Quotes About Combat

We don't teach them to fight fair, and we don't start a fight.

Don't aim for the middle of the body, which is easier to defend; aim high for the head or low for the knees.

We've already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time.

A military policeman deals with military lawbreakers. Those lawbreakers are service guys. Highly trained in weapons, sabotage, unarmed combat. Rangers, Green Berets, marines. Not just killers. Trained killers. Extremely well trained, at huge public expense. So the military policeman is trained even better. Better with weapons. Better unarmed.

Street-fighting's first rule: there are no rules.

Rule two: watch his eyes. If they stayed up, he was going to swing. If they dropped down, he was going to kick.

an average infantryman records one enemy fatality for every fifteen thousand combat rounds expended.

No one expects a head butt. Humans don't hit things with their heads. Some inbuilt atavistic instinct says so. A head butt changes the game. It adds a kind of unhinged savagery to the mix. An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight. The guy went down like an empty suit.

The best defense against knives was distance. The best countermove was entanglement.

then to turn and kick the back seat guy, in the head, and the front seat guy, the same, to keep them out of action on the ground, and

He had many formal qualifications. He was rated expert on all small arms. He had won an inter-service thousand-yard rifle competition with a record score. Anecdotally his fitness reports rated him well above average in the classroom, excellent in the field, fluently bilingual in English and French, passable in Spanish, outstanding on all man-portable weaponry, and beyond outstanding at hand-to-hand combat. Susan knew what that last rating meant. Like having a running chain saw thrown at you.

Combat is about time and space and opposing forces. Like a huge four-dimensional diagram. First step is to misinform the enemy. Let him think your diagram is a completely different shape. You assume all communications are penetrated, and then you use them to spread lies and deceit. You buy yourself an advantage.

Infantry. That stuff matters over there.

Reacher fired. Single shot. Range, eighty feet. Nine-millimeter Parabellum, 124 grains, full metal jacket. Muzzle velocity, more than eight hundred miles an hour. Time to target, less than a fifteenth of a second. Virtually instantaneous.

If you can't acquaint an opponent with reason, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk.

He also said, if you can't acquaint an opponent with tease, you must acquaint his head with the sidewalk. He was a man of sound instincts.

I was in the 110th MP," Reacher said. "I'm not scared of PTSD. PTSD is scared of me.

It's what we say in the army when we're going to beat someone to death.

mano a mano

Without breaking stride Reacher head-butted him full in the face. Left, right, bang. A perfect ten, for style and content, and power and precision.

They were doped up? Then you were lucky." Reacher shook his head. "You want to fight with me, your best choice would be aspirin.

There are four types of people who join the military. For some, it's a family trade. Others are patriots, eager to serve. Next, you have those who just need a job. Than there's the kind who want a legal means of killing other people.

A military policeman deals with military lawbreakers. Those lawbreakers are service guys. Highly trained in weapons, sabotage, unarmed combat. Rangers, Green Berets, marines. Not just killers. Trained killers. Extremely well trained, at huge public expense. So the military policeman is trained even better. Better with weapons. Better unarmed. Baker

She crawled on. She wanted to get closer. She knew the numbers. A thirty-round magazine would be gone in two seconds. She wanted to make both of them count. She wanted to get lucky. If she hit one and he hit one, that was two less for later. Which was good.