Favorite Military Quotes

Splendid film Carter. I have the DVD which is now rather well-worn

 

This one...

"Gentlemen,we are being killed on the beaches. Lets go inland and be killed."


~General Norman Cota: Omaha Beach 1944~

 

The Third Fleet's sunken and damaged ships have been salvaged and are retiring at high speed toward the enemy.

Admiral Halsey; in a message to Admiral Nimitz, referring to the Japanese's over exaggeration of the damage inflicted by them during the Third Fleet's raid on Formosa.

 

*I can't believe that nobody has quoted the US General at Bastogne whose reply to the Germans request for surrender was "NUTS"

* Manfred Von Richtofen( Red Baron) " when I have killed an Englishman my hunting passion is satisfied for a quarter of an hour

* Japanese Admiral commenting on the attack at Pearl Harbour " I am afrais all we have done is awaken a sleeping giant"

 

It was Anthony McAuliffe. dhermann1 posted that one in the 6th post in this thread.

 

"Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan."
- Count Galeazzo Ciano, Sept. 1942
- JFK, after "Bay Of Pigs"

 

During my childhood my parents had a lifetime friend who had been at Bastogne. He claimed McAuliffe did not reply with the single word: Nuts.

The single word was: Shit.

I have no way to confirm the man's veracity. Considering the Bastogne resistance story became nearly immediate folklore, I think it's possible that the general's defiance was cleaned up for dissemination.

 

I'd say more like "plausible" leaning toward "probable", given what the few Airborne types I've known shift into for attitudes once "It's On"...

 

question is, was it a defiant response to the suggestion of surrender? If so it seems odd. On the other hand, if I were in his position, the first thing I might say was a soft under my breath "oh shit."

 

We also have no context, not having General McAuliffe's body-language or voice tone recorded... I was thinking more like the faintly-contemptuous tone of Deputy Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) when he tells a local sheriff "well, shoot... I'd hate to see that happen so I'm taking over your investigation."

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Now playing: John Williams - Main Title - Approaching The Death Star - Tatooine Rendezvous
via FoxyTunes

 

"Nits Breed Lice" - a quote originally attributed to Oliver Cromwell in his subjugation of Ireland and then by Colonel Chivington at Sand Creek

 

I wish I remembered his name, but some British spy upon being captured by the Germans during WW2 simply said, "Oh damn, and it was such a lovely day..."

But really, who can resist Genghis Khan's "...To crush your enemies, to see them fall at your feet -- to take their horses and goods and hear the lamentation of their women. That is best." Of course today, we can only hear this line in a thick Bavararian accent, which only makes it all the better.

 

"TELL JIMMY TO GET ON HIS HORSE."

-The coded message that launched the Doolittle raid on Tokyo, April 18, 1942.


"Well, I guess they'll send me to Leavenworth."

-A despondent Jimmy Doolittle sitting on the wing of his wrecked plane in China, believing the raid was a failure.

 

War makes strange, giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

~Ernie Pyle

 

"War is merely the continuation of politics by other means" - Carl Von Clausewitz.
Whether you agree with the Prussian is one thing, but few other men have had such an impact on strategy.

Now for my true favorites:

Goose Green - The Falklands War;

Young Para: "Sergeant! I've lost my leg!"
Para Sergeant: "No you haven't son, it's over here"

On arrival in the middle east, a newly appointed Brigadier inspects the troops. He arrives at the inspection of an armoured car battalion of Arab soldiers and British officers;

Brigadier: There are far too many flies in this vehicle Liutenant!
Fresh-faced young cavalry Officer: Beg pardon sir, how many would you like there to be?

 

During the autumn of 1876, after the fall of Custer, Sitting Bull was hunted all through the Yellowstone region by the military. The following characteristic letter, doubtless written at his dictation by a half-breed interpreter, was sent to Colonel Otis immediately after a daring attack upon his wagon train.

"I want to know what you are doing, traveling on this road. You scare all the buffalo away. I want to hunt in this place. I want you to turn back from here. If you don't, I will fight you again. I want you to leave what you have got here and turn back from here.

I am your friend ~ Chief Sitting Bull.

Before the Battle of the Little Big Horn ~
Its a good day to die ~ Chief Sitting Bull


The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

 

"When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight it's way out of a piss-soaked paper bag."

George Patton

 

an oldie but goodie

Often seen on the t-shirts of those who've never actually fought anybody who can fight back is the supposed Green Berets motto "kill 'em all let God sort 'em out", I don't know if it is actually theirs, (one would hope not), but it's a lot older than that.
In 1209, during the "Albigensian Crusade" against the Cathar heresy in Southern France, the forces of Orthodox Catholicism had been besieging the city of Beziers, defended by the Cathar heretics, for some time. Finally they breached the walls of the city and prepared to storm it. The commander of the crusade, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, pointed out that not everybody in the city was a heretic, some of them were good Catholics, so how should they treat the inhabitants when they captured the city? A monk who was actually present at the siege recorded the answer of the Papal Legate to the Crusaders, Arnaud-Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, as "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." ("Kill them all. God will know his own." ) So the Crusaders followed his advice and killed everybody they could find in Beziers.
Various versions of this have appeared since, but that's the original.

 

In reference to General George Patton, a private soldier said:

“He’s the greatest General since Sergeant York!”

Regards,
Forrestal