Quotes from Robert Coram

The most important speaks to the issue of character and integrity, traits noted in many of his ERs. He was more concerned with the welfare of his men than with his own advancement, a rare trait in the Air Force and a sign of a great leader.

Generating a rapidly changing environment—that is, engaging in activity that is so quick it is disorienting and appears uncertain or ambiguous to the enemy—inhibits the adversary's ability to adapt and causes confusion and disorder that, in turn, causes an adversary to overreact or underreact. Boyd closed the briefing by saying the message is that whoever can handle the quickest rate of change is the one who survives.

The great gulf between the story told by the young reporters and the story that military people knew as their truth may be the reason that, almost a half century later, the Vietnam War remains the source of a cultural rift in America. Today a small but growing group of writers is looking back and finding a different story than the one told by many reporters of the day.

Sun Tzu, said the best commander is the one who wins while avoiding battle. The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Boyd said war is organic and compared his technique to clipping the nerves, muscles, and tendons of an enemy, thus reducing him to jelly.

During the assault on Fallujah, Marine commanders intercepted an enemy radio conversation and heard an insurgent say, "We are fighting, but the Marines keep coming. We are shooting, but the Marines won't stop.

As he later wrote, if he believed there were things he couldn't do, he would still be working at the meatpacking plant in Sioux City.

He closed with a partial verse from "Sir Andrew Barton," one of the ballads in Percy's Reliques, published in 1765. Barton had been wounded in battle. "Fight on, my men," Sir Andrew sayes, "A little Ime hurt, but yett not slaine; He but lye downe and bleede awhile, And then He rise and fight againe.

The sacrifices, duties, and obligations of a military wife have no equivalent in the civilian world, and many women are not cut out for the job.

Their history was in their eyes, and their sacrifices in their scars.

There had been many overseas deployments that separated them from their families. Countless times they had to uproot their families and move to another base, often to substandard quarters that were always too hot or too cold.

Even in peacetime, a military man is deployed for long periods, leaving his spouse to take care of the children and their schooling, to pay the bills, to make sure the lawn is mowed and the oil in the car is changed, and to handle dozens of other tasks usually done by him. During wartime, always hanging over the military wife is the fear that her husband may be wounded or killed in combat.

But they were still warriors. Their hearts beat as resolutely as when they stormed the beaches on Pacific islands, as when they fought across Europe, and as when they tried to stay warm in the snows of Korea. They were ready to march.

They were about to go to war with Uncle Sam. And it broke their hearts.

It was also he who said of Day, "He is, by nature, incapable of allowing injustice to go unchallenged.

Russ Vaughn, a member of the fabled 101st Airborne Division who had served in Vietnam, published a widely circulated poem that told how the Swifties had won the "last battle of Vietnam." The poem ended with "To our Brothers, forever, on that long black wall / You've been vindicated now, one and all.

The two defining characteristics of a successful assault are detailed planning and violent execution.

It doesn't matter if, like the Doolittle Raiders, the time comes when the Mistys can be counted on one hand. When only one Misty is left, that man will have his own reunion, and he will hoist a glass to his brothers who flew up north and who were in the shit on every mission. He will drink to those who never came back.

And once a beachhead is established, it is crucial to push inland as quickly as possible. The idea is not simply to seize a beach but to take enemy-held territory.

That frail and stooped old man is Bud Day. That is Misty 1.

On the wall over his head as he worked was a framed quote from President Calvin Coolidge: "Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.

Their war plan is simple: kill everyone they meet. If they are not shooting, they are reloading.

it cannot be the intention of Congress or the Executive Department (defendant) to provide the aged Private Ryans a discriminatory hemlock drink from the cup of life after reaching age sixty-five. If in fact that is the intention, then this government of William Jefferson Clinton is not worth fighting for.

You're not telling us that these promises were not made; you're just saying they don't have to be kept?

When America goes to war, finding troops with brave hearts is not a problem. The problem is finding the right men to lead them.