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I Am A Soldier And I M Marching On: Inspirational Stories from Veterans and Active Duty Personnel



Hanging in the open closet across the room are three neatly pressed Army Combat Uniform jackets. Attached to the sleeve of each jacket are three identical and perfectly aligned 5th Signal Command patches. The image of three fire breathing dragons, marching single file, in a sea of digital green and tan pattern, is all this man sees as he rises to his feet. With pride, he walks over to the closet and carefully removes one of the jackets. As he meticulously dons the jacket around his large frame, reality hits him that this is the last day the dragon will march by his side.


I am a soldier in the army of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is my commanding officer. The Holy Bible is my Code of Conduct. Faith, prayer, and the Word are my weapons of warfare. I have been taught by the Holy Spirit, trained by experience, tried by adversity and tested by fire.




I Am A Soldier And I M Marching On



I am a soldier. I am not a baby. I do not need to be pampered, petted, primed up, pumped up, picked up or pepped up. I am a soldier. No one has to call me, remind me, write me, visit me, entice me, or lure me. I am a soldier. I am not a wimp. I am in place, saluting my King, obeying His orders, praising His name, and building His kingdom! No one has to send me flowers, gifts, food, cards, candy or give me handouts. I do not need to be cuddled, cradled, cared for, or catered to. I am committed. I cannot have my feelings hurt bad enough to turn me around. I cannot be discouraged enough to turn me aside. I cannot lose enough to cause me to quit.


When Jesus called me into this army, I had nothing. If I end up with nothing, I will still come out ahead. I will win. My God has and will continue to supply all of my need. I am more than a conqueror. I will always triumph. I can do all things through Christ. The devil cannot defeat me. People cannot disillusion me. Weather cannot weary me. Sickness cannot stop me. Battles cannot beat me. Money cannot buy me. Governments cannot silence me and hell cannot handle me. I am a soldier. Even death cannot destroy me. For when my Commander calls me from this battlefield, He will promote me to Captain and then allow me to rule with Him. I am a soldier in the army, and Im marching, claiming victory. I will not give up. I will not run around. I am a soldier, marching heaven bound.


BRUTUSYou say you are a better soldier.Let it appear so, make your vaunting true,And it shall please me well. For mine own part,I shall be glad to learn of noble men.


Everyone decides to get a little sleep. They all say their "goodnights" to one another, and Brutus has Lucius call in some soldiers to sleep in his tent just in case he needs them to take messages to Cassius in the night.


1 Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,With the cross of Jesusgoing on before!Christ, the royal Master,leads against the foe;Forward into battle,see his banner go!


2 At the sign of triumphSatan's host doth flee;On, then, Christian soldiers,on to victory!Hell's foundations quiverat the shout of praise;Brothers, lift your voices,loud your anthems raise! [Refrain]


GRABER: Eggs are just one example of the ways scientists have been trying to figure out how to best feed the military for many, many decades now. But the question of how to feed soldiers goes back a lot farther in time.


TWILLEY: This grain-onion combo continued to be the mainstay of military rations. In ancient Greece, the notoriously austere Spartans added some goat cheese and sour wine to the mix, but each soldier was expected to carry his own two-week grain supply at all times, which weighed at least 30 lbs


MARX DE SALCEDO: The reason that rations had not changed in millennia was because there were no new food preservation techniques. And so rations relied on drying, salting, curing, and smoking. And so even in as late as the French and American Revolutionary Wars, what soldiers were carrying in their rucksacks was pretty much the same thing as the Roman legionnaires almost 2,000 years earlier.


TWILLEY: Between 1939 and 1945, the military went from feeding just under four hundred thousand soldiers to having to provide three meals a day for more than 12 million recruits, stationed all over the world.


TWILLEY: On top of that, soldiers complained that the fat in the C ration stew separated and went rancid, the meat tasted as if it had been cooked for months, the eggs and dairy smelled revolting, and the cans themselves were weighty and unwieldy


TWILLEY: But that was the deal throughout World War II and even Vietnam: soldiers were expected to stuff up to 9 tins of food into their field jacket along with their grenades and ammunition. According to reports from the time, 2 out of every 3 cans were thrown away.


The notable exception were the soldiers who fought on the front lines in the 92nd and 93rd Infantry Divisions. The 369th Infantry Regiment, known as the Harlem Hellfighters, were assigned to the French Army in April 1918. In this post the Hellfighters saw much action, fighting in the Second Battle of the Marne, as well as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. For his valiant and brave actions during World War I, Private Henry Johnson became the first American to receive the Criox de Guerre, and an additional 170 members of the 369th were also awarded the French medal.


The 370th Infantry Regiment, given the name "Black Devils" by Germans, were also assigned to the French Army. This was the only unit to be commanded by Black officers. Corporal Freddie Stowers was a standout soldier among the 371st Infantry. During the Meuse-Argonne Offensive, Stowers lead troops through a German line in spite of receiving mortal wounds. He was recommended for the Medal of Honor shortly after his death, but it was not processed and awarded until 1991.


The story goes that the author of "Glory," Kevin Jarre, was walking across Boston Common one day when he noticed something about a Civil War memorial that he had never noticed before. Some of the soldiers in it were black. Although the American Civil War is often referred to as the war to free the slaves, it had never occurred to Jarre - or, apparently, to very many others - that blacks themselves fought in the war. The inspiration for "Glory" came to Jarre as he stood looking at the monument.


It tells the story of the 54th Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, made up of black soldiers - some Northern freemen, some escaped slaves - and led by whites, including Robert Gould Shaw, the son of Boston abolitionists. Although it was widely believed at the time that blacks would not make good soldiers and would not submit to discipline under fire, the 54th figured in one of the bloodiest actions of the war, an uphill attack across muddy terrain against a Confederate fort in Charleston, S.C. The attack was almost suicidal, particularly given the battlefield strategies of the day, which involved disciplining troops to keep on marching into withering fire. The 54th suffered a bloodbath. But its members remained disciplined soldiers to the end, and their performance on that day - July 18, 1863 - encouraged the North to recruit other blacks to its ranks, 180,000 in all, and may have been decisive in turning the tide of the war.


These men are proud to be soldiers, proud to wear the uniform and also too proud to accept the racism they see all around them, as when a decision is made to pay black troops less than white. Blacks march as far, bleed as much and die as soon, they argue. Why should they be paid less for the same work? Shaw and his second in command, Cabot Forbes (Cary Elwes), eventually see the logic in this argument and join their men in refusing their paychecks. That action is a turning point for the 54th, fusing the officers and men together into a unit with mutual trust. But there are countless smaller scenes that do the same thing, including one in which Shaw is pointedly told by one of his men that when the war is over, nothing much will have changed: "You'll go back to your big house." "Glory" has been directed by Edward Zwick, designed by Norman Garwood and photographed by Freddie Francis with enormous attention to period detail, as in such small touches as the shoes issued to the troops (they don't come in right and left, but get to be that way after you've worn them long enough). These little details lead up to larger ones, as when the children of poor black sharecroppers look on in wonder as black soldiers, in uniform, march past their homes. And everything in the film leads up to the final bloody battle scene, a suicidal march up a hill that accomplishes little in concrete military terms but is of incalculable symbolic importance.


Watching "Glory," I had one reccuring problem. I didn't understand why it had to be told so often from the point of view of the 54th's white commanding officer. Why did we see the black troops through his eyes - instead of seeing him through theirs? To put it another way, why does the top billing in this movie go to a white actor? I ask, not to be perverse, but because I consider this primarily a story about a black experience and do not know why it has to be seen largely through white eyes. Perhaps one answer is that the significance of the 54th was the way in which it changed white perceptions of black soldiers (changed them slowly enough, to be sure, that the Vietnam War was the first in American history in which troops were not largely segregated). "Glory" is a strong and valuable film no matter whose eyes it is seen through. But there is still, I suspect, another and quite different film to be made from this same material.


This song is my life. Kinda creepy cuz I just listened to this song for the first time. I'm waiting for my soldier who people say I'm too young for, but no one understands. we write letters and he's been to training in california. I'm in the marching band and play piccolo, all I'm hoping for is that it won't end like that.


The song is a ballad so pretty much tells the story itself. It's set sometime during the Vietnam war.a guy just turned 18 is enlisted in the army and getting sent to an army camp and he's kinda nervous about it all. He doesn't really have anyone in his life to care about him and feels alone. He's sat in some cafe and asks this young girl working there if she would mind talking to him for a while so when she finishes work they go to the pier and sit and talk. He explains how he doesn't have anyone in his life and asks if he could write to her and she agrees.He gets sent to an army camp in California then on to Vietnam and is writing her letters all the time. He tells her that he thinks he loves her and all the things that he's afraid of and how he thinks about her and when they met whenever he feels scared and it cheers him up. Then he tells her that he's not going to be able to write for a while but that she shouldn't worry.The story then picks up at a football game in the girls town and after the anthem has been sung and the lords prayer said a man asks everyone to bow their heads as he reads a list of the soldiers killed in vietnam. Under one of the stands is the young girl crying because the soldier she fell in love with is one of the names read.The chorus is basically talking about her crying and not thinking she'll ever be able to love anyone else again because she's still waiting for the soldier to come home. She doesn't want to believe that he's really never coming home so she waits for the letter telling her he's coming home safe and everyone is telling her she's too young to be spending the rest of her life waiting for the soldier to return and trying to convince her to move on but she refuses saying that she won't be alone once her soldier comes home. 2ff7e9595c


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