To his phalanx, and I was going to say, of grim professional soldiers — now, that I think is in itself an enormously important thing.
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Days later, the survivors' faces tensed at the memory of the grim evening: soldiers dousing thatched-roof homes with gasoline, setting them on fire and shooting residents when they tried to flee.
In "Chromophobia," a short film made in 1966 by the great Belgian animator Raoul Servais, a squad of grim, antlike soldiers sets out to drain the world of color.
Patrolling the streets of a city seriously scarred by terrorist bombs are grim Israeli soldiers who point their weapons at the slightest hint of trouble and glare at Rana with open hostility and suspicion.
"I said, 'You're really good at your job,' and he said, 'No, Amanda, it doesn't work like that, it's how lucky you are.'" Neither was out to knock the military – they both said several times how proud they were of what their men did – but glimpses of how grim the soldiers' lot can be came through.
They are a heart-stopping glimpse of a moment when history came to a standstill; ground zero of what came to be known as "Year Zero" -- the moment when thousands of grim Khmer Rouge soldiers trooped single file into the city, tough, sometimes barefoot young men in black pajamas silently carrying their rifles and grenade launchers, looking at nobody.
Days later, the survivors' faces tensed at the memory of the grim evening: soldiers dousing thatched-roof homes with gasoline, setting them on fire and shooting residents when they tried to flee.
At more than a dozen checkpoints, grim-faced soldiers checked documents and car trunks, searching for weapons and rebels.
At the communist headquarters, kneeling before the Mit, the local Khmer Rouge leader, who was flanked by grim-faced soldiers, my mother didn't beg for her life.
