I would like to have his ability to convey the stuff of life: smells, tastes, sounds, heat. When you read a Kipling story or poem, you really know what it was like to be there.
That is but one of his many myriad skills.
His turn of a phrase, too, is breathtaking.
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.