One who makes drill bloodless combat and combat bloody drill…
One who disciplines the offense and not the offenders…
One whose heart is with the Legion and whose loyalty is to the Republic…
One who seeks the companionship of the long march and not the privilege of position…
One whose commission is assigned from above and confirmed from below…
One who knows the self and, therefore, is true to all…
One who seeks to serve and not to be served…
This is the one who leads best of all.”
LTC Jeffrey Spara in Military Leadership: In Pursuit of Excellence.
“War makes extremely heavy demands on the soldier’s strength and nerves. For this reason, make heavy demands on your men in peacetime exercises.”
German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
“It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.”
Julius Caesar
“If you are going to win any battle, you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do… the body is never tired if the mind is not tired.”
“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.”
General George S. Patton Jr.
“I may not have been the best combat commander, but I always strove to be. My men depended on me to carefully analyze every tactical situation, to maximize the resources that I had at my disposal, to think under pressure, and then to lead them by personal example.”
Dick Winters (1/506 Airborne Infantry Regiment, WWII)
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
John Stuart Mills
“Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.”
Ferdinand Foch at the Battle of the Marne
“Without a word this uniform also whispers of freezing troops, injured bodies, and Americans left forever in foreign fields. It documents every serviceman’s courage, who by accepting this uniform, promises the one gift he truly has to give: his life. I wear my uniform for the heritage of sacrifice it represents and more. I wear my uniform with pride, for it represents the greatest nation of free people in the world.”
Captain Karen Dorman Kimmel
“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten; then he who continues the attack wins.”
General Ulysses S. Grant
“It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.”
General Robert E. Lee
