John Keegan Quotes
Soldiers, when committed to a task, can't compromise. It's unrelenting devotion to the standards of duty and courage, absolute loyalty to others, not letting the task go until it's been done.
Keegan, John. Interview by Brian Lamb. Booknotes, C-SPAN, 8 May 1994.
Ataturk had been a military hero, but was very much opposed to war and military adventurism not unlike the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell type leaders. However, the one thing that he thought worth the sacrifice of his own and other Turkish lives was Turkish independence and sovereignty. Historically, the Ottoman Empire which Ataturk finally ended, had dominated half of Europe and all of the Mid East at the cost of sovereignty of other nations and Ataturk saw no more important virtue with dying for than national sovereignty. See {125322} and {584501}.
In 1932 FDR was elected president by a desperate nation in the midst of the great depression. A month before the presidential inauguration an assassin attempted to murder the President-elect, but instead fatally shot the Mayor of Chicago who was talking with Roosevelt:
Colonel Banks had given him the Regimental colors flag and urged him to take care to return it with honor. This was his famous reply. In the midst of the Battle he was hit fatally with a cannonball. A Black corporal then took up the colors and he too was killed and yet another Negro corporal took the flag and returned it after a battle where the Blacks were commended for their valor. This quotation has been quoted to military men and women throughout the world as an outstanding example of military bravery and honor..
Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan OBE FRSL was an English military historian, lecturer, writer and journalist. He wrote many published works on the nature of combat between prehistory and the 21st century, covering land, air, maritime, intelligence warfare and the psychology of battle.
