I've never been a soldier. In Denmark, at 18, as a male, you go in a draw, and if they pick you, you go and serve for a year. I didn't.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Soldiering is a very important profession, is it not?
I'm from the Vietnam generation. I didn't serve.
I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.
When I first went to school, I was fighting all the time. The soldier mentality was still in me. I kept getting expelled. I found it hard to take instructions from anyone who wasn't a military commander.
What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.
One doesn't become a soldier in a week - it takes training, study and discipline. There is no question that the finest Army in the world is found in the United States.
I want to be a soldier as my father was.
I never joined the army for patriotic reasons.
I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier.