Tag: Combat

Quotes October 18, 2024

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they’re protecting us.
Tom Clancy
 
 
 
 
As a combat medic, I heard a lot of last words; I saw a lot of last breaths taken.
James McCloughan
 
 
 
 
I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.
Oliver North
 
 
 
 
I’m a medevac pilot. I have spent time suppressing wildfires and things like that. And as a combat pilot, I tend to find the biggest bucket of water I can find and put it on the biggest fire I can find, right?
MJ Hegar
 
 
 
 
Being in combat is not unending high-five moments.
David Petraeus
 
 
 
 
Not long after I was married, World War II began. My husband John volunteered for the Navy and was sent to Pensacola for training as a Naval Combat Air Crew photographer. It seemed a strange assignment for a young newspaper editor and writer, already exempt, but off he went, saying goodbye to our 18-month-old Johnny and me.
Frances Hesselbein
 
 
 
 
There is no battle space the U.S. Military cannot access. They said we couldn’t do Afghanistan. We did it with ease. They said we couldn’t do Iraq. We did it with 150 combat casualties in six weeks. We did it so fast we weren’t prepared for their collapse. There is nobody we can’t take down. The question is, what do you do with the power?
Thomas P.M. Barnett
 
 
 
 

Quotes April 15, 2022

“Out of every one hundred men, ten should not even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, the one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”
Heraclitus, Greek philosopher.
 
 
 
 
“If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.”
Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States & former Army Colonel
 
 
 
 
“Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter.”
Winston S. Churchill
 
 
 
 
“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”
Dwight Eisenhower.
 
 
 
 
“The reason the American Army does so well in wartime is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis.”
Karl Dönitz.
 
 
 
 
“Your soul may belong to Jesus, but your *ss belongs to the marines.”
Eugene B. Sledge
 
 
 
 
“In the simple moral maxim the Marine Corps teaches — do the right thing, for the right reason — no exception exists that says: unless there’s criticism or risk. D*mn the consequences.”
Josh Rushing
 
 
 
 
“Marines don’t cry.”
Barbara Nickless.
 
 
 
 
“The Marine Corps is the Navy’s police force, and as long as I am President that is what it will remain. They have a propaganda machine that is almost equal to Stalin’s.”
Harry S Truman.

Quotes May 07, 2021

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

Quotes March 12, 2021

“Word to the Nation: Guard zealously your right to serve in the Armed Forces, for without them, there will be no other rights to guard.”
John F. Kennedy
 
 
 
 
“If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.”
Theodore Roosevelt
 
 
 
 
“The military might of a country represents its national strength. Only when it builds up its military might in every way can it develop into a thriving country.”
Kim Jong-un
 
 
 
 
“May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!”
Sen. Daniel Webster
 
 
 
 
“If you can’t experience the humanity of people who don’t look like you, you’re not civilized enough to be an officer of the peace.”
Ann Medlock
 
 
 
 
“If you wage war, do it energetically and with severity. This is the only way to make it shorter and consequently less inhuman.”
Napoléon Bonaparte
 
 
 
 
“They’ve got us surrounded — the poor bastards.”
An unnamed medic

Quotes January 15, 2021

Shouldering the duffel bag with the Marine Corps bulldog, Old Man knocked Jan’s photo off the bed table. He turned to stone staring down at the photo. His face then splintered into hurt. Tears seeped into his eyes. He grappled for the nearest bedpost and slumped forward on extended arms. His shoulders jerked and head sagged a little while his heart broke. Old Man cried the mute cry of men of his generation.
Ed Lynskey, The Blue Cheer
 
 
 
 
“Yet a part of you still believes you can fight and survive no matter what your mind knows. It’s not so strange. Where there’s still life, there’s still hope. What happens is up to God.”
Louis Zamperini, Devil at My Heels: A Heroic Olympian’s Astonishing Story of Survival as a Japanese POW in World War II
 
 
 
 
The fruits of victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly.
Emperor Hirohito of Japan, April 29, 1942
 
 
 
 
“When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.”
Patrick O’Donnell, Into the Rising Sun: In Their Own Words, World War II’s Pacific Veterans Reveal the Heart of Combat
 
 
 
 
Your name is unknown. Your deed is immortal.
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (Moscow)
 
 
 
 
“We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.”
President Lyndon Johnson in a speech at Akron University on October 21, 1964, two weeks before the presidential election.
 
 
 
 
“Well, Lyndon, they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I’d feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”
House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D-TX) speaking to Lyndon B. Johnson in January 1961 after the newly inaugurated vice president extolled the brilliance of the members of President John F. Kennedy’s new cabinet.
 
 
 
 
“You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower speaking at a press conference on April 7, 1954.

Quotes January 08, 2020

“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
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“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

Quotes December 18, 2020

“The time is now at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own…The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
President George Washington, July 2, 1776, Writings Of George Washington
 
 
 
 
“Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!”
Capt. John Parker to his 77 Minutemen at Lexington, Massachusetts, April 19, 1775
 
 
 
 
“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
President Abraham Lincoln, 1860, Collected Works
 
 
 
 
“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
 
 
 
 
“Praise the bridge that carried you over.”
George Colman
 
 
 
 
You’ve never lived until you’ve almost died. For those who have fought for it, life has a flavor the protected shall never know.”
Guy de Maupassant
 
 
 
 
Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by civilized man.
Constantine the Great
 
 
 
 
Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.
Otto von Bismarck

Quotes November 27, 2020

“You can’t be 19 forever,”
says Xavier Zell, a SAW gunner
 
 
 
 
You do what you can for as long as you can, and when you finally can’t, you do the next best thing. You back up but you don’t give up.
Chuck Yeager
 
 
 
 
“You build on failure. You use it as a steppingstone. Close the door on the past. You don’t try to forget the mistakes, but you don’t dwell on it. You don’t let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space.”
Johnny Cash
 
 
 
 
“The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.”
General Colin Powell
 
 
 
 
“When things go wrong in your command, start wading for the reason in increasing larger concentric circles around your own desk.”
General Bruce D. Clark
 
 
 
 
“Be an example to your men, in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself and let your troops see that you don’t in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide.”
German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
 
 
 
 
“The discipline which makes the soldiers of a free country reliable in battle is not to be gained by harsh or tyrannical treatment. On the contrary, such treatment is far more likely to destroy than to make an army. It is possible to impart instruction and give commands in such a manner and such a tone of voice as to inspire in the soldier no feeling but an intense desire to obey, while the opposite manner and tone of voice cannot fail to excite strong resentment and a desire to disobey. The one mode or the other in dealing with subordinates springs from a corresponding spirit in the breast of the commander. He who feels the respect which is due to others cannot fail to inspire in them respect for himself; while he who feels, and hence manifests, disrespect toward others, especially his subordinates, cannot fail to inspire hatred against himself.”
LTG John M. Schofield, 1879

Quotes July 03, 2020

The important thing in life is not victory but combat; it is not to have vanquished but to have fought well.
Pierre de Coubertin
 
 
 
 

Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Plato
 
 
 
 

True heroism consists in being superior to the ills of life, in whatever shape they may challenge us to combat.
Napoleon Bonaparte
 
 
 
 

Heroism is endurance for one moment more.
George F. Kennan

 
 
 
 

Don’t forget, incoming fire has the right of way.
Clint Smith
 
 
 
 

In combat, spontaneity rules; rote performance of technique perishes.
Bruce Lee
 
 
 
 

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
George S. Patton
 
 
 
 

I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn’t have in Vietnam.
Tracy Kidder
 
 
 
 

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
David Friedman
 
 
 
 

We combat obstacles in order to get repose, and when got, the repose is insupportable.
Henry Adams
 
 
 
 

The U.S. Military is us. There is no truer representation of a country than the people that it sends into the field to fight for it. The people who wear our uniform and carry our rifles into combat are our kids, and our job is to support them, because they’re protecting us.
Tom Clancy
 
 
 
 

I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.
Oliver North
 
 
 
 

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.
George H. W. Bush
 
 
 
 

Every country that has experimented with women in actual combat has abandoned the idea, and the notion that Israel uses women in combat is a feminist myth.
Phyllis Schlafly
 
 
 
 

I think women are too valuable to be in combat.
Caspar Weinberger
 
 
 
 

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
 
 
 
 

Casualties many; Percentage of dead not known; Combat efficiency; we are winning.
David M. Shoup
 
 
 
 

If you combat an international phenomenon, it is indispensable to share information internationally.
Gijs de Vries
 
 
 
 

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.
George Santayana
 
 
 
 

I do not believe in using women in combat, because females are too fierce.
Margaret Mead
 
 
 
 

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
 
 
 
 

The E.U. has moved to combat global terrorism by instituting common European arrest and evidence warrants and creating a joint situation center to pool and analyze intelligence.
John Bruton
 
 
 
 

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Richard Grenier

Quotes April 03, 2020

“The Japanese fought to win – it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.”
E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
 
 
 
 
“What you don’t know going in is that when you come out, you will be scarred for life. Whether you were in for a week, a month, or a year—even if you come home without a scratch—you are never, ever going to be the same.

When I went in, I was eighteen. I thought it was all glory and you win lots of medals. You think you’re going to be the guy. Then you find out the cost is very great. Especially when you don’t see the kids you were with when you went in. Living with it can be hell. It’s like the devil presides in you. I knew what I sighed up for, yes, and I would do it again. But the reality of war—words can’t begin to describe it.”
William Guarnere
 
 
 
 
“In each succeeding war there is a tendency to proclaim as something new the principles under which it is conducted. Not only those who have never studied or experienced the realities of war, but also professional soldiers frequently fall into the error. But the principles of warfare as I learned them at West Point remain unchanged.”
John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War
 
 
 
 
“The only detail I knew about my dad’s experience in World War II was that he liked when they served chicken-fried steak.

I was probably 13 when he told that story, and with the unblinking sanctimony that only a teenager can wield, I remember saying, “Wasn’t that really unhealthy?” In a look that I can only describe as for-a-smart-kid-you’re-remarkably-stupid, my father replied, “We were in planes carrying bombs, and enemy planes were shooting at us. Fried food was not a problem.”
Gina Barreca
 
 
 
 
“Wars may be started by the failings of humanity
But they are won
By the craft
Of the keen and intelligent minds that fight them”
Brendan Bigney, War What Comes After