Quotes About Combat

The heels reminded me of the silver stakes Eddie and Rose used to kill Strigoi.

you're beautiful in battle', said Dimitri. His cold voice carried to me clearly, even above the roar of combat. 'Like an avenging angel come to deliver the justice of heaven.' "Funny", I said, shifting my hold on the stake. "That is kind of why I'm here." "Angels fall, Rose.

I fought against her, trying to mount some kind of defense, but it was like fighting Dimitri on crack.

After killing hundreds of American and British soldiers during TORCH, the French had failed to so much as scratch a single German invader.

A soldier in the 5th Division wrote home, "They say cleanliness is next to Godliness. I say it's next to impossible.… If I am killed and go to hell it can't be any worse than infantry combat.

Thomas Paine, who had a shrewd eye for military matters, was closer to the mark in a public letter to Admiral Howe published in early 1777. "In all the wars which you have formerly been concerned in, you had only armies to contend with," Paine observed. "In this case, you have both an army and a country to combat.

the combat career of a new German pilot now lasted, on average, less than a month.

His animating principle, as the official history explained, was "that in order to destroy anything it is necessary to destroy everything." By the late fall of 1944, Harris claimed that forty-five of sixty listed German cities had been "virtually destroyed," at a rate of more than two each month, with a dwindling number awaiting evisceration.

In a phone call one evening the corps commander grew incensed when Ward mentioned his good fortune in losing no officers in combat that day. "Goddammit, Ward, that's not fortunate. That's bad for the morale of the enlisted men," Patton snapped. "I want you to get more officers killed.

Gunners sloshed cans of water to cool their glowing barrels while others struggled from the rear with ninety-six-pound rounds on their shoulders.

To make it perfectly clear to you: suppose you lose a hand or an ear is shot off, or perhaps a piece of your nose, and you think you should go back to get first aid. If I see you, it will be the last goddamn walk you'll ever take.

They're not shooting at us, they're not shooting at us," one infantry commander insisted, even as French artillery plastered his battalion.

inconsequential M-3 Stuart caused one American general to muse that "the only way to hurt a Kraut with a 37mm is to catch him and give him an enema with it" the half-track mounted with a 75mm gun was already known as a "Purple Heart box." American tanks were so flammable they were dubbed Ronsons, after a popular cigarette lighter advertised with the slogan "They light every time.

German general who had fought in both world wars now described the Normandy struggle as "a monstrous blood-mill, the likes of which I have not seen in eleven years of war." Omar Bradley lamented, "I can't afford to stay here. I lose all my best boys. They're the ones who stick their heads through hedges and then have them blown off.

And into the holds went: a platoon of carrier pigeons, six flyswatters and sixty rolls of fly-paper for each 1,000 soldiers, plus five pounds of rat poison per company.

The largest contingent of invaders—drawn from the U.S. 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions aboard thirty-four transport ships—would storm ashore at Beach Z near Arzew, a fishing town sixteen miles east of Oran. Two

Allen left the academy, graduated from Catholic University, and took a commission in 1912. Wounded at Saint-Mihiel in 1918 and carried from the field on a stretcher, he regained consciousness, ripped off the first-aid tag, and dashed back to rally his men. The next bullet drilled him through the jaw, right to left, but not before he had broken his fist on a German machine-gunner's head.

Mortar fragments caused 70 percent of the battle casualties among four U.S. infantry divisions in Normandy;

A soldier doesn't fight to save suffering humanity or any other nonsense. He fights to prove that his unit is the best in the Army and that he has as much guts as anybody else in the unit.

In the first half of 1944, battle casualty rates for every 1,000 bomber crewmen serving six months in combat included 712 killed or missing and 175 wounded: 89 percent. By one calculation, barely one in four U.S. airmen completed twenty-five missions over Germany, a minimum quota that was soon raised to thirty and then thirty-five on the assumption that the liberation of France and Belgium and the attenuation of German airpower made flying less lethal.

Mail finally arrived for some troops—many had received nothing for two months or more—and Christmas packages often implied a certain homefront incomprehension of life in the combat zone: bathrobes, slippers, and phonograph records were particularly popular.

A soldier would snake his way painfully through rocks and rubble to set up a light machine gun, raise his head cautiously to aim, and find a dozen natives clustered solemnly around him. Street

I don't know anything about wars. I don't think even the most erudite scholars do. I think you have to fight one, to know it.

When you have a background in combat sports, people think you're this martial arts expert, but really I'm just a guy who is able to do certain things without making a mess of himself.