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."
An ERA of WAR and PEACE : A Short History of Sarawak (1839-1990) By James Ritchie
Monday, September 25, 2023
Chapter 1: James Brooke—Sarawak’s first White Rajah
When Englishman James Brooke sailed into Kuching on August 15, 1839
it was a vassal State under the Brunei sultanate. The sleepy village
on stilts 20 miles from the coast, comprised about 800 Brunei Malays
and a handful of “Eastern foreigners” mainly Chinese shopkeepers and
Indians from the Malabar coast.
To James Brooke, Kuching was a no better than a “collection of mud
huts” where “there is little sign of cultivation either of rice or
other grain” and where fowls and goats were the only means of
subsistence.
Several years earlier, a member of the Brunei royalty Pengiran
Mahkota had been sent to Sarawak as the “Viceroy” and establish his
capital at the mouth of the Sungei Kuching (it is said along the
riverbanks grew the Mata Kuching tree.
At that time the original people of the region, the Sarawak Malays,
lived at another place called “Katupong” which was not far up the
Sarawak River and at “Leda Tanah” (Lidah Tanah or tongue of the earth
in Malay) under their chief Datuk Patinggi Ali.
Unhappy Malays under Brunei Rule
But behind that peaceful façade of the sleepy hollow, Brooke would
learn that a rebellion had been brewing for the past three years
between the Bruneians and the local Malays called “Siniawans” who were
unfairly over-taxed and badly treated.
If the locals refused to abide by the Sultan’s men, they would be
duly punished. Just before Brooke arrived in Kuching the locals had
suffered at the hand of the Sultanate. In the latest attack on
Katupong in 1837, the Brunei rulers unleashed the wild and fierce
Saribas “Sea Dayak” (Iban) headhunters on the locals who lost 120
people.
