At 19, your brain hasn't finished wiring itself. So the first time you have a good friend die, most people don't go through that at 19. Soldiers do. They're facing life in this accelerated, compressed form, and a lot of times, they're not ready for it.

In some ways, risk-taking is the ultimate act of self-indulgence , an obscene insult to the preciousness of life. And yet, how can one dismiss something that persists despite every reasonable theory that it shouldn't?

Combat isn't where you might die -- though that does happen -- it's where you find out whether you get to keep on living. Don't underestimate the power of that revelation. Don't underestimate the things young men will wager in order to play that game one more time.

I don't think journalists in World War II were objective about the Nazis, and I don't think they should have been.

People who do really dangerous tasks can't afford to sit around and discuss the merits of what they're doing.

No matter how many people you kill, using a machine gun in battle is not a war crime because it does not cause unnecessary suffering; it simply performs its job horrifyingly well.

An adventure is a situation where the outcome is not entirely within your control. It is up to fate, in other words