Quote(s) of the day

"He was a patriot - the best sort, the kind who do not walk around with American flags in their lapels."

"Twelve wrecked homes. The chaplain's words echoed. That's twelve wrecked homes. The doctor and I think in terms of human suffering not statistics. I thought about Sullivan again. He was one of the statistics, just like the four enemy soldiers killed that morning. The only difference was that they were in different columns on the colonel's scoreboard. Twelve wrecked homes. I thought about Sullivan's young widow in Pennsylvania, and a chill passed through me. Maybe her husband had died for nothing, maybe for something. Either way, it could not make much difference to her now."

Both come from Philip Caputo's book, Rumor of War, about his time as a US Marine in Vietnam in the Sixties. Not that much has changed.