"Having now visited Termini Imerese, I can't help but be filled with admiration for my great-grandfather. To think of that journey- from a coastal city in Sicily to Chicago and finally to Dubuque, Iowa- well, you don't do something like that unless you have a sturdy set of balls. I can only imagine the disorientation the Giuntas must have felt while passing through the great, sweeping cornfields of eastern Iowa. But I guess they figured it was worth the risk."

“I'd be lying if I said that I adjusted quickly and easily to a life without combat. I don't think that's possible.”

“For my wife, Jennifer, and our daughter, Lillian.”

“Soldiers on the ground do not have the luxury of political opinion- it's irrelevant to their existence and their mission. They do what they are told, regardless of how crazy it sometimes seems. Soldiers do not make big decisions; they do not have choices, other than those those that are made in the blink of an eye and have life-and-death consequences. And they accept this responsibility willingly. They seek it out. They fight so that others don't have to fight.”

“There were more bullets in the air than stars in the sky. A wall of bullets at every one at the same time with one crack and then a million other cracks afterwards. They're above you, in front of you, behind you, below you. They're hitting in the dirt early. They're going over your head. Just all over the place. They were close— as close as I've ever seen.”

“All these freedoms and pleasures we enjoy as Americans were bestowed upon us, but they came at a great cost.”

“Every day in the Korengal Valley held the possibility of death. The sun came up every morning and the shooting started shortly thereafter. That's just the way it was. The fact that you might have to kill someone, or that you might be killed, did not burn through your head, because that was life in the valley.”