（本文图片为译者配）

中文翻译：

我经常用“失望透顶”来描述战争，但并不是说我自己对战争或最近在乌克兰的经历感到 "失望"。对于第一次经历战争的士兵来说，战争通常是一种 "失望"。我远没有对战争的冷酷现实感到失望，相反，我觉得它最有趣。

我们对战争到底是什么充满了错误的认知。其中一个谬误是，一个好的士兵应该是肌肉发达，看起来像兰博（电影《第一滴血》中的角色约翰·兰博，由史泰龙扮演）一样，但现实的战斗中，你会失去大量的肌肉，原因很简单：我们的身体本身不需要这些膨胀但更多是审美意义的肌肉，而战斗中的士兵最需要的是耐力。膨胀的肱二头肌和胸肌可能能够给人留下深刻印象，但在战斗中几乎毫无用处。它们或许有用，但只是在耐力层面下。

因此，如果你看到一个从前线回来的士兵还带着一身肌肉，那可能是因为他压根没有上过前线，或者战斗并不激烈。顺便说一下，在第二次世界大战的图像资料上，士兵们看起来更像瘦弱的农民，而不是肌肉发达的健美运动员。

原文：OUR IMAGE OF THE SOLDIER IS DISTORTED

I often call the war a "terrible disappointment." Not that I myself am "disappointed" with the war or my recent experience in Ukraine. War is generally a kind of “disappointment” for soldiers experiencing it for the first time. Far from being disappointed by the cold reality of war, on the contrary, I find it most interesting.

We are filled with false perceptions about what war really is. One such perception is that a good soldier should be muscular and look like Rambo. The reality is that in combat, you lose a lot of muscle mass. The reason is simple: our body does not need all these inflated muscles for aesthetic purposes. What a soldier needs most to fight is endurance. Pumped up biceps and traps might be useful for impressing people, but almost useless in combat. They are useful, but at the level of endurance.

So if you see a soldier returning from the front who is particularly muscular, it is because he was probably not at the front or because the fighting was not intense. By the way, you will notice the images of the Second World War: the soldiers look more like thin farmers than muscle-bulging bodybuilders.