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"Wars are the sum of battles, battles the tally of individual human beings killing and dying. [...] To speak of war in any other fashion brings with it a sort of immortality: the idea that when hit, soldiers simply go to sleep, rather than are shredded, that generals order impersonal battalions and companies of automatons into the heat of battle, rather than screaming nineteen-year-olds into clouds of gas and sheets of lead bullets, or that a putrid corpse has little to do with larger approaches to sceince and culture.

Euphemism in battle narrative or the omission of graphic killing altogether is a near criminal offense of the military historian..."

- Victor Davis Hanson, Culture and Carnage

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