Vicki Constantine Croke Quotes

Dominance is not leadership. From animals, Williams said, people could learn about taking authority without being a bully.

…trust requires much more than affection; it depends on mutual confidence—strength, not niceness.

This point, the uzis believed that even the nicest bulls

If you will do this for them, they will follow you to the end of the world. And, if you do not, I will break you.

Merrill’s Marauders, as well as the pilots of the Flying Tigers.

The war sometimes made men harder and softer at the same time.

In part due to the 270 bridges they built from local materials, lightweight prefabricated sections were available to construct the largest known Bailey bridge, which was built across the Chindwin at K...

James Howard Williams died during an emergency appendectomy. So accustomed to the burning ache of his ulcer, he mistook the new, sharper agony as more of the same. The man who never spoke of his woes...

The world he loved was not just disappearing; it was already gone. The British Empire would shrink away from its borders. Williams had lost the Burmese members of his family, and the elephants were ne...

Years later, historians would try to explain the complicated reasons for such behavior. In part, they would conclude, it was a cocktail of harsh discipline, national fervor, religion, childhood educat...

I tell you, therefore, as officers, that you will neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor smoke, nor even sit down until you have personally seen that your men have done those things. If you will do th...

Many men who had spent their working lives in the East were terrified of going home to England and living on a pension. Gone were the spacious home, the servants, the ponies, the cars, and the members...

It was plain to see the toll the extraordinary climb had taken—for an hour after Bandoola reached the top, his legs continued to quiver with involuntary contractions. What a relief

Somewhere on the border of Burma and India is a monument. Carved on a giant teak tree, preserved for humanity, are the words BANDOOLA BORN 1897, KILLED IN ACTION 1944. Williams never saw Po Toke again...

Though he had always thought logging elephants had a good life, he found himself now pining for them to have something better. The war sometimes made men harder and softer at the same time. Even with...

Two riders led Williams to the body. There lay Bandoola, Williams would write. He stared in disbelief at the rotting corpse, not quite ready to comprehend that his hero was gone. Bandoola’s right tusk...

Unfortunately, by then, he had already seen the last of his beloved elephant Bandoola. The great tusker had been killed before war’s end, in circumstances that would haunt Williams for the rest of his...

When Williams unleashed his fury on Po Toke, the old mahout, sobbing, admitted that Bandoola was dead. He claimed he did not know what had happened.

When someone else in the village tried to extort money from Williams over damaged banana trees, he felt it was a sure sign they were reentering civilization

For he felt moved by forces that weren’t necessarily visible or easily explainable. Coming to Burma had only amplified those leanings. There are ways of knowing things quite certainly but not by reaso...