Word: soldierly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...simple soldier with a simple mind. As I see it, the object of this conference is to find a Christian foundation for a new German army and a close cooperation for it with the foreign armies. I have listened to the all-too-able learned lectures; they have offered and laid open the problems, but I have not yet heard a solution. If we are going to be successful against the common threat of Communism, we must find a greater means of cooperation to build a common foundation." There is only one foundation, added Colonel Freeth, on which all could...
...army, to a soldier serving unwillingly, is apt to seem a carefully designed tyranny. Writers, especially, see military life as a kind of conspiracy to fracture their sensibilities. A lot of German soldierwriters seem no different from novelistsin-uniform anywhere when it comes to heaping scorn on barracks life. What is surprising in this book is not that the Wehrmacht produced a novelist who protests against the army, but that he makes his protest with a sardonic sense of humor...
...friend Asch suffers from no such fears of the military. A bright, thoughtful type with a gyroscopic sense of self-preservation, he hates the whole military setup but manages to land all the cozy details while creating the impression that he is a first-rate soldier. While Vierbein works himself to death without reward, Asch's brilliantly planned loafing brings him a recommendation for corporal...
Using the army regulations themselves, taking advantage of the machine's very unwieldiness, he sets out to make fools of the men who run his life. Through devices that any old soldier can only admire, he gets his noncoms and even his captain into so much regulation trouble that they earn the contempt of the battery commander. Gunner Asch wins his corporal's stripes and shows up the simple-mindedness of the goose-steppers. But by a superb irony, he is the final loser; through the simple expedient of throwing all the Asch-inspired reports into the waste...
Harold Dahl was an air-age soldier of fortune with a quiet, ingratiating manner, the face of an unappreciated minor poet-and an astonishing talent for oscillating rapidly between the frying pan and the fire, meanwhile eating well and never getting badly burned. He was also a good pilot-and a very lucky...