The Junior Officers' Reading Club Quotes

“The hardest thing about getting what you want is knowing what to do with it.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“Perhaps wherever you go first is what you judge everything else by.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“In fact, second lieutenants were primary-school teachers. Sure, teachers with guns, but a platoon commander was, nonetheless, the guy who sorted out the working day for 30 men under his command, taught their lessons, helped them with their homework, sorted out their petty squabbles and put plasters on their knees when they fell over in the playground.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“Good general differ from bad generals only in the degree to which they resist the psychopathology of the very organization they serve. Norman Dixon”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“Military Annual Training Tests, which covered shooting; fitness; first aid; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear warfare; navigation; and values and standards. One to five were pretty straightforward, bread-and-butter Army stuff, but values and standards incorporated the law of armed conflict, security, health and safety, substance misuse, and equality and diversity.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club

“young and impressive sergeant mentioned that he was hoping to go back north with us because he had earned”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time and Fighting Wars

“A young and clueless second-lieutenant straight out of the factory, I was very much surplus to the requirements.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“Violence is temporary, but learning is permanent.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“What surfaced was the surprising power of our cultural heritage.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“I couldn't have done 16 months of deployment without a sense of irony. N”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“The British Army has a fine tradition of being so distracted by what it is currently up to it stubbornly refuses to look round the corner, let alone into the future.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars

“we sulked and, in the finest tradition of bored soldiers, sat around throwing stones at each other.”
― Patrick Hennessey, The Junior Officers' Reading Club: Killing Time And Fighting Wars