There is no need to suppose that human beings differ very much one from another: but it is true that the ones who come out on top are the ones who have been trained in the hardest school."

             - Thucydides

"C'mon you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?!?!"-- Sgt. Dan Daly (USMC) at Belleau Wood.

"The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made...He has been called United States Marine."
               -Historian T. E. Fehrenbach

One Tin Soldier

Listen children to a story
that was written long ago
Bout a kingdom on a mountain
and the valley far below
On the mountain was a treasure,
buried deep beneath the stone
And the valley people swore
they'd have it for their own.

So go ahead and hate your neighbor,
go ahead and cheat a friend
Do it in the name of heaven,
you can justify it in the end
There won't be any trumpets blowing,
come the judgment day
But on the bloody morning after,
one tin soldier rides away.

So the people from the valley
sent a message up the hill
Asking for the buried treasure,
tons of gold for which they'd kill
Came an answer from the kingdom,
"with our brothers we will share                                                                    
All the secrets of the mountain,
all the riches buried there."

Now the valley cried with anger,
"Mount your horses, draw your swords"
And they killed the mountain people,
so they won their just rewards
Now they stood beside the treasure,
on the mountain, dark and red
Turned the stone and looked beneath it,
"Peace on earth" was all it said.