The Forever War

by Joe Haldeman

But while my conscious mind was rejecting the silliness, somewhere much deeper, down in that sleeping animal where we keep our real motives and morals, something was thirsting for alien blood, secure in the conviction that the noblest thing a man could do would be to die killing one of those horrible monsters

A good sign that an army has been around too long is that it starts getting top-heavy with officers.

The 1143-year-long war had been begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

‘Why did you start this thing?’ and the answer was ‘Me?’