Troop Quotes

In 1969 the Khmer Rouge numbered only about 4,000. By 1975 their numbers were enough to defeat the government forces. Their victory was greatly helped by the American attack on Cambodia, which was carried out as an extension of the Vietnam War. In 1970 a military coup led by Lon Nol, possibly with American support, overthrew the government of Prince Sihanouk, and American and South Vietnamese troops entered Cambodia.

One estimate is that 600,000 people, nearly 10 per cent of the Cambodian population, were killed in this extension of the war. Another estimate puts the deaths from the American bombing at 1000,000 peasants. From 1972 to 1973, the quantity of bombs dropped on Cambodia was well over three times that dropped on Japan in the Second World War.

The decision to bomb was taken by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and was originally justified on the grounds that North Vietnamese bases had been set up in Cambodia. The intention (according to a later defence by Kissinger's aide, Peter W. Rodman) was to target only places with few Cambodians: 'From the Joint Chiefs' memorandum of April 9, 1969, the White House selected as targets only six base areas minimally populated by civilians. The target areas were given the codenames BREAKFAST, LUNCH, DINNER, SUPPER, SNACK, and DESSERT; the overall programme was given the name MENU.' Rodman makes the point that SUPPER, for instance, had troop concentrations, anti-aircraft, artillery, rocket and mortar positions, ~ Jonathan Glover

It is important to arrange games and competition so that all Scouts of the troop take part. ~ Baden Powell De Aquino

My mom, who was only six or seven herself, used to round up the abandoned kids and form a troop and take them around to the shebeens. They'd collect empties from the men who were passed out and take the bottles to where you could turn them in for a deposit. Then my mom would take that money, buy food in the spaza shops, and feed the kids. She was a child taking care of children. When ~ Trevor Noah

The Girl Scouts is where I became acquainted with the idea that a woman can do anything. Learning that early on has a tremendous impact on the development of a young girl's personality. It had a huge impact on me. Girl Scouts is where I first learned about philanthropy and fell in love with the concept of helping others-in my troop this was very important. We did a lot of community service like picking up trash and feeding the homeless. Loving humankind was something that echoed throughout my time at Girl Scouts. ~ Lisa Ling

Were our pupil's disposition so bizarre that he would rather hear a tall story than the account of a great voyage or a wise discussion; that at the sound of a drum calling the youthful ardour of his comrades to arms he would turn aside for the drum of a troop of jugglers; that he would actually find it no more delightful and pleasant to return victorious covered in the dust of battle than after winning a prize for tennis or dancing; then I know no remedy except that his tutor should quickly strangle him when nobody is looking or apprentice him to make fairy-cakes in some goodly town - even if he were the heir of a Duke - following Plato's precept that functions should be allocated not according to the endowments of men's fathers but the endowments of their souls. ~ Michel De Montaigne

We didn't have last names before they came. When they decided they needed to keep track of us, last names were given to us, just like the name "INDIAN" itself was given to us. These were attempted translations and botched Indian names, random surnames, and names passed down from white American generals, admirals, and colonels, and sometimes troop names, which were sometimes just colors. ~ Tommy Orange

Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

BOOK BEAUTY

Here's the end of that story about the old woman who wanted to lure a man with strange

cosmetics. She made a paste of pages from the Qur'an to fill the deep creases on her face and

neck with. This is not about an old woman, dear reader. It's about you, or anyone who tries

to use books to make themselves attractive. There she is, sticking scripture, thick with

saliva, on her face. Of course, the bits keep falling off. "The devil," she yells, and

he appears! "This is a trick I've never seen. You don't need me. You are yourself a troop

of demons!" So people steal inspired words to get compliments. Don't bother. Death comes

and all talking, stolen or not, stops. Pity anyone unfamiliar with silence when that happens.

Polish your heart with mediation and quietness. Let the inner life grow generous and handsome

like Joseph. Zuleika did that and her "old woman's spring cold snap" turned to mid-July. Dry

lips wet from within. Ink is not rouge. Let language lie bygone. Now is where love breathes. ~ Rumi

What a Shinobi Should Keep in Mind to Know the Enemy: It is essential for a shinobi monomi [covert scout] to speculate deeply about the way the enemy is. However, you should not report what is not reasonable enough to report. The commander in chief, troop commanders, or strategists make their strategy about the enemy based on the information given from the above covert scouts. This is critical to defense; whether the information is reliable or not is of vital importance. ~ Yoshie Minami

The hardiest sons of the war, the men who lead the storm-troop, and manipulate the tank, the aeroplane, and the submarine, are preeminent in technical accomplishment; and it is these picked examples of dare-devil courage that represent the modern state i battle. These men of first-rate qualities with real blood in their veins, courageous, intelligent, accustomed to serve the machine, and yet its superior at the same time, are the men, too, who show up best in the trench and among the shell-holes. ~ Ernst Junger

the Battle of San Juan. Two years later, the regiment held its first reunion, with a grand three-day celebration at Oklahoma City. The young metropolis would show the world that it could do things. There would be visitors from every state. "T. R.," national hero, would attend. A grand display of fireworks, the largest ever seen west of the Mississippi, was ordered. Quanah was besought to bring a troop of Indians for the parade. They would be fed and cared for, paid a small sum, and could see the show. The agent agreed, and there was no difficulty in assembling a troop. The young men gathered their gayest finery and borrowed the carefully saved costumes of their fathers, war bonnets, belts, and beads and feather ornaments. ~ U.C. Berkeley

Now you will understand how wise the ancient was when he told us in the Hermetica, There are two gifts which God has bestowed upon man alone and on no other mortal creature. These two are Mind and Speech, and the gift of Mind and Speech is equivalent to that of immortality. If a man uses these two gifts rightly, he will differ in nothing from the Immortals. And when he quits his body, Mind and Speech will be his guides, and by them he will be brought into the troop of the gods and the souls that have attained to bliss. ~ Neville Goddard

The most annoying thing, perhaps, was that the elven troop were obviously good people and were being kind to them, and yet Elliot felt subtly wrong-footed at every turn. He wondered if this was how Serene felt all the time, and he promised himself to bear it as well as she did. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

The process of my transformation came to a head with my discovery of St. Francis of Assisi during a pilgrimage I went on with a scout troop from my school. ~ Abbe Pierre

It was the red vision of the revolution, which would one day inevitably carry them all away, on some bloody evening at the end of the century. Yes, some evening the people, unbridled at last, would thus gallop along the roads, making the blood of the middle class flow, parading severed heads and sprinkling gold from disembowelled coffers. The women would yell, the men would have those wolf-like jaws open to bite. Yes, the same rags, the same thunder of great sabots, the same terrible troop, with dirty skins and tainted breath, sweeping away the old world beneath an overflowing flood of barbarians. ~ Emile Zola

Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of about twenty to fifty individuals. As the number of chimpanzees in a troop increases, the social order destabilises, eventually leading to a rupture and the formation of a new troop by some of the animals. Only in a handful of cases have zoologists observed groups larger than a hundred. Separate groups seldom cooperate, and tend to compete for territory and food. Researchers have documented prolonged warfare between groups, and even one case of 'genocidal' activity in which one troop systematically slaughtered most members of a neighbouring band. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

For the next several years, they gathered critical intelligence on German troop movements, blew up fuel depots, stole Nazi uniforms, and sabotaged lorries. Once, Avi and Jacob were ordered to attack a police station and grab any uniforms they could. They captured two police uniforms, two pistols, a small box of ammunition, and a money box with over ten thousand francs inside. What's more, they escaped with a bonus neither of them had expected - a stash of six thousand food-ration coupons, which they promptly gave to Morry to distribute among the various Jewish Resistance members scattered throughout the country. ~ Joel C. Rosenberg

Though the whole troop wore white garments, no two whites were alike amoung them. Some approached pure blanching, some had a bluish pallor; some worn by the older characters (which has possibly lain by folded for many a year) inclined to a cadavourous tint, and to a georgian style. ~ Thomas Hardy

The house had a private walk down to a private spit of beach, and in the mornings the four of them would troop downhill and swim - even he did, in his pants and undershirt and an old oxford shirt, which no one bothered him about - and then lie on the sand baking, the wet clothes ungluing themselves from his body as they dried. Sometimes Harold would come and watch them, or swim as well. In the afternoons, Malcolm and JB would pedal off through the dunes on bicycles, and he and Willem would follow on foot, picking up bits of shaley shells and the sad carapaces of long-nibbled-away hermit crabs as they went, Willem slowing his pace to match his own. In the evenings, when the air was soft, JB and Malcolm sketched and he and Willem read. He felt doped, on sun and food and salt and contentment, and at night he fell asleep quickly and early, and in the mornings he woke before the others so he could stand on the back porch alone looking over the sea. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Nearly all the Gauls are of a lofty stature, white, and of ruddy complexion; terrible from the sternness of their eyes, very quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence. A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong, and with blue eyes ~ Ammianus Marcellinus

By George Eliot Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul: There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires That trample on the dead to seize their spoil, Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible As exhalations laden with slow death, And o'er the fairest troop of captured joys Breathes pallid pestilence. ~ George Eliot

Like a community sing, a howl is a happy occasion. Wolves love to howl. When it is started, they instantly seek contact with one another, troop together, fur to fur. Some wolves will run from any distance, panting and bright-eyed, to join in, uttering, as they near, fervent little wows, jaws wide, hardly able to wait to sing. ~ Lois Crisler

These men were very much in the minority, but of course, being the 'Elect', they expected to be in a minority - the party of redemption. In fact they glorified in the slightness of their numbers, the self-purifying troop of Gideon's army ... stormtroopers in the front line of the Reformation. ~ Simon Schama

She trained the girls in her Girl Scout troop to believe that they could be anything, and she went to lengths to prevent negative stereotypes of their race from shaping their internal views of themselves and other Negroes. It was difficult enough to rise above the silent reminders of Colored signs on the bathroom doors and cafeteria tables. But to be confronted with the prejudice so blatantly, there in that temple to intellectual excellence and rational thought, by something so mundane, so ridiculous, so universal as having to go to the bathroom...In the moment when the white women laughed at her, Mary had been demoted from professional mathematician to a second-class human being, reminded that she was a black girl whose piss wasn't good enough for the white pot. ~ Margot Lee Shetterly

Girl Scouts is such an iconic organization that it's easy to overlook how daring an idea it was for founder Juliette Gordon Low to gather those first 18 girls in that troop in Savannah, Georgia. It was 1912, after all, and women wouldn't earn the right to vote for another eight years. ~ Anna Maria Chavez

I believe the only way a writer can keep himself up to the mark is by examining each story quite coldly before he starts writing it and asking himself if it is all right as a story. I mean, once you go saying to yourself, 'This is a pretty weak plot as it stands, but I'm such a hell of a writer that my magic touch will make it okay,' you're sunk. If they aren't in interesting situations, characters can't be major characters, not even if you have the rest of the troop talk their heads off about them. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Then there was Micah Jenkins, the Captain of Troop K, a gentle and courteous South Carolinian, on whom danger acted like wine. In action he was a perfect gamecock. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

If polar bears live at the North Pole, why doesn't Santa use them to pull the sleigh?" Brogan asked, licking mustard off his thumb with the air of someone who thought they'd won the argument, which was dumb, because he never won. Embry was the uncontested champion of arguing in their house.
"Are you high?" Embry asked. "Have you seen a fucking polar bear? There's no way they're as aerodynamic as reindeer."
"Polar bears make about as much sense as reindeer, seeing as neither of them can actually fly," Brogan pointed out. "Polar bears are stronger, too. You'd only need half as many to get the job done."
"Polar bears aren't pack animals. You'd never get all of them attached to the sleigh at once."
"Think how cool it would be, though. A whole troop of polar bears pulling a sleigh. There should be fire somewhere. A secondary propulsion system in case the bears get tired. Like a jet engine." His eyes went wide with awe, presumably at his own genius. "There should be a jet engine, Embry. ~ Sidney Bell

Its the reality of a situation like this that when you have a large troop presence that it has the tendency to fuel the insurgency, because they can make the incorrect and unfair claim that somehow the United States is here to occupy this country, which of course is not true. ~ Russ Feingold

Morale - the will to win, the fighting heart - are the honored hallmarks of the football coach and player. Likewise, they are characteristic of the enterprising executive, the successful troop leader, the established artist and the dedicated teacher and scientist. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Farewell the plumed troop, and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, th' ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war! ~ William Shakespeare

Osama Bin Laden is dead. Killed not by a massive troop deployment but by a commando raid carried out by a few dozen highly trained men and helicopters. ~ Richard Engel

It costs us $1 million for every troop[soldier] in Afghanistan. ~ Lawrence Korb

My wife volunteered her services as Red Cross nurse, insisting upon being sent to the front, in order to be as near me as could be, but it developed later that no nurse was allowed to go farther than the large troop hospitals far in the rear of the actual operations. ~ Fritz Kreisler

If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms never never never! ~ William Pitt

He said a bad word. Do you want to know what it was? It started with F. It's not the one you're thinking of, though. To the other one. The one that ends with P. do you want to know what it was? It was troop." She frowned. "Wait that's not a word. ~ Derek Landy

It is pleasant to walk over the beds of these fresh, crisp, and rustling leaves. How beautifully they go to their graves! how gently lay themselves down and turn to mould!
painted of a thousand hues, and fit to make the beds of us living. So they troop to their last resting-place, light and frisky. They put on no weeds, but merrily they go scampering over the earth, selecting the spot, choosing a lot, ordering no iron fence, whispering all through the woods about it,
some choosing the spot where the bodies of men are mouldering beneath, and meeting them half-way. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Over on our left the other three tanks of our Troop are misshapen black beetles swimming in a cauldron of fire...great spouts of flame illuminate a long vista of forest...in a hurricane of blast the tops of the trees dance against a sky of incandescent orange. The explosions, starting as vermilion pinpricks, bulge into leaping rainbows of light. A huge square object rises lazily above the trees, turns slowly over and over, then drops into the writhing forest. ~ Ken Tout

Warriors don't get weary, troops do. ~ T.F. Hodge

You shall be known among us as Usul, the base of the pillar. This is your secret name, your troop name. We of Sietch ~ Frank Herbert

The Regency,' said Laurent, addressing the troop, 'thought to take us outnumbered. It expected us to roll over without a fight.'
Damen said: 'We will not let them cow us, subdue us or force us down. Ride hard. Don't stop to fight the front line. We are going to smash them open. We are here to fight for our Prince!'
The cry rang out, For the Prince! The men gripped their swords, slammed their visors down, and the sound they made was a roar. ~ C.S. Pacat

I'm not quite sure which scout troop Heath belonged to, but it certainly wasn't the "I will totally honor my previous promise of no hanky-panky in the shower" troop. ~ Victoria Laurie

We started when I was in the fourth grade, which would have made me ten, I guess. It's different for everyone, but at that age, though I couldn't have said that I was gay, I knew that I was not like the other boys in my class or my Scout troop. While they welcomed male company, I shrank from it, dreaded it, feeling like someone forever trying to pass, someone who would eventually be found out, and expelled from polite society. Is this how a normal boy would swing his arms? I'd ask myself, standing before the full-length mirror in my parents' bedroom. Is this how he'd laugh? Is this what he would find funny? It was like doing an English accent. The more concentrated the attempt, the more self-conscious and unconvincing I became. ~ David Sedaris

Here, you drive," Erik said.
"What? Why?"
"In case we do have to start shooting; I have a badge and you don't," he explained.
"Fine. But for the record, I'm a better shot than you are."
"For your information, I was the youngest kid awarded the rifle shooting merit badge in my troop," Erik said, holding the wheel as she climbed across him.
"Is that supposed to impress me?"
"Just enough to get you back into my bed." She took over the gas pedal and Erik slid out from underneath her.
"It takes more than fancy shooting," she said loftily, making a sharp turn.
Erik was thrown against the door. "Would you warn me before you do that?"
"It's a car chase! ~ Tiffany Snow

There is always room for a man of force and he makes room for many. Society is a troop of thinkers and the best heads among them take the best places. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A troop surge in Baghdad would put more American troops at risk to address a problem that is not a military problem. ~ Norm Coleman

In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. ~ Bill Kristol

If you live in a baboon troop in the Serengeti, you only have to work three hours a day for your calories, and predators don't mess with you much. What that means is you've got nine hours of free time every day to devote to generating psychological stress toward other animals in your troop. So the baboon is a wonderful model for living well enough and long enough to pay the price for all the social-stressor nonsense that they create for each other. They're just like us: They're not getting done in by predators and famines, they're getting done in by each other. ~ Robert M. Sapolsky

And yet these Americans, with their helicopters and laser-guided weapons and shock-troop Rangers were going to somehow sort it out in a few weeks? Arrest Aidid and make it all better? They were trying to take down a clan, the most ancient and efficient social organization known to man. Didn't the Americans realize that for every leader they arrested there were dozens of brothers, cousins, sons, and nephews to take his place? Setbacks just strengthened the clan's resolve. Even if the Habr Gidr were somehow crippled or destroyed, wouldn't that just elevate the next most powerful clan? Or did the Americans expect Somalia to suddenly sprout full-fledged Jeffersonian democracy? ~ Mark Bowden

More helicopters hovered to the south, and a large troop carrier lifted off the ground a mile ahead. These weren't the same helicopters Rick had left behind in Tennessee. These were new ones from North Carolina. They must have had a plan, but Rick wasn't in any hurry to run to his doom. He slowed down to seventy miles per hour and looked at Renee.
"I love you, too," he said.
Renee's heart lurched into her throat. The reserved look on his face was something she wasn't used to seeing. "Do you think this is it?"
"I don't know." He looked again at the fuel gauge.
She put her hand over the gauge, covering it from his view. "Do you remember what you told me once?"
Rick smiled. "That, sometimes, it's best not to know."
"Just don't quit on me. Don't make this a worthless gesture." Renee forced him to look at her.
Rick feared running out of fuel in the middle of these mountains. He feared the fury of the Firebird's losing power, rolling to a stop, becoming helpless, and giving all these patrolmen a chance to catch up to them and gun them down like Bonnie and Clyde. Surely, they would use lethal force and nothing else.
But as long as that engine ran and Rick was behind the wheel, they had a chance to live. And every second of life mattered.
"OK, just hang on," he said, meeting her gaze. He reached over and kissed her gently.
Renee relished the kiss, closing her eyes and then opening them wide to take in the mountains. Did it h ~ Rich Hoffman

Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop. ~ Thomas Harris

Whatever actually happened or was said, McChystal's refusal to defend himself - to give me any ammunition to use on his behalf - made it impossible for me to save his job. But to this day, I believe he was given the bum's rush by Biden, White House staff, and NSS who harbored deep resentment toward his unyielding advocacy the previous fall of counterinsurgency and a huge troop surge in Afghanistan; who interpreted his public comments back than as "boxing in" the president; and who continued to oppose the strategy approved by the president and the way McChrystal was implementing it. I am convinced the "Rolling Stone" article gave the president, egged on by those around him in the White House, and himself distrustful of the senior military, and opportunity he welcomed to demonstrate vividly - to the public and to the Pentagon - that he was commander in chief and fully in control of the military. ~ Robert M. Gates

I was deeply disturbed by the meeting. If I couldn't do what I thought was necessary to take care of the troops, I didn't see how I could remain as secretary. I was in a quandary. I shared Obama's concerns about an open-ended conflict, and while I wanted to fulfill the troop requests of the commanders, I knew they always would want more - just like all their predecessors throughout history. How did you scale the size of the commitment to the goal? How did you measure risk? But I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House's lack of appreciation - from the top down - of the uncertainties and inherent unpredictability of war. "They all seem to think it's a science," I wrote in a note to myself. I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it. During ~ Robert M. Gates

The Beats are really nothing more than a troop of malevolent Boy Scouts trying to earn badges for cultural arson. ~ Carlene Bauer

Even chimps understand the concept - if a troop of chimps enters a fruit tree, they will only pick the fruits that are ripe and leave the others growing. That is sustainability. ~ Jane Goodall

A war always comes to someone else. In Salinas we were aware that the United States was the greatest and most powerful nation in the world. Every American was a rifleman by birth, and one American was worth ten or twenty foreigners in a fight. Pershing's expedition into Mexico after Villa had exploded one of our myths for a little while. We had truly believed that Mexicans can't shoot straight and besides were lazy and stupid. When our own Troop C came wearily back from the border they said that none of this was true […] Somehow we didn't connect Germans with Mexicans. We went right back to our own myths. One American was as good as twenty Germans. This being true, we had only to act in a stern manner to bring the Kaiser to heel. He wouldn't dare interfere with our trade--but he did. He wouldn't stick out his neck and and sink our ships--and he did. It was stupid, but he did, and so there was nothing for it but to fight him. The war, at first anyway, was for other people. We, I, my family and friends, had kind of bleacher seats, and it was pretty exciting. And just as war is always for somebody else, so it is also that somebody else always gets killed. And Mother of God! that wasn't true either. The dreadful telegrams began to sneak sorrowfully in, and it was everybody's brother. Here we were, over six thousand miles from the anger and the noise, and that didn't save us […] The draftees wouldn't look at their mothers. They didn't dare. We'd never thought the war could happen ~ John Steinbeck

The Count himself was ready to die, and he would be glad to die here alone, without pretence and mockery, with no troop of expectant relatives about his bed. The world was not what he had thought it at twenty
or even at forty. ~ Willa Cather

We'll then," Enjd said. "What's the problem?"
"This," Mindy said. She opened her hand and held up a tiny green plastic toy solider thrusting a bayonet.
"I don't understand," Enid said.
"This morning, when I opened my door to get the newspaper, I found a whole troop of them arranged on the mat."
"And you think Paul Rice did it," Enid said skeptically.
"I don't think he did it. I know he did it," Mindy said. "He told me if I didn't approve his air conditioners, it was war ... ~ Candace Bushnell

A sagging economy, a soaring national debt, and an increasingly restive Congress pushed Obama to order troop reductions that are both deeper and faster than recommended by his military commanders. ~ Ron Fournier

Guys who get their name splashed all over history and folklore don't tend to be Boy Scout troop leaders. ~ Jim Butcher

If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television. ~ Gerald Durrell

So finally, I can feel a sort of pride in all my family - Mum, Lynn, Corin, Tasha, my cousin Gemma - because, I think how wonderful that this troop of gypsies can carry on telling stories. ~ Joely Richardson

On the seventh day, Howard turned off the trail and sat by the river and smoked a pipeful of tobacco that he had packed for the hermit. As he smoked, he listened to the voices in the rapids. They murmured about a place somewhere deep in the woods where a set of bones lay on a bed of moss, above which a troop of mournful flies had kept vigil the previous autumn until the frosts came, and they, too, had succumbed. ~ Paul Harding

The Girl Guides kept up their activities as well, giving Elizabeth an unexpectedly democratic experience when refugees from London's bomb-ravaged East End were taken in by families on the Windsor estate and joined the troop. The girls earned their cooking badges, with instruction from a castle housekeeper, by baking cakes and scones (a talent Elizabeth would later display for a U.S. president) and making stew and soup. With their Cockney accents and rough ways, the refugees gave the future Queen no deference, calling her Lilibet, the nickname even daughters of aristocrats were forbidden to use, and compelling her to wash dishes in an oily tub of water ~ Sally Bedell Smith

As the Pentagon makes plans for the largest troop rotation since World War II, I will work with the Armed Services Committee to help make this proposal a reality. ~ Mike Rogers

...you can't eat a grub, man. You'd be depriving that young moth of its life goal of bashing into a lightbulb all night. ~ Cutter Nick

Nineteen years, three months, and one week before I found Seivarden in the snow, I was a troop carrier orbiting the planet Shis'urna. ~ Ann Leckie

My brother Jim and I spent many wonderful summers working on dairy farms in Wisconsin owned by Mom's cousins, and as members of our local Boy Scout troop. ~ Peter Agre

On August 5, 2012, a few days before the fourth anniversary of the war, a forty-seven-minute Russian documentary film "8 Avgusta 2008. Poteryannyy den" (8 August 2008. The Lost Day) was posted on YouTube. In the film retired and active service generals accused former President Medvedev of indecisiveness and even cowardice during the conflict. They praised Putin, on the other hand, for his bold and vigorous action. According to one of Medvedev's critics, retired Army General Yury Baluevsky, a former First Deputy Defense Minister and Chief of the General Staff, "a decision to invade Georgia was made by Putin before Medvedev was inaugurated President and Commander-in-Chief in May 2008. A detailed plan of military action was arranged and unit commanders were given specific orders in advance." [...]

After the release of the documentary film Putin confirmed that the Army General Staff had, indeed, prepared a plan of military action against Georgia. It was prepared "at the end of 2006, and I authorized it in 2007," he said. Interestingly, Putin also said "that the decision to 'use the armed forces' had been considered for three days - from around 5 August," which clearly contradicts the official Russian version that the Russian army only reacted to a Georgian attack that started on August 7. According to this plan not only heavy weaponry and troops were prepared for the invasion, but also South Ossetian paramilitary units were trained to support the Russian invading troop ~ Marcel H. Van Herpen

The bow in hand, he finally staggered up and glanced down the alley, obviously searching for whoever had – what had he said? – 'called' him? Though he didn't look much taller than her, the vast array of weapons – enough to fight a whole troop of French soldiers – was terrifying and slightly ridiculous. Like what a little boy might don to pretend to be some ancient warrior.

A warrior. Oh, by the Most High…

He was looking for her. Nahri was the one who had called him. ~ S.A. Chakraborty

Vice-President Ford, possibly preparing for higher duties, assessed Kissinger's part in the Syrian-Israeli troop disengagement as the great diplomatic triumph of this century or perhaps any other. ~ Edwin Newman

My thanks for your hospitality, Roran Stronghammer," he said, raising his voice so that his entire troop could hear. "Mayhap I will soon have the honor of entertaining you within the walls of Aroughs. If so, I promise to serve you the finest wines from my family's estate, and perhaps with them I will be able to wean you off such barbaric milk as you have there. I think you will find our wine has much to recommend it. We let it age in oaken casks for months or sometimes even years. It would be a pity if all that work were wasted and the casks were knocked open and the wine were allowed to run out into the streets and paint them red with the blood of our grapes."
"That would indeed be a shame," Roran replied, "but sometimes you cannot avoid spilling a bit of wine when cleaning your table." Holding the horn out to one side, he tipped it over and poured what little mead remained onto the grass below.
Tharos was utterly still for a moment--even the feathers on his helm were motionless--then, with an angry snarl, he yanked his horse around and shouted at his men, "Form up! Form up, I say…Yah!" And with that final yell, he spurred his horse away from Roran, and the rest of the soldiers followed, urging their steeds to a gallop as they retraced their steps to Aroughs.
Roran maintained his pretense of arrogance and indifference until the soldiers were well away, then he slowly released his breath and rested his elbows on his knees. His hands were trembling slightly.
Christopher Paolini

In the half-reclined bed, Yaz slept, mouth open, snoring - probably doped. Mike turned on the TV. For twenty minutes, he watched retired generals on CNN discussing Afghanistan and troop surges as though they knew what the hell war was all about. ~ Pete Barber

I should make you watch, said Laurent, while he's stripped down for every man in the troop to have him."
Damen stepped forward. "You don't mean this. You need him as a hostage."
"I don't need him continent," said Laurent. ~ C.S. Pacat

The embroidery came later, in the retelling, as the story was told again and again by the men, taking on its own character as it passed over camp.
The Prince had ridden out, with only one soldier. Deep in the mountains, he had chased down the rats responsible for these killings. Had ripped them out of their hiding holes and fought them, thirty to one, at least. Had brought them back thrashed, lashed and subdued. That was their Prince for you, a twisty, vicious fiend who you should never, ever cross, unless you wanted your gullet handed to you on a platter. Why, he once rode a horse to death just to beat Torveld of Patras to the mark.
In the men's eyes the feat was reflected as the wild, impossible thing it was
their Prince vanishing for two days, then appearing out of the night with a sackful of prisoners thrown over his shoulder, tossing them at the feet of his troop and saying: You wanted them? Here they are. ~ C.S. Pacat

As Iraqi forces gain experience and the political process advances, we will be able to decrease our troop level in Iraq without losing our capability to defeat the terrorists. These decisions about troop levels will be driven by the conditions on the ground in Iraq and the good judgment of our commanders, not by artificial timetables set by politicians in Washington. ~ George W. Bush

I was heartened to hear the President say that as we make progress on the ground, and Iraqi forces increasingly take the lead, we should be able to further decrease our troop levels. ~ Howard Coble

And bid them love each other and be blest:
And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves,
And come and be my guest, - for I am Love's. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Raven, lying on the sandy ground, covered in creepy-crawlies. Spiders, cockroaches, termites, ants, crickets - they smother her, nibble on her, devouring her from hair to toenails in seconds, leaving just a skeleton behind. Apple, standing at the podium on Legacy Day. Poof, she disappears. And reappears in a goblin cave. The goblin troop moves in, brandishing salad bowls and chopping knives. Daring Charming, no story to call home, thins and melts into a wisp of a ghost, swimming endlessly through walls. The crowded Charmitorium at Ever After High, Headmaster Grimm on the stage. "And remember, students, no matter what you do, don't follow the example of the worst, most despised, most selfish character in all of Ever After history - Raven Queen!" "Boo!" the students yell. "Boo!" says the Daring ghost. Apple's head in a goblin bowl opens her eyes and looks straight at Raven. "Boo! ~ Shannon Hale

I am sorry the infernal Divinities, who visit mankind with diseases, and are therefore at perpetual war with Doctors, should have prevented my seeing all you great Men at Soho to-day-Lord! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical and pyrotecnical, will be on the wing, bandy'd like a shuttlecock from one to another of your troop of philosophers! while poor I, I by myself I, imprizon'd in a post chaise, am joggled, and jostled, and bump'd, and bruised along the King's high road, to make war upon a pox or a fever! ~ Erasmus Darwin

The troop commander's name was Rich...[and] he was one of the best leaders I've ever known. His motto, which I've stolen from him, is, 'Nobody ever worked for me. They worked with me. ~ Robert O'Neill

We spent the rest of the afternoon searching for the lost Girl Scout troop. We found them asleep, drugged with music. They were curled around a sign that said, "No All-Female Groups Beyond This Point. Satyr Breeding Area." Satyrs have a peculiar sense of humor. I ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

My father contracted polio on a troop train in Korea. ~ David Alan Grier

We were at a swap meet in Cochituate last year, and there was this Boy Scout troop with a sign that read, 'Help Boy Scouts, Blind Kids.' Toby saw it, and he grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me away. I asked what was wrong, and with this scared expression on his face, he said, That's not right. They need to be stopped.'
I cracked up. 'Oh, no,' I said.
'When I asked him why helping blind kids and Boy Scouts was bad, Toby's whole face went white. He said, 'Forget it. Let's go.' But I had to know what the hell he was talking about, so I made him walk back over with me. We looked at the sign together, and finally he mumbled, 'I didn't see the comma. ~ Bill Konigsberg

There can be no barrenness in full summer. The very sand will yield something. Rocks will have mosses, and every rift will have its wind-flower, and every crevice a leaf; while from the fertile soil will be reared a gorgeous troop of growths, that will carry their life in ten thousand forms, but all with praise to God. And so it is when the soul knows its summer. Love redeems its weakness, clothes its barrenness, enriches its poverty, and makes its very desert to bud and blossom as the rose. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

And what a city! The perfect geometric layout, the wide avenues and clean sidewalks, all the monuments bathes in celestial light. The contemps around me hav eno idea how long it will take to rebuild something like this. Do they see the beauty around them? Are they dizzy from the heights on this pinnacle their civilization is teetering upon? No--they troop along, necks crooked into their ancient phones like bent marionettes. Their right cheeks glow. ~ Thomas Mullen

Opposing Bush's troop surge is a dangerous position. ~ Mike Huckabee

The idea of aerial military surveillance dates back to the Civil War, when both the Union and the Confederacy used hot-air balloons to spy on the other side, tracking troop movements and helping to direct artillery fire. ~ Michael Hastings

Somebody betrayed us... The Germans learned the location of our partisan troop. They surrounded the forest from all sides. We were hiding in the deep woods, hiding in the swamps where the torturers did not go [...] A radio operator was with us. She gave birth recently. The baby was hungry... Wanting the breast... But the mother is starving, she has no milk, and the baby is crying. The Germans are nearby... With dogs... If the dogs hear the baby, we're all dead. All of us - thirty people... Do you understand? We make a decision... Nobody dares to tell her the commader's order, but the mother guesses it herself. She puts the bundle with the baby into the water and holds it there for a long time... The baby does not cry... Not a sound... And we cannot lift our eyes. We cannot look at the mother or at each other ~ Svetlana Alexievich

When I think about the history of the SS United States, I wonder if she has something to teach us about the history of the church. The church, like the SS United States, has been designed for battle. The purpose of the church is to mobilize a people to accomplish a mission. Yet we seem to have turned the church as troop carrier into the church as luxury liner. We seem to have organized ourselves, not to engage in battle for the souls of peoples around the world, but to indulge ourselves in the peaceful comforts of the world. ~ David Platt

Ride!' went the call, and the individuals of the troop became a single lurching, streaming mass of horseflesh pounding toward the trees.
The first of the men reached the tree line moments before the sound became a roar, the crack and crash of stones, of huge granite boulders large enough to smash into other parts of the cliff and send them driving downwards. The thundering sound, echoing off the walls of the mountain, was frightening and panicked the horses almost more than the boulders at their heels. It was as though the whole surface of the cliff loosened, dissolved into a liquid surface: a rain of stone, a rolling wave of stone. ~ C.S. Pacat

From the depths of the West of Europe, a young child will be born of poor people, he who by his tongue will seduce a great troop; his fame will increase towards the realm of the East. ~ Nostradamus

I will teach you my townspeople how to perform a funeral for you have it over a troop of artists unless one should scour the world you have the ground sense necessary. ~ William Carlos Williams

After our clips were seen on YouTube, we gained some fame and were invited to Dubai to kick off a five country tour of the region. This was a big deal because no American-based comedy troupe had ever gone to the Middle East to perform for Middle Eastern people. As a matter of fact, normally whenever Middle Easterners hear the words "American" and "troop" in a sentence, it usually means their country is about to be attacked. So it was important for us to emphasize the word "comedy" when publicizing our Dubai arrival. It was also important for us to spell troupe with a "u". What a difference a vowel makes. ~ Maz Jobrani

Yeah, in every film that I've been lucky enough to do with Tim, there's always some form of torture, and the nails were Tim's idea. They were the length of the fingers and stuff, but it was okay because I had a troop of people who would help me go to the bathroom. They had to have treatment afterwards but they're okay now. That is true. ~ Johnny Depp

What I caution against is any unaccountable concentration of power. And I don't care whether that's the government, a corporation, the church, a really bad-ass girl scouts troop, whatever it is. ~ Daniel Suarez

That he didn't demand to know why she was so upset and stupid won the guy so many brownie points, he could have led every Girl Scout troop in the contiguous forty-eight states. ~ Olivia Cunning

The main hallway of the Sternwood place was two stories high. Over the entrance doors, which would have let in a troop of Indian elephants, there was a broad stained-glass panel showing a knight in dark armor rescuing a lady who was tied to a tree and didn't have any clothes on but some very long and convenient hair. The knight had pushed the vizor of his helmet back to be sociable, and he was fiddling with the knots on the ropes that tied the lady to the tree and not getting anywhere. I stood there and thought that if I lived in the house, I would sooner or later have to climb up there and help him. He didn't seem to be really trying. ~ Raymond Chandler

Sex in social mammals is generally carried out in public, before the gazes of other members of the troop. ~ Jared Diamond

They would have too easy a conquest over four separate men; whilst four men united make a troop. ~ Alexandre Dumas