“Above everything else, beyond the long hardships, one out- come is the most invaluable. The sisterhoods. The lifelong friends and bonds that will never lessen. Years can go by, and I will pick up with each of those sisters as if a single day hasn’t passed. Only we can truly understand one another; not even our husbands can fully grasp what we’ve been through with each other and how ironclad those bonds are.”
Source: No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife
“It’s the wide variation of women in our little shared petri dish that makes our lives never boring. Really all that we have in common is we each fell in love with a dude in uniform. The rest of it is a wild card. . . . Each of us trying to get through the day, the deployment, and the time in between.”
Source: No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife
“We all reek of weariness. A room full of the black-soul phenomenon. All of a sudden I don’t feel so alone in the recognition of my own mixed feelings mirrored in those faces. In those faces, I see that the seemingly repugnant behavior wasn’t so atrocious after all. Everything is forgiv- able. Everything we said and did and felt was magnified by the pres- ence of something we couldn’t control, and that fact definitely brought out the crazy. Each of us will carry a balance of regret and pride for the rest of our lives.”
Source: No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife
“There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.”
Source: The Day After He Left for Iraq: A Story of Love, Family, and Reunion
“The Crazy feeling builds and builds. It never stops, it never ends, there is no relief.”
Source: The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows
“Most likely, they were writing the same type of macho bullshit that I wrote, trying to sound tough with their words in case words were all that made it home.”
Source: Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
“No matter what the reason, the ways I tried to justify the situation, the second-guessing that lingered, nothing could change the fact that people stopped existing because of me.”
Source: Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
“Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don’t do it to win anymore; we do it because it’s what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It’s our battle rhythm.”
Source: No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife
“So when I arrived in Saudi Arabia in August of 2001, as there was no chemical, biological, or nuclear war going on, all I prepared for was to be bored until it was time to go home. Obviously, that plan failed.”
Source: The Long Walk: A Story of War and the Life That Follows
“I feel like so much has been left undone. There are friends I won't see before I leave, there are bills I still need to pay. I haven't written as much as I've wanted, and there are countless things I've said that I wish I could correct, but this is a process that will never end. When my grandmother died she left a library full of books she never finished reading. This is how I feel now.”
Source: Just Another Soldier: A Year on the Ground in Iraq