Combat Deployment Quotes

There are two things a combat deployment offers which all of us strongly desire. The first, being purpose. Every morning we woke up and knew why we were there. It is immediate and unavoidable. Although, it is extreme and unpleasant, there is a comfort in that purpose. The second, is simplicity. We have one goal. There are relatively simple rules on how to accomplish it, and we understand that just about everything will go wrong. Pretty simple. ~ Adam Fenner

When we deployed, in our heads, the towel we left hanging next to the shower to dry, would still be hanging there when we got back. Well, it won't be. If it is, some important questions need to be asked. ~ Adam Fenner

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. ~ Rachel Maddow

When they had ended their prayers, the Angel of Death recovered his loquacity and his gayety and ascending the chariot again, preceded by Gil Gil, spoke as follows.

'The village you see on that mountain is Gethsemane. In it was the Garden of Olives. On the other side you can distinguish an eminence crowned by a temple which stands out against a starry sky - that is Golgotha. There I passed the greatest day of my existence. I thought I had vanquished God himself - and vanquished he was for some hours. But, alas! on that mount, too, it was that three days later I saw myself disarmed and my power brought to naught on the morning of a certain Sunday. Jesus had risen from the dead. There, too, took place on the same occasion my great single combat with Nature. There took place my duel with her, that terrible duel (at the third hour of the day, I remember it well), when, as soon as she saw me thrust the lance of Longinus in the breast of the Saviour she began to throw stones at me, to upturn the cemeteries, to bring the dead to life, and I know not what besides. I thought poor Nature had lost her senses.'

The Angel of Death seemed to reflect for a moment... ("The Friend of Death") ~ Pedro Antonio De Alarcón

A FRIGHTENED, ANGRY, FOUR-HUNDRED-POUND, antisocial chef with a combat shotgun never leads to anything good. ~ Dean Koontz

I touched my scalp where Sula had wrapped the cloth. It still burned, but it made me feel important. I'd been wounded in combat. Anyone could break a leg or dislocate a sholder, but how many people get shot? I could tell by the way Will was looking at me that he was impressed too and not a little bit jealous. I would have quickly traded the head wound, however, for a glass of clean water. ~ Cameron Stracher

Obama met with the president of China, Xi Jinping, in a sterile hotel conference room, untouched cups of cooling tea and ice water before us. There was a long review of all the progress made over the last several years. Xi assured Obama, unprompted, that he would implement the Paris climate agreement even if Trump decided to pull out. "That's very wise of you," Obama replied. "I think you'll continue to see an investment in Paris in the United States, at least from states, cities, and the private sector." We were only two years removed from the time when Obama had flown to Beijing and secured an agreement to act in concert with China to combat climate change, the step that made the Paris agreement possible in the first place. Now China would lead that effort going forward.
Toward the end of the meeting, Xi asked about Trump. Again, Obama suggested that the Chinese wait and see what the new administration decided to do in office, but he noted that the president-elect had tapped into real concerns among Americans about "the fairness of our economic relationship with China. Xi is a big man who moves slowly and deliberately, as if he wants people to notice his every motion.

Sitting across the table from Obama, he pushed aside the binder of talking points that usually shape the words of a Chinese leader. We prefer to have a good relationship with the United States, he said, folding his hands in front of him. That is good for the world. But every action will have a ~ Ben Rhodes

Lilac was compelled to battle and overcome the evil in front of her so that Dahmien could be metamorphosed back to his divine spiritual wholeness. She was determined to combat his demons with pure, unconditional love to save her family from further torment and to end the ancestral bloodline curse once and for all. ~ Lali A. Love

During the few months Troy had been back home, he'd told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we'd all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we'd been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I'd yet been over Troy's passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others. ~ Anthony Swofford

Courage is a fleeting commodity and can be crushed effortlessly by a single fond memory of home. A backyard barbecue, a fragmented flashback to a moonlit dance with a beautiful girl--those are psychological bullets in combat. One glimpse of what has been makes a soldier yearn for what can be again. That yearning can be as caustic as acid. It burns away the resolve you need to get the job done.

One stray thought can paralyze just as effectively as a bullet in the spine. ~ Sean Parnell

The combat exclusion policy was adopted during the Clinton Administration in 1994 and says women can 'be assigned to all positions for which they are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.' ~ Cynthia Dill

The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, "We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). The enemy's lies completely mess up our thinking and weaken us if we believe them. Every day we must combat his lies with God's truth. ~ Stormie O'martian

During World War II, when combat rations were tinned, meat hashes were a common entrée because they worked well with the filling machines. "But the men wanted something they could chew, something into which they could 'sink their teeth,'" wrote food scientist Samuel Lepkovsky in a 1964 paper making the case against a liquid diet for the Gemini astronauts. He summed up the soldiers' take on potted meat: "We could undoubtedly survive on these rations a lot longer than we'd care to live." (NASA went ahead and tested an all-milkshake meal plan on groups of college students living in a simulated space capsule at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964. A significant portion of it ended up beneath the floorboards.) ~ Mary Roach

As long as I look into the muzzles, nothing can happen to me. Only if he pulls lead am I in danger. ~ Hans-Joachim Marseille

After immortal feats-of-arms at Narvik, in Holland, at Eben Emael, at Korinth, on Crete and at Leningrad, these men held the encircled airfield at Anissowo-Gorodischtsche in bitter close combat against Soviet divisions. ~ Frank Kurowski

The closest modern equivalent to the Homeric hero is the ace fighter pilot. ~ W. H. Auden

I'd always wanted to do something about the Second World War, but I didn't want to do another combat film, whether it was air, land, or sea. ~ Michael Apted

Siemens had to go to every deployment of their software worldwide and change the password. Getting ~ Ted Koppel

Community, a place of healing and growth ...
There are more and more groups today oriented towards issues and causes ... They can become very aggressive and divide the world between oppressors and the oppressed, the good and the bad. There seems to be a need in human beings to see evil and combat it outside oneself, in order not to see it inside oneself.
The difference between a community and a group that is only issue-oriented, is that the latter see the enemy outside the group. The struggle is an external one; and there will be a winner and a loser. The group knows it is right and has the truth, and wants to impose it. The members of a community know that the struggle is inside of each person and inside the community; it is against all the powers of pride, elitism, hate and depression that are there and which hurt and crush others, and which cause division and war of all sorts. The enemy is inside, not outside. ~ Jean Vanier

He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating. ~ Umberto Eco

I've battled with that type of stuff, but what I've found is that by doing stand-up, I've actually learned about depression and how to combat it. I don't have clinical, but I've definitely had my bouts with it. ~ Bill Burr

Without intentional efforts to combat old ways and norms, ... institutions ... reproduce dominant social ideas, hierarchies, and systems of oppression. ~ Monique W. Morris

Literature has always been related to utopia, so when the utopia loses meaning, so does literature. What I was trying to do, and perhaps what all writers try to do-- what on earth do I know?-- was to combat fiction with fiction. What I ought to do was affirm what existed, affirm the state of things as they are, in other words, revel in the world outside instead of searching for a way out, for in that way I could undoubtedly have a better life, but I couldn't do it, I couldn't, something had congealed inside me, a conviction was rooted inside me, and although it was essentialist, that is, outmoded and, furthermore, romantic, I could not get past it, for the simple reason that it had not only been thought but also experienced, in these sudden states of clear-sightedness that everyone must know, where for a few seconds you catch sight of another world from the one you were in only a moment earlier, where the world seems to step forward and show itself for a brief glimpse before reverting and leaving everything as before... ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Through their own actions, customers can hold companies responsible to higher standards of social responsibility. Through collective action, they can leverage their dollars to combat the force of those investors who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society. ~ Simon Mainwaring

Unlike modern pills, these hard antimony pills didn't dissolve in the intestines, and the pills were considered so valuable that people rooted through fecal matter to retrieve and reuse them. Some lucky families even passed down laxatives from father to son. Perhaps for this reason, antimony found heavy work as a medicine, although it's actually toxic. Mozart probably died from taking too much to combat a severe fever. ~ Sam Kean

It can take greater courage to stand in opposition to the views of your neighbors or nation than to confront an enemy in combat. ~ George McGovern

to have to combat one's instincts - that is the formula for decadence: as long as life is ascending, happiness and instinct are one. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Even though the National Guard and Army Reserve see combat today, it rankles me that people assume it was some kind of waltz in the park back then. ~ Larry David

Letting the religious right teach ID in schools is like letting the Marines teach poetry in advanced combat training. As a scientist, I see these the relevancy between the two sets to be equal. If Kansas is going to mess up like this, the least it can do is not be hypocritical and allow equal time for other alternative "theories" like FSMism, which is by far the tastier choice. ~ Julian Simon

If you defend free speech for bigots but not to combat bigotry, then you believe in bigotry, not free speech. ~ DaShanne Stokes

[There are] games children must conjure up to combat an awful fact of childhood: the fact of their vulnerability to fear, anger, hate and frustration - all the emotions that are an ordinary part of their lives and that they can perceive only as as ungovernable and dangerous forces. To master these forces, children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction. ~ Maurice Sendak

I've flown over seventy goddam combat missions. Don't talk to me about fighting to save my country. I've been fighting all along to save my country. Now I'm going to fight a little to save myself. The country's not in danger any more, but I am. ~ Joseph Heller

Hope is a projection of the imagination; so is despair. Despair all too readily embraces the ills it foresees; hope is an energy and arouses the mind to explore every possibility to combat them. ~ Thornton Wilder

More than 38 percent of women report depressive symptoms after deployment, compared with about 32 percent of men, according to a study published by the Journal of General Internal Medicine. ~ Anonymous

There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared. ~ Melissa Seligman