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Bright





You followed him halfway around the world, to this ancient, embattled place. An adventure, he said it would be. And it was, beautiful and sere and breathless and lethal, all at once. The afternoon before, you watched an incendiary bomb take out a brick building on the edge of town, dust flying. Women cried over broken little bodies. While this morning the sun rose like a slow volcano, the vast beauty of a desert dawn.

Now he paused at the sound so like thunder, and looked back at the hills behind you, his eyes suddenly serious, weighing. Then he looked at you, and his last words were sweet, as sweet as his smile: "Come on. The view from the wall is amazing!"


The sky was so bright that day.

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Chief of Army, Lieutenant General David Morrison, AO, to the Australian Army


...meanwhile, in the US, generals whine about how fighting sexism "endangers national security".

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