[Bilgefisher]

For the military types out there.

"Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes life worse than it need be, petty harrassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary disipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called-instead of horse- or bull- or elephantshit- because it is smallminded and ignoble and takes trivial seriously"

Paul Fussell, Wartime
Requoted by Stephen E. Ambrose, Band of Brothers