Quotes from Charles Whiting

If they were junior infantry officers, they survived, on average, three weeks. Enlisted men could expect twice that long in combat before they were killed, wounded or broke down.

They were possessed] of the conviction that optimistic publicity and euphemism had rendered their experience so falsely that it would never be readily communicable... what had happened to them had been systematically sanitized and Norman Rockwellized, not to mention Disneyfied.

The cardinal principle was: 'A double agent should, as far as possible, actually live the life and go through the motions of a genuine agent.

He added in typical Patton style, "There is one thing you men will be able to say when you go home. You may all thank God that 30 years from now when you are sitting with your grandson upon your knees and he asks: 'Grandfather, what did you do in World War II?' you won't have to say, 'I shovelled s**t in Louisiana!