Word: soldier
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Flores, 26, was told his failure as a station commander meant he'd soon be returning to a basic recruiter's slot. "He was an emotional wreck," said a soldier who spoke with him the evening of Aug. 8. "He said he felt he failed as a station commander," the colleague told investigators. "He had asked me for a firearm. I told him I didn't have one. It actually never crossed my mind that it might have been for himself." Flores hanged himself that night. "The leadership is the major cause for SFC Flores taking his own life...
...Bachmann] hauled off and poked his stick into the ghost’s side. It writhed with pain and made faces. You’ve hurt my kidney, the critter whimpered.” Though the reader and Bachmann eventually learn that Schnotz was once just as inhuman a soldier as he is now a woodland critter, Schnotz’s Gollum-like wildness emphasizes his pathetic fall from the military, society, and humanity. In addition, Lind captures his subjects with kind of dual childishness and precision; in sketching the form of Bachmann’s girlfriend Helga, he writes...
...kukri strapped to Mekhman Tamang's hip belt is more than an ordinary family heirloom. When his father bequeathed the traditional knife to him 10 years ago, Tamang, a third-generation Gurkha soldier, also inherited the stout-hearted reputation tethered to thousands of Nepalese men who fought for foreign countries before him. Recruited by the British army in 1999, the 30-year-old soldier has braved hails of Taliban bullets during two recent stints in Afghanistan. But he is uncertain whether he will be able to pass down his kukri - or the Gurkha legacy...
...understandable. Nepal's decade-long insurgency hollowed the country's development, leaving nearly half of its population living below the poverty line and an average Nepali farmer earning roughly $300 a year. By contrast, Gurkha privates in the British army take home $28,000 a year. "Becoming a Gurkha soldier is a burning ambition for every hill boy," said Tamang's father, Saharman Tamang, 50, who served the British army for 12 years. "Those who make it are hailed as the 'lucky ones.' Money is not the only draw. Those recruited are whisked away to be educated, trained, shown...
...elder Tamang, who worked as a farmer before he became a soldier, doubts Nepal will ever achieve a total ban on Gurkha recruitment. If the recruitment is stopped, Nepal's flailing economy will take a hit; each year, the country receives $1.1 billion in remittances - nearly 18% of the national GDP - from the Gurkhas and other 2 million Nepalis serving abroad. Even with its new democratically elected government, there is no guarantee how long peace will last in a still fractious Nepalese society. "If Nepal was politically stable and there were enough jobs," says Saharman Tamang, "our young men would...