I have not forgotten the men I knew in the 101st Airborne Division.
我仍然记得我认识的101空降师的军人们。
The men and women I worked with in universities were pale and unreal in comparison.
相比之下,我在大学里的同事们显得苍白、不真实。
They were hollow and filled with words.
他们虽然健谈,但空话连篇。
What was I to think of the new breed of university professors, structuralists, poststructuralists, deconstructionists,
我该如何看待新一代的大学教授、结构主义者、后结构主义者、解构主义者呢?
who taught that experience had no meaning, that the only reality was language, one word referring to another, one "sign" to another, with no stop in any kind of truth?
他们向学生传授说经验毫无意义,他们认为语言是唯一真实的东西,用一个词来表达另一个词,用一个符号代表另一个符号,只是与真理相去甚远。
It is right to remember such things as I have described—
铭记我所叙述的这些事情是有益的。
in the first place, because those who have lived and died before us should be remembered, insofar as it is possible.
首先,我们应尽可能不遗忘那些前辈与逝者,
Otherwise our own lives seem worthless.
否则我们自己的生命就似乎毫无价值。
In the second place, war is a permanent human condition, and men and women will have to face it.
其次,战争是人类永远要面对的处境,人人都得面对它。
It may help them to know how people no stronger physically or mentally than they have faced it.
这会帮助人们了解在体力和精神上都与他们相差无几的人是如何面对战争的。