Quotes About Combat

All worthwhile tales possess some element of violence.

He knew the sound of an AK-47. It made a high-pitched, more mechanical crack than the American rifle, the M16, which made a deeper, rounder sort of pop.

They were all running on adrenaline, which cannot just be turned off. So even when they had silent hours and felt reasonably safe with their backs against a wall, most could not fully sleep. They would nod off with their head between their knees, a rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other. It was more like being temporarily not awake than sleep.

Marines do not hesitate in combat. If the Corps has a defining philosophy, that's it. In war, when the enemy is foolish enough to show himself, marines go right at him and kill him, risks be damned.

The Viet Cong were not the idealistic warriors of American antiwar propaganda; they were vicious. They relied on terror.

He was convinced that men lost their nerve in combat when they allowed themselves to think too much. The part movies never got right about war was all the waiting, and all the effort it took not to think.

All had had close calls. They lived in what combat correspondent Dale Dye would later call "the high weirdness of survival when the odds say you should be stone dead.

So making him rattled and weary became a strategy.

And Johnson was a convert. Body counts were the first thing he asked for in regular war briefings. He bragged that his general in Vietnam killed thousands of enemy personnel for every one man he lost:

On the same convoy were two marine "snuffies," or combat correspondents, Steve Berntson and Dale Dye.

A última coisa que o chefe quer num cozinheiro de linha é um inovador, alguém com ideias próprias que irá estragar as suas receitas ou as suas apresentações. Os chefes exigem cegueira, lealdade próxima do fanatismo, costas fortes e uma consistência de autómato para executar as tarefas dentro de uma situação de combate.

Os poucos heróis culinários que havia no Dreadnaught eram admirados mais pela sua resistência em combate – medida pelo número de pratos servidos numa noite, quantidade de dor e de calor suportados, número de empregadas comidas e cocktails consumidos sem efeitos aparentes. Esses eram os valores compreendidos e apreciados.

One can almost always achieve surprise in war by suddenly doing something that is truly stupid, but surprise alone is scarcely victory.

Perhaps also Roger felt that were he to take up the cudgels for an argument he might be worsted in the combat, as in such combats success is won by practised skill rather than by truth.

Another division was even tougher in its views. 'We have never been benefited by treating prisoners well . . . We are here to Kill Germans, not to baby them.' Some soldiers in the 30th Division exacted their own revenge when they captured Germans wearing American combat boots taken from the dead. They forced them at gunpoint to remove them and walk barefoot along the icy roads.

It was a young man's war. Even a thirty-one-year-old pilot was nicknamed 'Grandpa'.

Neuro-psychiatric cases, termed combat exhaustion, rose to nearly a quarter of all hospital admissions. The German army, which refused to recognize the condition, apparently suffered far fewer cases. Combat exhaustion produced recognizable symptoms: 'nausea, crying, extreme nervousness and gastric conditions'. Some

The newly landed 2nd Infantry

There he heard that Major Thomas, the commander of B Company, had been killed while single-handedly rushing a German machine gun. 'Very gallant,' observed Partridge, 'but I had long since learned that dead soldiers do not win battles, and my prime duty was to stay alive and preserve the lives of as many others as possible.

Frontline soldiers are advancing day and night under fire, with pure and saintly hearts. The rear echelon men who follow along behind are raping, drinking and looting.

The brigade fought to the end with great courage, winning the admiration of the Germans. But the continuing failure of British commanders to counter-attack in force from the west was one of the least impressive examples of generalship in the war.

The surgeon-general of the US Army estimated that American front-line forces suffered a 10 per cent rate of psychiatric breakdown.

The Supreme Court could have said, You're just these fringe women in combat boots. But they didn't.

Chorus of old men: If we give them the least hold over us, 'tis all up! their audacity will know no bounds! We shall see them building ships, and fighting sea-fights like Artemisia; nay if they want to mount and ride as cavalry, we had best cashier the knights, for indeed women excel in riding, and have a fine, firm seat for the gallop. Just think of all those squadrons of Amazons Micon has painted for us engaged in hand-to-hand combat with men.