What ‘fighting’ And ‘battling’ Really Mean

As an ag writer, I often write about farmers “battling” to plant or harvest their crops and ranchers “fighting” to protect their animals. Actions verbs are always more interesting and almost always more descriptive than plain, vanilla words like “working” or “attempting.”

But it’s important to keep things in perspective. There are different levels of “fighting” and “battling.” Today is the 70th anniversary of D-Day, when more than 160,000 Allied troops landed on heavily fortified French coastline to take on Nazi Germany. They fought, they battled, in brutal, horrific conditions, and more than 9,000 were killed or wounded.

Yeah, farmers and ranchers “fight” and “battle” the elements. But our military vets took the words to a whole different level.