Word: soldierly
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...Drafted soldiers are far more likely to die in combat than long-service professionals. Military leaders know from painful experience that it takes years to produce a fully competent combat soldier. They also know that older soldiers live longer in combat. Drafting teenagers and committing them to combat within only a year of enlistment will create an Army of amateurs. Our Army in particular has a sad history of committing to battle men who are too young and inexperienced to have much hope of surviving against a hardened and skillful enemy...
...Rudyard Kipling's day was. He is a patriot; his modern British comrades, patriots themselves but shy of admitting it, express surprise at the American warrior's outspoken devotion to flag and homeland. He feels a personal relationship with his Commander in Chief, the President, as Kipling's archetypal soldier, Tommy Atkins, seems to have done with his Queen. Above all, like Tommy, he ships out. Ordered to a strange corner of the world, often at the ends of the earth, he packs his kit, says his farewells and departs. He does not ask how long he will be away...
Hence the distinctive character of the American military. I first learned its flavor through my father, a soldier of the First World War. After that war, he served as a member of the army of occupation in defeated Germany. He made friends with doughboys. Their high-spirited and easygoing ways delighted him. When the G.I.s appeared in my corner of embattled Britain in 1943, I saw what had attracted him. G.I.s were ambassadors of their country: easy, outgoing, generous and above all, ready to make friends. So they did. Every unattached girl acquired an American boyfriend--60,000 G.I. brides...
...uncommon skills and service, for the choices each one of them has made and the ones still ahead, for the challenge of defending not only our freedoms but those barely stirring half a world away, the American soldier is TIME's Person of the Year...
...campaign of shock and awe was always aimed at mind and heart: many Iraqis viewed America as magically powerful, which raised their hopes and, in some cases, broke their will to resist. One U.S. soldier, when raiding a house in search of weapons, would aim his cheap key-ring flashlight at the scalp of a suspect, then scan from head to toe before flashing the light onto his wristwatch and humming softly. The Iraqi, perhaps convinced that his thoughts and secrets had been electronically captured in a Casio, would often confess...