Firemen Don't Talk About Whether

Society Can Give Its Young Men Almost Any Job And They'll Figure How To Do It. They'll Suffer For It And Die For It And Watch Their Friends Die For It, But In The End, It Will Get Done. That Only Means That Society Should Be Careful About What It Asks For. ... Soldiers Themselves Are Reluctant To Evaluate The Costs Of War, But Someone Must. That Evaluation, Ongoing And Unadulterated By Politics, May Be The One Thing A Country Absolutely Owes The Soldiers Who Defend Its Borders.

One Interesting Thing I Found Was That If You Take An Affluent Modern Society And Collapse It During A Crisis, Like A War Or A Natural Disaster, People Begin Relating In A More Ancient, Organic Way. They're Functioning In Small Interdependent Groups And Putting Others First. And Another Irony Is That Even In Terrible Times, Cooperating Makes People Feel Good.

If You Shell A Military Base And Happen To Kill Civilians, You Have Not Committed A War Crime; If You Deliberately Target Cities And Towns, You Have.

The Only Thing That Makes Battle Psychologically Tolerable Is The Brotherhood Among Soldiers. You Need Each Other To Get By.

In My Eyes Marlantes Has Become The Pre-eminent Literary Voice On War Of Our Generation. He Is A Natural Storyteller And A Deeply Profound Thinker Who Not Only Illuminates War For Civilians, But Also Offers A Kind Of Spiritual Guidance To Vets Themselves. As This Generation Of Warriors Comes Home, They Will Be Enormously Helped By What Marlantes Has Written. I’m Sure He Will Literally Save Lives.