Change hurts. It makes people insecure, confused, and angry. People want things to be the same as they've always been, because that makes life easier. But, if you're a leader, you can't let your people hang on to the past.
Popularity is not leadership.
We all knew there was just one way to improve our odds for survival: train, train, train. Sometimes, if your training is properly intense it will kill you. More often -- much, much more often -- it will save your life.
Pain was their body's way of telling them that they'd pushed themselves to their limits -- which was exactly where they were supposed to be.
If you train people properly, they won't be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.
For the past weeks I'd been reacting. That was no way to win. To win, you take the initiative. You instigate the action. You make the opponent react to you.
When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing.