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."
Raymond Ibrahim: One week ago today, Friday, May 29, was the 567th-year anniversary of the Islamic conquest of Constantinople, one of ancient Christianity’s greatest capitals that for the previous seven centuries had, as Europe’s easternmost bulwark, withstood Islam.
Lesser
known is what immediately followed this Muslim seizure of “New
Rome”—which Turkey is immensely proud of—as described below (note: all
quotes are from contemporary sources, mostly eyewitnesses):
Once inside the city on that fateful May 29, 1453, the “enraged Turkish soldiers . . . gave no quarter”:
When
they had massacred and there was no longer any resistance, they were
intent on pillage and roamed through the town stealing, disrobing,
pillaging, killing, raping, taking captive men, women, children, old
men, young men, monks, priests, people of all sorts and conditions…
There were virgins who awoke from troubled sleep to find those brigands
standing over them with bloody hands and faces full of abject fury…
[The Turks] dragged them, tore them, forced them, dishonored them, raped
them at the cross-roads and made them submit to the most terrible
outrages… Tender children were brutally snatched from their mothers’
breasts and girls were pitilessly given up to strange and horrible
unions, and a thousand other terrible things happened. . .
Because
thousands of citizens had fled to and were holed up in Hagia Sophia,
the ancient basilica offered an excellent harvest of slaves—once its
doors were axed down. “One Turk would look for the captive who seemed
the wealthiest, a second would prefer a pretty face among the nuns. . . .
Each rapacious Turk was eager to lead his captive to a safe place, and
then return to secure a second and a third prize. . . . Then long chains
of captives could be seen leaving the church and its shrines, being
herded along like cattle or flocks of sheep.”
The slavers
sometimes fought each other to the death over “any well-formed girl,”
even as many of the latter “preferred to cast themselves into the wells
and drown rather than fall into the hands of the Turks.”
Having
taken possession of one of Christendom’s greatest and oldest
basilicas—nearly a thousand years old at the time of its capture—the
invaders “engaged in every kind of vileness within it, making of it a
public brothel.” On “its holy altars” they enacted “perversions with our
women, virgins, and children,” including “the Grand Duke’s daughter who
was quite beautiful.” She was forced to “lie on the great altar of
Hagia Sophia with a crucifix under her head and then raped.”
Next “they paraded the [Hagia Sophia’s main] Crucifix in mocking procession through their camp, beating drums before it, crucifying the Christ again
with spitting and blasphemies and curses. They placed a Turkish cap . .
. upon His head, and jeeringly cried, ‘Behold the god of the
Christians!’”
Many other churches in the ancient city suffered the
same fate. “The crosses which had been placed on the roofs or the walls
of churches were torn down and trampled.”
The Eucharist was hurled to
the ground; holy icons were stripped of gold, “thrown to the ground and
kicked.” Bibles were stripped of their gold or silver illuminations
before being burned. “Icons were without exception given to the flames.”
Patriarchal vestments were placed on the haunches of dogs; priestly
garments were placed on horses.
“Everywhere there was misfortune,
everyone was touched by pain” when Sultan Muhammad II (“Mehmet”) finally
made his grand entry into the city. “There were lamentations and
weeping in every house, screaming in the crossroads, and sorrow in all
churches; the groaning of grown men and the shrieking of women
accompanied looting, enslavement, separation, and rape.”
