The Honor Was Mine Quotes

“Innumerable soldiers have told me they don't want to be thanked for their service and they don't want to be seen as heroes (or, for that matter, villains). They want to be respected for the job they did and the pride they took in doing it well.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“Coming to understand their bedrock sense of duty was perhaps the key to understanding their world, and orienting to my own sense of duty took me deeper into myself and my work.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“They weren't crazy, although they felt like it; they weren't broken, although they felt this, too. They were simply far past what their natural capacities could tolerate.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“They trained me for months on end to adjust to combat. They wanted me fully prepared for what it means to fight on the battlefield. But they never gave me any training on how to leave all that behind.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“Rather than being seen as protectors - as warriors have been viewed in past cultures - our current culture struggles with how to view combat veterans. The cultural dissonance about recent wars spills over into our feelings about soldiers, creating another layer of difficult struggle for soldiers who fought and served.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“Admitting to feelings of helplessness is difficult in the close-knit, insular world of the military. Soldiers often worry that in doing so, they will lose honor, and they'll risk shame, stigmatization and rejection.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“Feelings of helplessness didn't usually arrive in the moments when soldiers' adrenaline ran high, making their attention laserlike and tightly focused on battle. It washed in later, when the chaos had ebbed and they could feel things again.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“My vague stereotypes were falling by the wayside as I let myself see who soldiers really were, beyond the narrow imaginings that had come to mind while driving across the country.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine

“I realize his blessed attention to every minute detail was a a tribute to his comrade, to their shared lives as soldiers - lives that are sometimes calibrated in just a few centimeters. And in tiny, precious millimeters.”
― Elizabeth Heaney, The Honor Was Mine