hidden? what strange forces wreath it in secrecy and mystery?

in the spring of 1945 the Third Reich simply ceased to exist. There was no longer any German authority on any level. The millions of soldiers, airmen and sailors were prisoners of war in their own land. The millions of civilians were governed, down to the villages, by the conquering enemy troops, on whom they depended not only for law and order but throughout that summer and bitter winter of 1945 for food and fuel to keep them alive. Such was the state to which the follies of Adolf Hitler—and their own folly in following him so blindly and with so much enthusiasm—had brought them, though I found little bitterness toward him when I returned to Germany that fall.

I had seen the soldiers' god, the Word, the Light, the Good Shepherd, the mediator between the one God and man. I had seen Mithras, who had come out of Asia a thousand years ago. He had been born in a cave at mid-winter, while shepherds watched and a star shone; he was born of earth and light, and sprang from the rock with a torch in his left hand and a knife in his right. He killed the bull to bring life and fertility to the earth with its shed blood, and then, after his last meal of bread and wine, he was called up to heaven. He was the god of strength and gentleness, of courage and self-restraint. The soldiers' god. [fifth-century Brittany] The Crystal Cave, p. 131 of 384

Where others only see coal, I see diamonds. Where others only see clouds, I see sunshine. Where others only see storms, I see rainbows. Where others only see thorns, I see roses. Where others only see seeds, I see harvests. Where others only see catapillars, I see butterflies. Where others only see cubs, I see lions. Where others only see darkness, I see stars. Where others only see wood, I see fire. Where others only see sparks, I see flames. Where others only see winters, I see summers. Where others only see frowns, I see smiles. Where others only see sorrows, I see joys. Where others only see nights, I sees days. Where others only see burdens, I see blessings. Where others only see hindrances, I see helpers. Where others only see enemies, I sees friends. Where others only see choas, I sees opportunity. Where others only see losses, I see gains. Where others only see crosses, I sees crowns. Where others only see warriors, I see generals. Where others only see learners, I see teachers. Where others only see followers, I see leaders. Where others only see scholars, I see professors. Where others only see soldiers, I sees commanders. Where others only see preachers, I see popes. Where others only see priests, I see prophets. Where others only see lawyers, I see judges. Where others only see students, I see masters. Where others only see outlaws, I see conquerors.

I wanted to check on you one last time . . . see if you needed anything,” she whispered, stopping in the center of the room. “Have you come to give me my orders?” There was a hint of a smile in his voice as he moved to stand before her, arms still crossed. “Orders?” she echoed. “Don’t look out the window. Don’t climb onto the roof. Don’t go below.” She tried to smile, surprised at his easy manner, but her sense of impending disaster only deepened. “I have no heart for a frolic tonight. The soldiers are simply too close.” He looked down at her, studying her small form smothered in moss green wool. She pulled her scarlet shawl closer around her, chilled by the cold bedroom. She could hear Pa calling her but made no move to go. Distracted, her eyes fell to his feet. He wore the shoepacks he’d made as they’d sat together about the fire these long winter nights, just the three of them in a warm circle of firelight—she, he, and Pa. That was what she craved—quiet companionship about the fire, not the forced frivolity before her. She swallowed down a sigh, a bit startled when he put his hands on her shoulders. In the dimness, his face held a rare pensiveness. “Do you forgive me, Morrow?” The heartfelt words returned her to the autumn day he’d first asked. “Forgive you?” she echoed. “Do you forgive me—for my father’s people?” The humble question, now thrice asked, seemed to resound to the far corners of the room. Her lips parted in answer, but no sound came. She had a keen awareness of her own thudding heart. The pressure of his hands. The warmth in his eyes. Below, the frolic seemed to fade away. “Yes.

The winter of 1942-43 was the coldest winter of the war. The Germans will never forget that winter either. The defense and siege of Stalingrad and Leningrad are highly documented historic chapters of the war. The fierce winds and diabolically low temperatures plagued all of Eastern Europe. That was the winter of our deepest despair. The people in Transnistria died by the thousands, be it of starvation or frost or sickness. Once in a while Romanian soldiers or civilians came from there and brought news from the desperate Jews. Some Romanians would accept, for remuneration, to bring some clothes, or money or food from relatives in Czernovitz. Some had no relatives left in town. In some villages, they could not find anybody who would take a message to relatives. They succumbed to typhoid fever by the thousands.

The Soviet Union’s record before, during, and after the war isn’t pretty, so it’s easy to forget that in the early days of World War II, they were the underdog. The Third Reich regarded Russians and Ukrainians as racial undesirables fit only to be exterminated; Soviet soldiers were routinely slaughtered or starved if they were taken prisoner, unlike the more by-the-book treatment of French and English POWs. The Russians responded with equal savagery once the tide turned in their favor, but at the beginning of Germany’s terrifying and overwhelming invasion, all the under-equipped Red Army could do was mount a fighting retreat, letting the harsh terrain and Russian winter do to Hitler what it had done to Napoleon. That strategy came at a horrifying cost: millions of Soviets died wearing down the German advance. And many of those front-line lives at stake were women.

More proof that Lynn is still meant to continue with the government programme occurred during the winter of 2000, when she was sitting at a cafeteria table at the area college. It was later in the afternoon when a few people congregated there with books spread out so they could study while drinking coffee or snacking. Many tables were empty, yet after Lynn had been sitting for a few moments, an elderly man sat down across from her. The old man seemed familiar to Lynn, though, at first, she pretended to ignore him. He said nothing, just sat there as someone might when all the tables are filled and it is necessary to share space with a stranger. His presence made her uncomfortable, yet there was nothing specific that alerted her. A short while later, Mac, the man who had been Lynn's handler in Mexico, came out of the shadows and stopped at the table. He was younger than the old man. His clothes were military casual, the type of garments that veteran students who have military experience might recognise, but not think unusual. He leaned over Lynn and kissed her gently on the forehead, spoke quietly to her, and then said 'Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.' Those were the code words that would start the cover programme of which she was still part. The words led to her being switched from the control of the old man, a researcher she now believes may have been part of Dr Ewen Cameron's staff before coming to the United States for the latter part of his career, to the younger man. The change is like a re-enlistment in an army she never willingly joined. In a very real way, she is a career soldier who has never been paid, never allowed to retire and never given a chance to lead a life free from the fear of what she might do without conscious awareness.

you do not go, because only your brother called for you, and to look on the Lord Aragorn, Elendil's heir, in his triumph would now bring you no joy. Or because I do not go, and you desire still to be near me. And maybe for both these reasons, and you yourself cannot choose between them. Éowyn, do you not love me, or will you not?' 'I wished to be loved by another,' she answered, 'But I desire no man's pity.' 'That I know,' he said. 'You desired to have the love of the Lord Aragorn. Because he was high and puissant, and you wished to have renown and glory and to be lifted far above the mean things that crawl on the earth. And as a great captain may to a young soldier he seemed to you admirable. For so he is, a lord among men, the greatest that now is. But when he gave you only understanding and pity, then you desired to have nothing, unless a brave death in battle. Look at me, Éowyn!' And Éowyn looked at Faramir long and steadily; and Faramir said: 'Do not scorn pity that is the gift of a gentle heart, Éowyn! But I do not offer you my pity, For you are a lady high and valiant and have yourself won renown that shall not be forgotten; and you are a lady beautiful, I deem, beyond even the words of the Elven-tongue to tell. And I love you. Once I pitied your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, were you the blissful Queen of Gondor, still I would love you. Éowyn do you not love me?' Then the heart of Éowyn changed, or else at last she understood it. And suddenly her winter passed, and the sun shone on her. 'I stand in Minas Anor, the Tower of the Sun,' she said; 'and behold! the Shadow has departed! I will be a sheildmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.' And again she looked at Faramir. 'No longer do I desire to be a queen,' she said. Then Faramir laughed merrily. 'That is well,' he said; 'for I am not a king. Yet I will wed with the White Lady of Rohan, if it be her will. And if she will, then let us cross the River and in happier days let us dwell in fair Ithilien and there make a garden. All things will grow with joy there, if the White Lady comes.

When she first arrived, Mi-ran was impressed. The dormitories were modern and each of the four girls who would share one room had her own bed rather than use the Korean bed mats laid out on a heated floor, the traditional way of keeping warm at night while expending little fuel. But as winter temperatures plunged Chongjin into a deep freeze, she realized why it was that the school had been able to give her a place in its freshman class. The dormitories had no heating. Mi-ran went to sleep each night in her coat, heavy socks, and mitten with a towel draped over her head. When she woke up, the towel would be crusted with frost from the moisture of her breath. In the bathroom, where the girls washed their menstrual rags (nobody had sanitary napkins, so the more affluent girls used gauze bandages while the poor girls used cheap synthetic cloths), it was so cold that the rags would freeze solid within minutes of being hung up to dry. Mi-ran hated the mornings. Just as in Jun-sang's school, they were roused by a military-style roll call at 6:00 A.M., but instead of marching off like proud soldiers, they shivered into the bathroom and splashed icy water on their faces, under a grotesque canopy of frozen menstrual rags.

_To Santa Claus_ Most tangible of all the gods that be, O Santa Claus-- our own since Infancy! As first we scampered to thee-- now, as then, Take us as children to thy heart again. Be wholly good to us, just as of old: As a pleased father, let thine arms infold Us, homed within the haven of thy love, And all the cheer and wholesomeness thereof. Thou lone reality, when O so long Life's unrealities have wrought us wrong: Ambition hath allured us--, fame likewise, And all that promised honor in men's eyes. Throughout the world's evasions, wiles, and shifts, Thou only bidest stable as thy gifts--: A grateful king re-ruleth from thy lap, Crowned with a little tinselled soldier-cap: A mighty general-- a nation's pride-- Thou givest again a rocking-horse to ride, And wildly glad he groweth as the grim Old jurist with the drum thou givest him: The sculptor's chisel, at thy mirth's command, Is as a whistle in his boyish hand; The painters model fadeth utterly, And there thou standest--, and he painteth thee--: Most like a winter pippin, sound and fine And tingling-red that ripe old face of thine, Set in thy frosty beard of cheek and chin As midst the snows the thaws of spring set in. Ho! Santa Claus-- our own since Infancy-- Most tangible of all the gods that be--! As first we scampered to thee-- now, as then, Take us as children to thy heart again.

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over The bending poplars, newly bare, And the dark ribbons of the chimneys Veer downward; flicked by whips of air. Torn posters flutter; coldly sound The boom of trams and the rattle of hooves, And the clerks who hurry to the station Look, shuddering, over the eastern rooves, Thinking, each one, "Here comes the winter! "Please God I keep my job this year!" And bleakly, as the cold strikes through Their entrails like an icy spear, They think of rent, rates, season tickets, Insurance, coal, the skivvy's wages, Boots, school-bills and the next installment Upon the two twin beds from Drage's. For if in careless summer days In groves of Ashtaroth we whored, Repentant now, when winds blow cold, We kneel before our rightful lord; The lord of all, the money-god, Who rules us blood and hand and brain, Who gives the roof that stops the wind, And, giving, takes away again; Who spies with jealous, watchful care, Our thoughts, our dreams, our secret ways, Who picks our words and cuts our clothes, And maps the pattern of our days; Who chills our anger, curbs our hope. And buys our lives and pays with toys, Who claims as tribute broken faith, Accepted insults, muted joys; Who binds with chains the poet's wit, The navvy's strength, the soldier's pride, And lays the sleek, estranging shield Between the lover and his bride.

The calf is capable of walking quite well now," Dazu said. "He never stumbles." "But I told you to carry him back here," the teacher said. "The first thing a soldier must learn is to obey orders." Every day, the calf grew a little heavier, and every day, Dazu had to struggle a little harder. He would collapse, exhausted, when he finally got to the ranch, and the calf would bound out of his arms, glad to be able to walk on his own and stretch out. When winter rolled around again, Médo handed him a wooden sword and asked him to strike as hard as he could at the practice dummy. Dazu looked with distaste at the crude weapon with no edge, but he swung obediently. The wooden dummy fell in half, cut clean through. He looked at the sword in his hand with wonder. "It's not the sword," his teacher said. "Have you looked at yourself lately?" He brought Dazu to stand in front of a brightly polished shield. The young man could hardly recognize the reflection. His shoulders filled the frame of the mirror. His arms and thighs were twice as thick as he remembered, and his chest bulged over his narrow waist. "A great warrior trusts not his weapons, but himself. When you possess true strength, you can deal a killing blow even if all you have is a blade of grass. "Now you're finally ready to learn from me. But first, go thank the calf for making you strong.

The soldiers had been entrenched in their positions for several weeks but there was little, if any fighting, except for the dozen rounds they ritually exchanged every day. The weather was extremely pleasant. The air was heavy with the scent of wildflowers and nature seem to be following its course, quite unmindful of the soldiers hiding behind rocks and camouflaged by mountain shrubbery. The birds sang as they always had and the flowers were in bloom. Bees buzzed about lazily. Only when a shot rang out, the birds got startled and took flight, as if a musician had struck a jarring note on his instrument. It was almost the end of September, neither hot nor cold. It seemed as if summer and winter had made their peace. In the blue skies, cotton clouds floated all day like barges on a lake. The soldiers seemed to be getting tired of this indecisive war where nothing much ever happened. Their positions were quite impregnable. The two hills on which they were placed faced each other and were about the same height, so no one side had an advantage. Down below in the valley, a stream zigzagged furiously on its stony bed like a snake. The air force was not involved in the combat and neither of the adversaries had heavy guns or mortars. At night, they would light huge fires and hear each other's voices echoing through the hills. From The Dog of Titwal, a short story.

It is recorded that during the long winter after the Battle of Fredericksburg, when the two rival armies were camped on opposite sides of the Rappahannock, with the boys on the opposing picket posts daily swapping coffee for tobacco and comparing notes on their generals, their rations, and other matters, and with each camp in full sight and hearing of the other, one evening massed Union bands came down to the river bank to play all of the old songs, plus the more rousing tunes like "John Brown's Body," "The Battle Cry of Freedom," and "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys Are Marching." Northerners and Southerners, the soldiers sang those songs or sat and listened to them, massed in their thousands on the hillsides, while the darkness came down to fill the river valley and the light of the campfires glinted off the black water. Finally the Southerners called across, "Now play some of ours," so without pause the Yankee bands swung into "Dixie" and "The Bonnie Blue Flag" and "Maryland, My Maryland," and then at last the massed bands played "Home, Sweet Home," and 150,000 fighting men tried to sing it and choked up and just sat there, silent, staring off into the darkness; and at last the music died away and the bandsmen put up their instruments and both armies went to bed. A few weeks later they were tearing each other apart in the lonely thickets around Chancellorsville.

We were on a family holiday to Cyprus to visit my aunt and uncle. My uncle Andrew was then the brigadier to all the British forces on the island, and as such a senior military figure I am sure he must have dreaded us coming to town. After a few days holed up in the garrison my uncle innocently suggested that maybe we would enjoy a trip to the mountains. He already knew the answer that my father and I would give. We were in. The Troodos Mountains are a small range of snowy peaks in the center of the island, and the soldiers posted to Cyprus use them to ski and train in. There are a couple of ski runs, but the majority of the peaks in winter are wild and unspoiled. In other words, they are ripe for an adventure. Dad and I borrowed two sets of army skis and boots from the garrison up in the hills and spent a great afternoon together skiing down the couple of designated runs. But designated runs can also be quite boring. We both looked at each other and suggested a quick off-piste detour. It was all game…age eleven. It wasn’t very far into this between-the-trees deep-powder detour that the weather, dramatically, and very suddenly, took a turn for the worse. A mountain mist rolled in, reducing visibility to almost zero. We stopped to try and get, or guess, our directions back to the piste, but our guess was wrong, and very soon we both realized we were lost. (Or temporarily geographically challenged, as I have learned to call it.) Dad and I made the mistake that so many do in that situation, and plowed on blind, in the vain hope that the miraculous would occur. We had no map, no compass, no food, no water, no mobile telephone (they hadn’t even been invented yet), and in truth, no likelihood of finding our way. We were perfect candidates for a disaster.

As in everything, nature is the best instructor, even as regards selection. One couldn't imagine a better activity on nature's part than that which consists in deciding the supremacy of one creature over another by means of a constant struggle. While we're on the subject, it's somewhat interesting to observe that our upper classes, who've never bothered about the hundreds of thousands of German emigrants or their poverty, give way to a feeling of compassion regarding the fate of the Jews whom we claim the right to expel. Our compatriots forget too easily that the Jews have accomplices all over the world, and that no beings have greater powers of resistance as regards adaptation to climate. Jews can prosper anywhere, even in Lapland and Siberia. All that love and sympathy, since our ruling class is capable of such sentiments, would by rights be applied exclusively—if that class were not corrupt—to the members of our national community. Here Christianity sets the example. What could be more fanatical, more exclusive and more intolerant than this religion which bases everything on the love of the one and only God whom it reveals? The affection that the German ruling class should devote to the good fellow-citizen who faithfully and courageously does his duty to the benefit of the community, why is it not just as fanatical, just as exclusive and just as intolerant? My attachment and sympathy belong in the first place to the front-line German soldier, who has had to overcome the rigours of the past winter. If there is a question of choosing men to rule us, it must not be forgotten that war is also a manifestation of life, that it is even life's most potent and most characteristic expression. Consequently, I consider that the only men suited to become rulers are those who have valiantly proved themselves in a war. In my eyes, firmness of character is more precious than any other quality. A well toughened character can be the characteristic of a man who, in other respects, is quite ignorant. In my view, the men who should be set at the head of an army are the toughest, bravest, boldest, and, above all, the most stubborn and hardest to wear down. The same men are also the best chosen for posts at the head of the State—otherwise the pen ends by rotting away what the sword has conquered. I shall go so far as to say that, in his own sphere, the statesman must be even more courageous than the soldier who leaps from his trench to face the enemy. There are cases, in fact, in which the courageous decision of a single statesman can save the lives of a great number of soldiers. That's why pessimism is a plague amongst statesmen. One should be able to weed out all the pessimists, so that at the decisive moment these men's knowledge may not inhibit their capacity for action. This last winter was a case in point. It supplied a test for the type of man who has extensive knowledge, for all the bookworms who become preoccupied by a situation's analogies, and are sensitive to the generally disastrous epilogue of the examples they invoke. Agreed, those who were capable of resisting the trend needed a hefty dose of optimism. One conclusion is inescapable: in times of crisis, the bookworms are too easily inclined to switch from the positive to the negative. They're waverers who find in public opinion additional encouragement for their wavering. By contrast, the courageous and energetic optimist—even although he has no wide knowledge— will always end, guided by his subconscious or by mere commonsense, in finding a way out.

Since I did Selection all those years ago, not much has really changed. The MOD (Ministry of Defence) website still states that 21 SAS soldiers need the following character traits: “Physically and mentally robust. Self-confident. Self-disciplined. Able to work alone. Able to assimilate information and new skills.” It makes me smile now to read those words. As Selection had progressed, those traits had been stamped into my being, and then during the three years I served with my squadron they became molded into my psyche. They are the same qualities I still value today. The details of the jobs I did once I passed Selection aren’t for sharing publicly, but they included some of the most extraordinary training that any man can be lucky enough to receive. I went on to be trained in demolitions, air and maritime insertions, foreign weapons, jungle survival, trauma medicine, Arabic, signals, high-speed and evasive driving, winter warfare, as well as “escape and evasion” survival for behind enemy lines. I went through an even more in-depth capture initiation program as part of becoming a combat-survival instructor, which was much longer and more intense than the hell we endured on Selection. We became proficient in covert night parachuting and unarmed combat, among many other skills--and along the way we had a whole host of misadventures. But what do I remember and value most? For me, it is the camaraderie, and the friendships--and of course Trucker, who is still one of my best friends on the planet. Some bonds are unbreakable. I will never forget the long yomps, the specialist training, and of course a particular mountain in the Brecon Beacons. But above all, I feel a quiet pride that for the rest of my days I can look myself in the mirror and know that once upon a time I was good enough. Good enough to call myself a member of the SAS. Some things don’t have a price tag.

Someday, she would stand from the couch, step away from the window sill, leave the fire escape, put away the black backpack, take the rings off her neck. Someday when the music played, she would not feel him waltzing with her through the clearing under the crimson moon on their wedding night. Oh, how we danced on the night we were wed… Someday. But today with every breath of the past she colored her breath of the future, with every blink of her eye, Alexander bore himself deeper and deeper inside her until the whole of what they were together blinded her from seeing what else might be in the world for her. All she thought about was what he had loved in her, what he had needed from her, what he had wanted from her. Memory—that fiend, that cruel enemy of comfort. There was no forgetting; worse, the bloodletting that went on every minute became more intense as time went on. It was as if his lips, his hands, his crown, his heart, the things that seemed almost normal, almost right in Lazarevo acquired a prescient, otherworldly sense; it was as if in their totality they took on a life they had not had before. How did they fish, or sleep, or clean? How did she go to her sewing circle? She hated herself now, flagellated herself for doing anything else, how could she have tried to live a normal life in Lazarevo with him, knowing even then that time and they were as fleeting as snowflakes? Knowing what was at stake, could he have lowered his head and walked by her, if he had known what he would lose for the hour of rapture, for the minute of bliss? How he loved to touch her. And she would sit quietly, with her legs not too close together, so that anytime he wanted to, he could: and he did. Anytime. Yes, he said, it was what a soldier on furlough wanted. Anytime wasn’t often enough. He would touch her with his fingers as she sat quietly on the bench, and then he would touch her with his mouth as she sat less quietly on the bench, there was no other time for him but now, there was no later, there was only insanity now. I will make you insane, her memory screamed at her near the winter window sill as Tatiana smelled the brine of eternity. On the outside you will walk and smile as if indeed you are a normal woman, but on the inside you will twist and burn on the stake, I will never free you, you will never be free.

Speech to the Reichstag April 26, 1942 The British Jew, Lord Disraeli, once said that the race problem is the key to the history of the world. We National Socialists have become great in this knowledge. By devoting our attention to the existence of the race problem, we have found the solution for many problems which would have otherwise have seemed incomprehensible. The hidden forces which incited England already in 1914, in the first world war, were Jews. The force which paralyzed us at that time and finally forced us to surrender with the slogan that Germany was no longer able to bear homeward a victorious flag, came from the Jews. It was the Jews who fomented the revolution among our people and thus robbed us of every possibility at further resistance. Since 1939 the Jews have maneuvered the British Empire into the most perilous crisis it has ever known. The Jews were the carriers of that Bolshevist infection which once threatened to destroy Europe. It was also they who incited the ranks of the plutocracies to war, and it is the Jews who have driven America to war against all her own interests, simply and solely from the Jewish capitalistic point of view. And President Roosevelt, lacking ability himself, lends an ear to his brain trust, whose leading men I do not need to mention by name; they are Jews, nothing but Jews. And once again, as in the year 1915, she (America) will be incited by a Jewish President and his completely Jewish entourage to go to war without any reason or sense whatever, with nations which have never done anything to America, and with people from whom America can never win anything. For what is the sense of a war waged by a state having territory without people against people without territory. In the terms of the war it is no longer a question of the interests of individual nations; it is, rather, a question of conflict between nations which want to make the lives of their people secure on this earth, and nations which have become the helpless tools of an international world parasite. The German soldiers and the allies have had an opportunity to witness at first hand the actual work of this Jewish International-war mongers in that country in which Jewish dictatorship has exclusive power and in which it is being taught as the most ideal form of government in the world for future generations and to which low subjects of other nations have become inexplicably subservient just as this was the case with us at one time. And at this juncture this seemingly senile Europe has, as always in the course of its history, raised aloft the torch of its perception and today the men of Europe are marching as the representatives of a new and better order as the genuine youth of social and national liberty throughout the world. Gentlemen! In the course of this winter a decision has been reached in international struggle which as regards to problems involved far exceeds in scope those difficulties which must and can be solved in normal warfare; when in November 1918 the German nation being befogged by the hypocritical phraseology of the American President at that time, Wilson, laid down its arms, although undefeated, and withdrew from the field of battle it was acting under the influence of that Jewish race which hoped to succeed in establishing a secure bulwark of Bolshevism in the very heart of Europe. We know the theoretical principles and the cruel truth regarding the aims of this world-wide pestilence. It is called, "the Rule of the Proletariat," and it really is "Jewish Dictatorship," the extermination of national government and of the intelligent element among the nations, and the rule over the proletariat after it has thus deprived of its leaders and through its own fault ended defenseless by the concerted efforts of Jewish international criminals.