Rudyard Kipling"
“When you're left wounded on Afganistan's plains and
the women come out to cut up what remains, Just roll to your rifle
and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier”
General Douglas MacArthur"
“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”
“It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.” “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
“The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and be the deepest wounds and scars of war.”
“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won't .” “The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
“Nobody ever defended, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
The Soldier stood and faced God
Which must always come to pass
He hoped his shoes were shining
Just as bright as his brass
"Step forward you Soldier,
How shall I deal with you?
Have you always turned the other cheek?
To My Church have you been true?"
"No, Lord, I guess I ain't
Because those of us who carry guns
Can't always be a saint."
I've had to work on Sundays
And at times my talk was tough,
And sometimes I've been violent,
Because the world is awfully rough.
But, I never took a penny
That wasn't mine to keep.
Though I worked a lot of overtime
When the bills got just too steep,
The Soldier squared his shoulders and said
And I never passed a cry for help
Though at times I shook with fear,
And sometimes, God forgive me,
I've wept unmanly tears.
I know I don't deserve a place
Among the people here.
They never wanted me around
Except to calm their fears.
If you've a place for me here,
Lord, It needn't be so grand,
I never expected or had too much,
But if you don't, I'll understand."
There was silence all around the throne
Where the saints had often trod
As the Soldier waited quietly,
For the judgment of his God.
"Step forward now, you Soldier,
You've borne your burden well.
Walk peacefully on Heaven's streets,
You've done your time in Hell."
ROME — Pope Francis trotted out a scene from the 11th-century French epic poem La Chanson de Roland this week to prove Christians have tried to convert Muslims by the sword, just as Muslims have done to Christians.
“A scene from The Song of Roland comes to me as a symbol,
when the Christians defeat the Muslims and line them up in front of the
baptismal font, with one holding a sword,” the pope told an Argentinian interreligious dialogue group Monday. “And the Muslims had to choose betwe en baptism or the sword. That is what we Christians did,” he declared.
It did not take long for the French themselves to cry foul,
reproaching the pontiff both for besmirching one of their most beloved
pieces of epic literature and for using a fictional narrative to
illustrate a point about how Christians supposedly behave. “La Chanson de Roland is obviously not a historical chronicle of events, but an epic poem, a chanson de geste,
the oldest and most complete manuscript, written in Anglo-Norman, and
dates back to the early twelfth century, four centuries after the facts
it is supposed to recount,” wrote Vini Ganimara Thursday for the French Catholic news site Riposte Catholique.
The Song of Roland was indeed inspired in part by a
historical event, namely Charlemagne’s expedition to Spain in 778,
Ganimara observes, but this expedition to Spain was actually undertaken
at the request of several Muslim governors of Spain, in rebellion
against the Emir of Cordova.
