Joe M.

I did two tours with Danes. Small army, no complaints, went where we went.

You can think Europe underpays and still think this was a filthy way to do it. Both of those fit in one head. Mine has been holding them all afternoon.

Tanya — nobody can tell you and anyone who says they can is guessing.

What I can tell you: if he is at Bragg he is with the best-drilled people in the world and they take care of the nineteen year olds first. Keep the phone charged. Do not doomscroll at 3am, it does not make the call come sooner.

"We'll fly out of Maine."

Sir, I have loaded those aircraft. Flying out of Maine means a tanker crew doing fourteen hour cycles in Arctic weather to put gas in one fighter, every day, forever.

They will do it. They will not complain. Somebody should say out loud that you are spending them, and that spending them has a bottom.

The battery was invited by a parliament, eleven days after we took Greenland by force.

I have been on the side of "the mission is the mission" my whole adult life. But you do not get to move first, twice, and then call the other man's rifle provocation. That is not toughness. My grandfather would have had a word for it and it was not a nice one.

Thirty-two.

I have carried one of those boxes. It is heavier than you think and it is not because of what is in it.

Whatever you believe about this war, today is not the day to be clever about it online. Tomorrow, be as angry as you want. I intend to be.

Every serving person I know is reading that gaggle tonight and doing the same thing: working out whether their unit is in the troop list.

Mine is out. My daughter's godfather's is in.

Sir, you have about four days. Rule it out. Not for us — I know how that goes — for the nineteen year olds who cannot say anything and will go anyway.