Quotes About Infantry

From the time I left the Marine Corps after serving as an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam, I decided that I would focus on immediate goals that inspired me to devote all of my energy to them, rather than putting together the more cautious and traditional building blocks of a predictable career.

I fought as an infantry Marine on one of the Vietnam War's harshest battlefields. After leaving the Marine Corps, I studied law and found a fulfilling career as an author and journalist. But again and again, I came back to the personal fulfillment that can only come from public service.

But they (the infantry) had no use for boys of twelve and thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.

What branch do you want to go in?" "I don' give a god-damn," said Pilon jauntily. "I guess we need men like you in the infantry." And Pilon was written so. He turned then to Big Joe, and the Portagee was getting sober. "Where do you want to go?" "I want to go home," Big Joe said miserably. The sergeant put him in the infantry too.

Some lasting terms of military organization owe their origin to Spain: colonel comes from cabo de colunela, or head of a column; infantry most likely comes from infante, the name for a Spanish prince, who often led these formations of foot soldiers.

In all armies, soldiers serving with forward combat units shared a contempt for the much larger number of men in the rear areas who fulfilled roles in which they faced negligible risk: the infantry bore 90 percent of global army casualties.

The great weapon of infantry - and of Mongol and Turkish cavalry - was the bow and arrow. The short bow is very ancient, the property of most primitive peoples the world over. As we see in the Bayeux tapestry, it was drawn to the breast, not the ear; at short range it could be lethal. The six-foot longbow, shooting a three-foot "clothyard" shaft, was apparently a Welsh invention of the twelfth century; it became the favorite weapon of the English.

To plan to reserve cavalry for the finish of the battle, is to have no conception of the power of combined infantry and cavalry charges, either for attack or for defense.

The cockiness of this bantam did not put off Porter, a senior colonel of infantry, large-boned in build and white-haired at fifty-two, whose restrained manner tended to obscure his knowledge of his profession and the firmness of his own character.

If they did not credit it, we did. We knew it was against all maxims of war for Cavalry to act without support, or infantry at hand. We knew that in all probability few indeed, if any of us, would ever come back from that rapid and deadly ride. But the order was given. There were the guns — and away we went, quickening from trot to canter, and from canter to gallop, as we drew nearer to them. On we went, spurring our horses across the space that divided us from those grim fiery mouths.