“Such a stupid act. Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.”
Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter VIII (p. 183).
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Iain Banks 139
Scottish writer 1954–2013Related quotes

To A. Schmidt and others - February 4th, 1943. Quoted in "Report of the Special Section of the Don Front NKVD to Special Sections Department of NKVD USSR"

Source: Soldiers Live (2000), Chapter 131, “Around Taglios: Aerial Recon” (p. 736)

“We did not win the war with prayers, but with the blood of our soldiers.”
Explaining his dismissal of the imam assigned to the Turkish Grand National Assembly; as quoted in Ataturk : An Intellectual Biography (2011) by M. Şükrü Hanioğlu, p. 145 http://books.google.com/books?id=dNFhZzug6tMC&pg=PA145
Barani, Fatawa-i-Jahandari, pp.25-26. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 4
Fatawa-i-Jahandari

Speech in Ottawa (10 January 1946), published in Eisenhower Speaks : Dwight D. Eisenhower in His Messages and Speeches (1948) edited by Rudolph L. Treuenfels
1940s

“Good plain soldiering wins wars. Doing mundane things well is what counts.”
Colonel Sir Barnaby Moon, p. 11
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

“Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!”
Military review on the 60th anniversary of the KPA (25 April 1992), the only occasion of Kim's voice being broadcast in the DPRK http://observer.guardian.co.uk/7days/story/0,,1816145,00.html

A Soldier's Declaration (July 1917)
Context: I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.