Quotes December 13, 2019

“I am the Infantry—Queen of Battle! For two centuries I have kept our Nation safe, purchasing freedom with my blood. To tyrants, I am the day of reckoning, to the suppressed, the hope for the future. Where the fighting is thick, there am I. I am the Infantry! Follow me!
Creed of the U.S. Army Infantry Center, Fort Benning, Georgia
 
 
 
 
“SEALs…fight in teams, only in teams, each man relying entirely on the others to do exactly the right thing. That’s how we do it, fighting as one in a team of four or maybe even 10 or even 20, but always as one unit, one mind, one strategy. We are, instinctively, always backing up, always covering, always moving to plug the gap or pave the way. That’s what makes us great.”
Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, Lone Survivor
 
 
 
 
“Bin Laden knew we were coming when he heard the helicopter. I had more respect for Ahmed al-Kuwaiti in the guesthouse because at least he tried to defend himself and his family. Bin Laden had more time to prepare than the others, and yet he still didn’t do anything. Did he believe his own message? Was he willing to fight the war he asked for? I don’t think so.”
Navy SEAL Mark Owen, No Easy Day
 
 
 
 
“People tell me I saved hundreds and hundreds of people. But I have to tell you: It’s not the people you saved that you remember. It’s the ones you couldn’t save.”
Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, American Sniper
 
 
 
 
“All the wrong people remember Vietnam. I think all the people who remember it should forget it, and all the people who forgot it should remember it.”
Michael Herr, The London Observer, 1989
 
 
 
 
“It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”
General H. Norman Schwarzkopf
 
 
 
 
“First, we are going to cut it off, and then we are going to kill it.”
General Colin Powell, on plans to destroy the Iraq Army during the Gulf War, 1991
 
 
 
 
“The good company has no place for the officer who would rather be right than be loved, for the time will quickly come when he walks alone, and in battle no man may succeed in solitude.”
Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, 1964
 
 
 
 
“Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard, but I am fair! There is no racial bigotry here! … Here you are all equally worthless! And my orders are to weed out all non-hackers who do not pack the gear to serve in my beloved Corps! Do you maggots understand that?”
R. Lee Ermey, as Gunnery Sergeant Harman in Full Metal Jacket
 
 
 
 
“There can be no retreat when there’s no rear. You can’t retreat, or even withdraw, when you’re surrounded. The only thing you can do is to break out, and in order to do that you have to attack, and that is what we’re about to do. Heck, all we’re doing is attacking in a different direction.”
Marine Major General Oliver P. Smith, in Korea, 1950
 
 
 
 
“The only way we got out of Frozen Chosin is because a lot of young guys know how to fight. God bless the Chosin Marines. They are my brothers for life…Every Memorial Day my thoughts go drifting back to those youngsters who never came home. I can still see them as they were then. They’ll never grow old.”
Lieutenant Henry Litvin. A battalion surgeon with the Marines, Litvin was describing fighting out of the Chosin Reservoir in North Korea, 1950
 
 
 
 
“Fix bayonets! Charge! Everybody goes with me!”
U.S. Army Capt. Lewis Millett, in Korea, 1951
 
 
 
 
“In the final choice, a soldier’s pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner’s chains.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, 1953
 
 
 
 
“There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It’s very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.”
President John F. Kennedy, 1962
 
 
 
 
“Sighted sub, sank same.”
U.S. Navy Pilot Donald F. Mason, 1942, in one of the shortest victory messages of all time
 
 
 
 
“I gave him the whole nine yards!”
A P-51 Mustang pilot, using a WWII expression referring to the plane’s 27-foot-long ammo belt.
 
 
 
 
“Uncommon valor was a common virtue.”
Admiral Chester Nimitz, in Iwo Jima, 1945
 
 
 
 
“Retreat? Hell, we just got here!”
Marine Captain Lloyd Williams, answering a messenger from the French Commander as Marines arrive at the Belleau Wood sector in WWI.
 
 
 
 
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and on the streets, we shall fight in the hills, we shall never surrender.”
Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940