“And what is a man that he should not run with his brothers? I was born in the jungle; I have obeyed the Law of the Jungle; and there is no wolf of ours from whose paws I have not pulled a thorn. Surely they are my brothers!”
“The jungle is shut to me, and I must forget your talk and your companionship; but I will be more merciful than ye are. Because I was all but your brother in blood, I promise that when I am a man among men I will not betray ye to men as ye have betrayed me.”
“During the next year, I learned that the Company was more than a group of men wanting money. We were brothers: strangers in a strange land who had banded together for mutual help and protection. There were arguments, of course, but they were always worked out.”
‘‘‘I know,’ he said, breaking our embrace. ‘Inshallah, we’ll celebrate later. Right now, I’m going to run that blue kite for you,’ he said. He dropped the spool and took off running, the hem of his green chapan dragging in the snow behind him.
‘Hassan!’ I called. ‘Come back with it!’
He was already turning the street corner, his rubber boots kicking up snow. He stopped, turned. He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘For you a thousand times over!’ he said. Then he smiled his Hassan smile and disappeared around the corner. The next time I saw him smile unabashedly like that was twenty-six years later, in a faded Polaroid photograph.”
“Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.”
“They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in their foxhole more than themselves. They found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.”
“In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.‘”
“They found combat to be ugliness, destruction and death and hated it. Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands on the body-anything that is, except letting down their buddies.”
“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition”
“And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love.”
“He would think about this a lot later, and the best he could explain it was, his own life no longer mattered. All that did matter were his buddies, his brothers, that they not get hurt, that they not get killed.”
“We were all enclosed by the same fence, bumping into one another, fighting, celebrating. Showing one another our best and worst, revealing ourselves . . . as if that fence had created a circle of trust. A brotherhood.”
“In the attic, Violet finds out that she used to have another brother named Will, but he died shortly after he was born, so her parents tried to replace him with her Will. ”
“When no one was looking he picked a few nits off the paper towel. Then he wandered over to Peter and casually fingered a lock of his hair. ‘Mum!’ squealed Peter, ‘Henry’s pulling my hair!‘. ‘Stop it, Henry,’ said Dad. ‘I wasn’t pulling his hair,’ said Henry indignantly. ‘I just wanted to see how clean it was. And it is so lovely and clean,’ added Henry sweetly. ‘I wis my hair was as clean as Peter’s.’ Peter beamed. It wasn’t often that Henry said anything nice to him.