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."
“Pride Was Their Downfall”: Muslim Slaughter of Christians at Nicopolis
Monday, September 28, 2020
Miniature of the execution of Europeans refusing to convert to Islam after Nicopolis, Jean Colombe, c. 1475
Raymond Ibrahim : Today in history, on September 25, 1396, a major military encounter with Islam that demonstrated just how disunited Christendom had become took place.
Two years earlier, in 1394, the Ottoman Turks had been “doing great injury to Hungary,” causing its young king, Sigismund, to appeal “to Christendom for assistance.” It came at an opportune time. The hitherto quarreling English and French had made peace in 1389, and a “crusade against the Turks furnished a desirable outlet for the noble instincts of the Western chivalry.”
Matters were further settled once “men of all kinds”—pilgrims, laymen, and clerics returning from the Holy Land and Egypt—told of “the miseries and persecutions to which their Eastern co-religionists were subjected by the ‘unbelieving Saracen,’ and . . . appeal[ed] with all the vehemence of piety for a crusade to recover the native land of Christ.”
Western knights everywhere—mostly French but also English, Scottish, German, Spanish, Italian, and Polish—took up the cross in one of the largest multiethnic crusades against Islam. Their ultimate goal, according to a contemporary, was “to [re-]conquer the whole of Turkey and to march into the Empire of Persia . . . the kingdoms of Syria and the Holy Land.” A vast host of reportedly some one hundred thousand crusaders—“the largest Christian force that had ever confronted the infidel”—reached Buda in July 1396.
But numbers could not mask the disunity, mutual suspicions, and internal rancor that was evident from the start. Not only did the French spurn Sigismund’s suggestion that they take a defensive posture and forego the offensive, but when the king suggested that his Hungarians were more experienced with and thus should lead the attack on the Turks, the Frenchmen accused him of trying to take away their glory and set out to take the field before him. They easily took two garrisons before reaching and besieging Nicopolis, an Ottoman stronghold on the Danube. Victories and still no response from Bayezid led to overconfidence and complacency; dissolution set in and some sources say the camp became all but a brothel.
