“I wanted to share the risks the digger in Afghanistan took every day. Whenever I could I joined patrols ‘outside the wire’, walking the same dusty tracks and fields as the ordinary soldiers. I did everything in my power to keep them alive, I failed. In that year I lost ten soldiers under my command, killed in action. I personally identified the remains of each of them, sending them home to their families. More than sixty of my soldiers were wounded, some horribly.”

“i did what heartbroken, lost soldiers have done for centuries. I made my way home to my mother."- Richard Von Schaumburg”

“I hit him more times than necessary but by then my actions were mostly chemical, like a soldier ant or a teenager in love.”

“I am not a woman who would be practical in your life, Sam. You need a home and family...""I'm a soldier, Azami. That's who I am. What I am. My woman will be my home----my family...”

“I cast my lot in with a soldier, and where he was, was home to me.”

“Dear Sixpence,I saved them all, you know. Every letter you ever sent, even those to which I never replied. I’m sorry for so many things, my love: that I leftyou; that I never came home; that it took me so long to realize that you were my home and that, with you by my side, none of the restmattered.But in the darkest hours, on the coldest nights, when I felt I’d lost everything, I still had your letters. And through them, in some small way,I still had you.I loved you then, my darling Penelope, more than I could imagine—just as I love you now, more than you can know.MichaelHell House, February 1831”