Sunday Reflection

“When you lose a friend [in battle] you have an overpowering desire to go back home and yell in everybody's ear, 'This guy was killed fighting for you. Don't forget him--ever. Keep him in your mind when you wake up in the morning and when you go to bed at night. Don't think of him as the statistic which changes 38,788 casualties to 38,789. Think of him as a guy who wanted to live every bit as much as you do. Don't let him be just one of 'Our Brave Boys' from the old home town, to whom a marble monument is erected in the city park, and a civic-minded lady calls the newspaper ten years later and wants to know why that 'unsightly stone' isn't removed.'” --  Bill Mauldin, Pulitzer Prize- winning editorial cartoonist and chronicler of the lives of the average American soldier in World War II, from his 1944 book Up Front.