We are reluctant to admit that essentially war is the business of killing, though that is the simplest truth in the book. - S.L.A. Marshall

Truly then, it is killing men with kindness not to insist upon physical standards during training which will give them maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses of campaigning in war.

The enemy, no more willing to be shot than was his opponent, was rarely seen, only fleetingly if at all.

....most of our textbooks and commentaries on leadership and the mastery of the moral problem in battle are written by senior officers who are either wholly lacking in combat experience or have been for long periods so far removed from the reality of small arms action that they have come to forget what were once their most vital convictions and impressions.