865 – “A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war.”

–General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr, USA

Today marks the 75th Anniversary of the D-Day Invasion of France, which opened up the Western Front of the European Theater in World War II, leading to the downfall of Hitler and the NAZIs.

793 – “Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life. There is only one radical means of sanctifying human lives. Not armored plating, or tanks, or planes, or concrete fortifications. The one radical solution is peace.”

–Yitzhak Rabin

777 – “Rather do I believe that our Great Maker is preparing the world, in His own good time, to become one nation, speaking one language, and when armies and navies will be no longer required.”

–Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States of American

648 – “One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.”

–Mike Hastie, US Army Medic [See Source Notes]

Today marks the 63rd anniversary of the official start of the Vietnam War

637 – “I trust the time is nigh when, with the universal assent of civilized people, all international differences shall be determined without resort to arms by the benignant processes of civilization.”

–Chester A Arthur, 21st President of the United States of America

591 – “Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences, instead of keeping large standing armies as they do in Europe.”

–Ulysses S Grant, 18th President of the United States [Attributed]

462 – “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.”

–Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States of America

417 – “The anomaly of war is that the best men get themselves killed while crafty men find their chance to govern in a manner contrary to justice.”

–Émile Chartier under the pseudonym Alain

318 – “War is mankind’s most tragic and stupid folly; to seek or advise its deliberate provocation is a black crime against all men.”

–Dwight Eisenhower, 34th President of the United States of America

249 – “War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.”

–Thomas Mann