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Maybe we all really do attend church in our own way, whether we believe in gods or not.
It feels strange to admit it to myself, but despite all the bullshit that comes with life in the service, all the chunks the war has taken out of my soul over the years, I have missed this feeling of belonging and purpose.
“If you want to really beat an enemy, you have to care. You have to know what drives them. What makes them tick. Their greatest desires, their biggest fears. So you can kick them where it hurts the most. Kick them until they are down, and then keep kicking. Until the threat is gone for good.”
and being unable to control anger is as much a weakness as an inability to control fear.
of the eastern coast of Iceland, I suspect that all of those maybes are wishful thinking, not sober reflection. I’ve learned that as a species, we are exceptionally and universally good at rationalization, at accepting facts that support our biases, and explaining away or ignoring the ones that contradict them.
Remember to keep the number of landings equal to the number of takeoffs.”
Twelve years of good-byes. I should know all the different ways to say this by now, I think. We’ve done sappiness, snark, dark humor, flippancy, and a dozen other moods. But there’s never an easy way to have this last talk before a combat deployment. No matter which mood we choose, or how many of them we manage to cycle through in a single conversation, it’s always unnatural to have to think about the possibility that it’s going to be the last time we see and talk to each other.
I’ve been in the service for twelve years. I’ve done hundreds of combat missions and out-of-system deployments, and my job has me steeped in the most testosterone-soaked part of the military, where everyone is highly skilled and capable, trained to be physically tough and mentally resilient. But in all this time, I’ve never managed to shake the awful, unwelcome little pang of despair and loneliness I feel whenever I send off that last communication right before a combat deployment.
Anything worth doing is worth overdoing,
“That is the situation. It is challenging, but it is not hopeless. I expect everyone to do their duty to the utmost of their abilities. We depend on each other more than ever now. Work hard and be kind to each other, and do not lose heart. We are about to do things that no ship in the Fleet has ever done before. We’re going to see things no human eye has ever seen before. And then we are going to go home and tell the rest of the world about it.
Combat soldiers don’t get hooked on war. They get hooked on the exhilaration of being alive.
