Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good. - Norman Schwarzkopf Jr.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war. Any soldier worth his salt should be anti-war. And still there are things worth fighting for.'''

I had to be a complete son of a bitch to get any results, which often entailed losing my temper five or six times in a day. Being calm and reasonable just didn't work. For one thing the antiwar protests were mounting in the United States and a lot of our draftees knew they'd been sent to an unpopular war and didn't want to fight. Then there was the Army's policy of keeping Vietnam tours to one year, which meant a constant stream of raw recruits and a constant exodus of experienced men. When these new kids arrived, they'd immediately be exposed to a bogus combat-veteran culture that was in reality no more than an accumulation of bad habits. Some other troops would tell them: "Forget that crap you learned in basic training. This is how we do it around here. This is the real thing."

Frankly, any man that doesn't cry scares me a little bit. I don't think I would like a man who was incapable of enough emotion to get tears in his eyes every now and then. That type of person scares me. That's not a human being.