Quote

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

I've never boxed in my life, never been in a military base in my life, never grew up with anyone in the military.

Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.

I joined the army on my seventeenth birthday, full of the romance of war after having read a lot of World War I British poetry and having seen a lot of post-World War II films. I thought the romantic presentations of war influenced my joining and my presentation of war to my younger siblings.

Spending time with the military certainly lends itself to some remarkable experiences, and I've been privileged to have had my share.

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world.

My dad being an Army officer, I was just born to it. I was raised in a military manner, and it was a given that Army brats went to West Point, so I went to West Point in 1941. And being in the military has been my life.

I was a military brat; we moved all around.