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We intend to check up on the fitness of our small units...If each such particle attains real efficiency and brings genuine military skill to our large units, our troops, should they be called upon to fight, will carry out their operations without sustaining heavy losses.
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Quoted in "Timoshenko: Marshal of the Red Army" - Page 130 - by Walter Mehring - 1942

 

Semyon Timoshenko

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Generally, (military) exercises not only contribute to the testing of professional skills and inter-operability of participating units and personnel, but also are a good opportunity for the units from various states, interested in the overall security and stability of our region, to develop combined operations and jointly implement given tasks as a team. Therefore Armenia has always been willing to host such events and open its welcoming doors to the participants by trying to provide for them the most comfortable working environment.

 

Seyran Ohanyan

 

…as we do bring our troops home, we cannot lose sight of our very real strategic national interests in this region… I will order specialized units to engage in narrow and targeted operations against al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in the region. They will also provide security for U.S. troops and personnel and train and equip Iraqi security services to keep order and promote stability in the country, but only to the extent we believe such training is actually working. I would also consider, as I have said before, leaving some forces in the Kurdish area to protect the fragile but real democracy and relative peace and security that has developed there.

 

Hillary Clinton

 

Hitler was very upset by the heavy losses suffered by the parachute units, and came to the conclusion that their surprise value had passed. After that he often said to me: "The day of parachute troops is over." He would not believe reports that the British and Americans were developing airborne forces. The fact that none were used in the St. Nazaire and Dieppe raids confirmed his opinion. He said to me: 'There, you see! They are not raising such forces. I was right.' He only changed his mind after the Allied conquest of Sicily in 1943. Impressed by the way the Allies had used them there, he ordered an expansion of our own airborne forces. But that change of mind came too late - because by then you had command of the air, and airborne troops could not be effectively used in face of a superior air force.

 

Kurt Student

 

[M]en cannot be treated as units in operations of political arithmetic because they behave like the symbols for zero and the infinite, which dislocate all mathematical operations.

 

Arthur Koestler

 

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes. I see it as a large thing too, only I break it into small units of one man at a time, and see it as a large and monstrous thing for each man involved. I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers, and all the men who survived the war, including myself, I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers. There is no such thing as a soldier. I see death as a private event, the destruction of the universe in the brain and in the senses of one man, and I cannot see any man's death as a contributing factor in the success or failure of a military campaign.

 

William Saroyan