Tanks are easily identified, easily engaged, much-feared targets which attract all the fire on the battlefield. When all is said and done, a tank is a small steel box crammed with inflammable or explosive substances which is easily converted into a mobile crematorium for its highly skilled crew.
- Brigadier Shelford Bidwell
Blessed be those happy ages that were strangers to the dreadful fury of these devilish instruments of artillery, whose inventor I am satisfied is now in Hell, receiving the reward of his cursed invention, which is the cause that very often a cowardly base hand takes away the life of the bravest gentleman.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Being shelled is the real work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks about. Everyone has his own way of going about it. In general, it means lying face down and contracting your body into a small a space as possible.
- Louis Simpson
If the cavalry were not very valuable in trench warfare, they did bring a little social tone to the battlefield.
- Desmond Morton
Only the enemy in front, every other bugger behind.
- unofficial motto of the British Infantry Reconnaissance Corps, W.W.II
And the Lord was with
- Judges
The typical staff officer is a man past middle life, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, noncommittal, with eyes like a codfish, polite in contact, but at the same time unresponsive, cool, calm and as damnably composed as a concrete post or plaster of Paris cast; a human petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm or the friendly germ; minus bowels, passions or a sense of humor. Happily they never reproduce and all of them finally go to hell.
- Gen George S. Patton, Jr.
A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander.
- General Omar Bradley
The terms leadership and command are often used as interchangeably, which does disservice to the understanding of each concept. Command is a functional process and, therefore, unemotional, calculating and analytical. Leadership on the other hand, is a lot like love, because it deals with personal relationships, and these must be lived to be developed. Command is not an art or personal style, but a military science and process - a synergistic and cerebral application of equipment, tactics, weapons and men to achieve a defined military aim. Leadership, on the other hand, could be expressed as visibility and contact.
A platoon commander is 95% leadership and 5% commander; he should really be called a platoon leader. A company commander is still highly visible and in direct man-contact, but he also has command tasks such as organizing fire support, cooperating with tanks, controlling logistics, reporting to higher headquarters, etc. Let's say he is 50% leader and 50% commander. A battalion commander has restricted opportunity for direct leadership of men, but he is certainly a visible authority. Let's say he is 20% leader and 80% commander. Above this level, leadership is less than 5%.
- Major-General N.G. Wilson-Smith, PPCLI (paraphrased)
Discussion of leadership is so often overloaded with vague but emotive ideas that is one is hard put to it to nail the concept down. . . . One comes to the simple truth that leadership is no more than exercising an influence upon others that they tend to act in concert towards achieving a goal which they might not have achieved so readily had they been left to their own devices.
The ingredients which bring about this agreeable state of affairs are many and varied. At the most superficial level they are believed to include such factors as voice, stature and appearance, an impression of omniscience, trustworthiness, sincerity and bravery. At a deeper and rather more important level, leadership depends on a proper understanding of the needs and opinions of those one hopes to lead, and the context in which the leadership occurs. It also depends on good timing. Hitler, who was neither omniscient, trustworthy nor sincere, whose stature was unremarkable and whose appearance verged on the repellent, understood these rules and exploited them to full advantage. The same may be said of many good comedians.
- Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence
You cannot be everyone's friend, but you can be a good comrade to all.
- unknown
A piece of spaghetti, like a military unit, must be lead from the front.
- General George S. Patton
How can the ability to lead depend on the ability to follow? You might as well say that the ability to float depends on the ability to sink.
- L.J. Peter and R. Hull, The Peter Principle
There are no bad regiments, there are only bad officers.
- Field Marshall Lord Slim
Education makes people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.
- Henry Peter, Lord Brougham in The
In the World War, nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes … talking, talking, talking in place of leading, leading, leading.
- Major-General J.F.C. Fuller in Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure, 1936
Leadership explains the differences in the performance of nearly all armies at all times....But laying full responsibility on the commander is difficult for human beings to accept. Most people assume that groups arrive at decisions by the interactions of their members. This leads many to attribute a defeat (or victory) to alleged inherent nature of the soldiers or the nation, not the leaders.
...A military organization must make life-and-death choices. It does not arrive at these choices by consensus. Seeking consensus leads first to debate, then to disintegration, since some will accept hard choices, while others will not. Military forces work only when decisions are made by commanders. If commanders are wrong, the units will likely fail. If they are right, they may succeed.
- Bevin Alexander, How Hitler Could Have Won World War II
Train your corporals now to command troops of tanks and platoons of infantry. Train your young officers, warrant officers and Sergeants to command squadrons and companies and train yourselves to command regiments and battalions. Casualties amongst leaders will be terrible and unless the junior ranks are trained and physically prepared to take over, it will be difficult to maintain confidence. Young leaders must be trained in peace to seize the initiative and not wait for orders.
Major-General Kitching,
OBE, DSO, CD - GOC of 4th Canadian Armoured Division
in
I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
- The Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), English soldier, prime minister. Dispatch, Aug. 1810, speaking of his generals
A leader is the man who has the ability to get other people to do what they don't want to do, and like it.
- Harry Truman
Where there is no vision, the people perish.
- Proverbs 29:18
Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances.
- Thomas Jefferson
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother. . . and gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurst they were not here; and hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
- Wm. Shakespeare, Henry V
Scots, wha ha'e wi' Wallace bled!
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led!
Welcome to your gory bed,
Or to glorious victorie!
Now's the day and now's the hour;
See the front o' battle lower!
See approach proud Edward's power -
Edward! chains and slaverie!
Wha will be a traitor knave?
Wha can fill a coward grave?
Wha sae base as be a slave?
Traitor! coward! turn and flee!
Wha for
Freedom's sword will strongly draw,
Free-man stand, or free-man fa',
Caledonian! on wi' me!
By oppression's woes and pains!
By your sons in servile chains!
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall - they shall be free!
Lay the proud usurpers low!
Tyrants fall in every foe!
Forward! let us do or die!
- Robert Burns,
There is discipline. There is drill. . . . When you are relying on your mates and they are relying on you, there's no room for slackness or sloppiness. If you're not prepared to accept the rules, you're better off where you are.
- British army recruiting poster, 1976
. . . I was deluded by the conventional wisdom which maintains that it is the personal linkages that give a group its unity. I was slow to comprehend the truth; that comrades-in-arms unconsciously create from their particulate selves an imponderable entity which goes its own way and has its own existence, regardless of the comings and goings of the individuals who are its constituent parts. . . . Once out of it, it ceases to exist for you - and you for it.
- Farley Mowat, And No Birds Sang
In
- German wireless report,
To live amongst men who would give their last fag, their last bit, aye, even their last breath if need be for a pal--that is comradeship, the comradeship of the trenches. The only clean thing borne of this life of cruelty and filth. It grows in purity from the very obscenity of its surroundings.
An English private quoted in John Ellis , Eye Deep In Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I
In essentials unity,
In doubtful things liberty,
But in all things love.
-
Ubi concordia, ibi victoria
(Where is the unity, there is the victory.)
- Roman proverb
Arms are my ornaments, warfare my repose.
- Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
People, Ideas, Hardware - in that order.
- Col John Boyd, USAF, who first described the OODA Loop
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice--is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he cares about more than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the existing of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
- John Stuart Mill, "The Contest in America," pp. 208-09, in John Stuart Mill, Dissertations and Discussions (Boston: William V. Spencer, 1867). Written just prior to the U.S. Civil War to oppose Great Britain's favour of the Confederate side.
. . . it was by courage, sense of duty, and a keen feeling of honour in action that men were enabled to win all this, and that no personal failure in an enterprise could make them consent to deprive their country of their valour, but they laid it at her feet as the most glorious contribution that they could offer.
- The Funeral Oration of Pericles (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War)
That public virtue which among the ancients was denominated patriotism, is derived from a strong sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of the free government of which we are members.
- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the
No state has an inherent right to survive through conscript troops and in
the long run no state ever has. Roman matrons used to say to their sons:
"Come back with your shield or on it." Later on, this custom
declined. So did
- Robert Heinlein
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke
- C.P. Stacey, 1955
A soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.
- Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels
. . . judging happiness to be the fruit of freedom and freedom of valour, never decline the dangers of war. For it is not the miserable that would most justly be unsparing of their lives; these have nothing to hope for: it is rather they to whom continued life may bring reverses as yet unknown, and to whom a fall, if it came, would be most tremendous in its consequences.
- The Funeral Oration of Pericles (Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War)
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods?
- Horatius at the Bridge,
Lays of Ancient
Dulce et decorum est pro
patria mori
(It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country.)
- Horace, Odes, III
If a man hasn't discovered something that he would die for, he isn't fit to live.
- Martin Luther King,
Every subject's duty is the king's, but every subject's soul is his own.
- Wm. Shakespeare, Henry V
Peace purchased at the cost of any part of our national integrity is fit only for slaves, and even when purchased for such a price it is a delusion, for it cannot last.
- Wm. E. Borah
War is the second worst activity of mankind, the worst being acquiescence in slavery.
- Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.
- George Orwell
Bella suscipienda sunt
ob eum causum, ut sine injuria in pace vivatur.
(Wars are to be undertaken in order that it may be possible to live in peace
without molestation.)
-
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
- Dolores Ibarruri, speaking against Generalissimo
Franco's Fascists during the Spanish Civil War,
A pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer.
- Theodore Roosevelt,
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. . . . Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech.
- Benjamin Franklin
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.
- Patrick Henry,
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
- Thos. Jefferson
Man is condemned to be free. Condemned, because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
- Jean Paul Sartre
Shall your brethren go to war, and shall ye sit here?
- Numbers 32:6
Why is my liberty judged of another man's conscience?
- 1 Corinthians 10:29
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
- John 8:32
The vast majority of citizens, as well as most of their civil servants and cabinet ministers do not believe that their own armies are relevant to their lives or to the life of their society. Their neither feel responsible for the armies their taxes support nor do they hate them. Most people are simply indifferent.
But no civilization can afford to turn its back on the mechanisms of violence. . . . The refusal to address the question of force because we do not wish to use it merely leaves us naked before those who may wish to use it against us.
- John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards
If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.
- Thomas Sowell
What General Weygand called the Battle of France is over. I expect that the
Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of
Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long
continuity of our nation is turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to
break us in this
- Excerpt of Speech given by Sir Winston Churchill to the House of Commons
as the The Battle of Britain Begins,
At the Day of Judgment, we shall not be asked what we have read, but what we have done.
- Thomas a Kempis
My path is clear here: I am to love my neighbor as myself, in the manner needed, in a practical way, in the midst of the fallen world, at my particular point of history. This is why I am not a pacifist. Pacifism in this poor world in which we live -- this lost world -- means that we desert the people who need our greatest help.
- Francis Schaeffer, 1984
Dear Mrs. Meloney,
There are a good many things that
Here are a few of them:
1. That every molly-coddle, professional pacifist, and man who is "too proud to fight" when the nation's quarrel is just, should be exiled to those out of the way parts... where the spirit of manliness has not yet penetrated.
2. That every decent young man should have a family, job, and the military training which will enable him to keep this country out of war by making it dangerous for any ruthless military people to attack us.
3. That every youngster should have a good and wise mother; and every good woman a child for her arms.
4. That we may all of us become an efficient, patriotic, and nobly proud people - too proud either to inflict wrong or to endure it.
Good luck, Always yours
Theodore Roosevelt
Brutus: Who is here so vile that will not love his country?
-Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.
- Abraham Lincoln
In this world of sin and sorrow if virtue triumphs over vice it is not
because it is virtuous, but because it has better and bigger guns; if honesty
prevails over double dealing, it is not because it is honest, but because it
has a stronger army more ably led; and if good overcomes evil it is not because
it is good, but because it has a well-lined purse. It is well to have right on
our side, but it is madness to forget that unless we have might as well it will
avail us nothing. We must believe that God loves men of good will, but there is
no evidence to show that he will save fools from the results of their folly.
- Somerset Maugham, Then as Now, 1946
God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to defend it.”
- Daniel Webster
Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.
- Thomas Jefferson
Every
man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier.
- Samuel Johnson
People
sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do
violence on their behalf.
- George Orwell
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to
the advantage of others.
- Niccolò Machiavelli
Happiness is freedom, and freedom is courage.
- Pericles
Sons of Empire, forget it not! There are such things as love, honour and the soul of man, which cannot be bought with a price, nor die with death.
- A General Instructional Background for the Young Soldier, Canadian Army, 1942
The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.
- Thucydides
Quodsi
deficiant vires, audacia certe laus
erit: in magnis et voluisse sat est.
(If my strength should fail,
my courage still may shine: the attempt suffices in a grand design.)
- Propertius, Elegies II. x. 5-6
'Die trying' is the proudest human thing.
- Robert Heinlein
It takes a brave man not to be a hero in the Red Army.
- Joseph Stalin
The tuition in obedience that I received as a boy was too severe, too Spartan to be imposed upon Athenians. Courage and initiative they possessed in abundance. They were born to debate and disputation, abashed by no authority established over them, brash and as spirited as cats. Invincible when events ran their way, they could not summon the self-command to rally when the sky began to rain. They personified the type of warrior who beneath a commander of vision and audacity may roll restlessly from success to success. Compelled, however, to endure adversity over a sustained interval - not alone defeat but simply delay and inaction - the restless enterprise that made them great would turn upon itself.
Restless, easily bored, our citizen campaigners possessed not the patience
of the warrior and did not care to acquire it. The virtue of obedience,
in
I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor food; I offer only hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country with his heart, and not merely his lips, follow me.
-Giuseppe Garibaldi (1849), Italian Patriot and soldier, the man who
united modern
Any man can fight refreshed and full of rest. A great soldier is when they fight valiantly drained of all strengths, whom is cold and tired, who also have not eaten or drank in weeks.
- ancient Spartan
- Vegetius
Audendo virtus crescit, tardando timor.
(Courage grows by daring, fear by delaying.)
- Publilius Syrus
Danger gleams like sunshine to a brave man's eyes.
Euripides: Iphigenia in Tauris, 412 B.C.
To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.
Cowards die many times before their deaths;
the valiant never taste death but once.
- William Shakespeare ("Julius Caesar")
I leveled the city and its houses from the foundations to the top; I
destroyed them and consumed them with fire. I tore down and removed the outer
and inner walls, the temples and the ziggurats made of brick, and dumped the
rubble in the Arahtu canal. And after I destroyed
- Sennacherib of
Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?
- Gunnery Sgt Dan Daly, USMC,
The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American Continent.
- Thos. Jefferson, letter dated
We have done nothing extraordinary, nothing contrary to human nature in
accepting an empire when it was offered to us and then in refusing to give it
up. Three very powerful motives prevent us from doing so-- security, honour and
self-interest. And we were not the first to act in this way. Far from it. It
has always been a rule that the weak should be subject to the strong: and
besides, we consider that we are worthy of our power.
- Thucydides
In peace nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard favour'd rage. . .
- Wm. Shakespeare, Henry V
A slash cut rarely kills, however powerfully delivered, because the vitals are protected by the enemy's weapons, and also by his bones. A thrust going in two inches, however, can be mortal. You must penetrate the vitals to kill a man. Moreover, when a man is slashing, the right arm and side are left exposed. When thrusting, however, the body is covered, and the enemy is wounded before he realizes what has happened.
- Roman army training manual
Wir Deutsche furchten Gott aber sonst
nichts in der Welt.
(We Germans fear God but nothing else in this world.)
- Otto von Bismarck, speech in the Reichstag,
The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
- Thucydides
Vae victis. (Woe to the vanquished.)
- Livy
Its not the size of the dog in the fight, its the size of the fight in the dog.
- Mark Twain
The art of concentrating strength at one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear, before the enemy has time to react.
- Erwin Rommel, speaking of Blitzkriek
The Allied high command's dominating thought was to make sure of success, a thought that led it to use orthodox methods and material. As a result it was almost always possible for me, despite inadequate means of reconnaissance and scanty reports, to foresee the next strategic or tactical move of my opponent.
- German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, explaining why Allied casualties were so high and Allied progress so slow in the Italian campaign, 1943
Never lose contact with the enemy!
An objective, at junior combat level is usually a geographic feature that
tactically is advantageous to own. In attack, when captured, it is not a
resting place for tired, frightened soldiers. It is a base from which to
exploit the success of the assault. By continuing movement toward the enemy, he
is compelled to disclose his reserve defensive position and the pattern of his
defensive fire. Such knowledge is essential to higher commanders if your
initial success is to exploited.
If contact with the enemy is not maintained, a program of patrolling to find
him must be developed and a long drawn-out and costly process that is. It was
most apparent in
Colonel J.R. Stone, DSO and Bar, MC - CO of The
Loyal
L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace.
- Napolean
Oh! he is mad, is he? Then I wish he would bite some of my other generals.
- George II, replying to advisors who told him that General James Wolfe was mad
Retreat Hell! We're just attacking in another direction.
- Major General Oliver P. Smith, 1st Marine Division,
Fear is apparently a formidable ally for a guard.
- Xenophon, How to be a Good Cavalry Commander
War
is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it
will be over.
- William Tecumseh Sherman
...it became clear to all, and especially to the king, that though he had plenty of men, he had but very few warriors.
- Herodotus, Histories, describing the predicament of Xerxes, King of Persia, at the Battle of Thermopylae
The way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak.
- Sun Tzu
Arms once taken up should never be laid down but upon one of three conditions: a safe peace, a complete victory, or an honourable death.
- Jeanne Albret, Queen of Naverre
It is no use saying "we are doing our best." You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Push on, brave York Volunteers!
- dying words of General Sir Isaac Brock at
When you feel you cannot continue in your position for another minute, and all that is in human power has been done, that is the moment when the enemy is most exhausted, and when one step forward will give you the fruits of the struggle you have borne.
- Sir Winston Churchill
Tremendous victories make bad peaces.
- Guglielmo Ferrero
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory - victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; without victory, there is no survival.
- Sir Winston Churchill
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena, who strive valiantly, who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spend themselves in a worthy cause; who, at the best, know the triumph of high achievement and who, at the worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.
- Theodore Roosevelt
Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained
- The Duke of
Never lead forth a soldier to a general engagement except when you see that he expects victory.
- Vegetius
Veni, vidi, vici
(I came, I saw, I conquered.)
- Julias Caesar, after the battle of Zela
When I warned them that
- Sir Winston Churchill, addressing the Canadian Parliament 30 Dec 1941, referring to a remark made by French Nazi collaborator Field Marshall Petain
For to win one hundred victories in
one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without
fighting is the acme of skill.
- Sun Tzu.
A plan which succeeds is bold, one which fails is reckless.
- Carl von Clausewitz
It drives one mad to think that any old Canadian boor, who probably can't even find Europe on the globe, flies to Europe from his super-rich country, which his people don't know how to exploit, and here bombards a continent with a crowded population.
- Joseph Goebbles, 1943
When you're wounded and left on
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
- Rudyard Kipling
I think it very uncivilized of you to invade British territory. You are here illegally.
- Rex Hunt, Governor of the
You know that these two nations have been at war over a few acres of snow near Canada, and that they are spending on this fine struggle more than Canada itself is worth.
- Voltaire, 1759
I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.
- last words of the Marquis de Montcalm, 13 Sep 1759
We have a thousand reasons for failure but not a single excuse.
- Rudyard Kipling
Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Lets go inland and be
killed.
- General Norman Cota: Omaha Beach, 1944
We've
been looking for the enemy for several days now, We've finally found them.
We're surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and
killing them.
- Colonel Lewis B. Puller, USMC, during the Chosin
Reservoir campaign in Korea, November 1950
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
- Ecclesiastes 9:11
Swank and Marchand's World War II study determined that after 60 days of continuous combat, 98 percent of all surviving soldiers will have become psychiatric casualties of one kind or another. (Swank and Marchand also found that the 2 percent who are able to endure sustained combat had as their most common trait a predisposition toward "aggressive psychopathic personalities.")
- David A. Grossman
Some regiments assigned an NCO, with an outstanding record as a fighter and
leader, to deal with this. His task was to look after these survivors and
restore, by example and persuasion, their confidence and fighting spirit. These
NCOs were rotated frequently because by nature they were usually impatient to
rejoin their troops in action.
He set up a bivouac in B echelon and with the help of an assistant prepared to
greet them. When they arrived, they were given as much medicinal rum as seemed
appropriate, a hot meal and then to bed. On awakening, they were issued fresh
kit and the assistant provided hot water and meals. They were encouraged to
relax and after a period when the NCO felt they were ready, he started the
rehabilitation process. There was no timetable to this and while not always
successful, many were returned to their troops to fight again.
- Brigadier-General E.A.C. Amy, DSO, OBE, MC, CD - CO of The Canadian Grenadier Guards in WWII
Oh what can ail thee, knight at arms
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
- John Keats
There are plenty of small-minded men who in time of peace are inexorable in matters of equipment and drill, and perpetually interfere in the work of their subordinates. They thus acquire an unmerited reputation, and render the service a burden, but above all do mischief in preventing development of individuality, and in retarding the advancement of independent and capable spirits.
- Archduke Charles
My Lord, if I attempted to answer the mass of futile correspondence which surrounds me, I should be debarred from the serious business of campaigning.
So long as I retain an independent position, I shall see no officer under my command is debarred by attending to the futile drivelling of mere quill-driving from attending to his first duty, which is and always has been to train the private men under his command that they may without question beat any force opposed to them in the field.
-The Duke of Wellington to the Secretary of State for War during the Peninsular Campaign
MESSAGE FROM THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON TO THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE IN
LONDON -- written from Central Spain, August 1812
Gentlemen,
Whilst marching from Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with your requests which have been sent by H.M. ship from London to Lisbon and thence by dispatch to our headquarters.
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's Government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, and spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg your indulgence.
Unfortunately the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensible carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstance, since we are at war with France, a fact which may come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue either one with the best of my ability, but I cannot do both:
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London or perchance,
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
Your most obedient servant
Wellington
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
- Robert Heinlein
It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, more dangerous to manage, than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institutions and merely lukewarm defenders in those would gain by the new ones.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias, they
had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed. They produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had
brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they
produce? The cuckoo clock.
The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim.
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, ch. 5, axiom 13
Alea iacta est
(The die is cast.)
Julius Caesar, after crossing the river Rubicon with his army and committing himself to war
A risk is a chance you take; if it fails you can recover. A gamble is a chance taken; if it fails, recovery is impossible.
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel
It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the
time of action is past.
- Carl von Clausewitz
Don't delay. The best is the enemy of the good. By this I mean that a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. War is a very simple thing, and the determining characteristics are self confidence, speed and audacity. None of these things can be done perfectly, but all can be done well.
- George Patton
The officers of a panzer division must learn to think and act independently within the framework of the general plan and not wait until they receive orders.
- Erwin Rommel
Intuitive decision-making and mastering this profession are one in the
same.
- Lt. General Van Riper, USMC
Intuition is often crucial in combat, and survivors learn not to ignore
it.
When you have to make a choice and don't make it, that is in itself a
choice.
The condition of freedom is risk
- Goethe
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
- Plato
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
- Benjamin Franklin.
If you believe the doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe the theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe the soldiers, nothing is safe.
- Lord Salisbury, 1877
Equo ne credite, Teucri. Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
(Don't trust the horse, Trojans. Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bearing
gifts)
- Virgil, Aeneid
He, general or mere captain, who employs every one in the storming of a position can be sure of seeing it retaken by an organized counterattack of four men and a corporal.
- Colonel Ardant du Picq
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
- Edmund Burke
In the end, more than the Athenians wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life and they lost it all - security, comfort and freedom. When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.
- General Omar Bradley
To keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down.
- Lord Ismay, Secretary-General of NATO 1952-57, speaking of NATO
For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well-organized
and armed militia is their best security.
- Thomas Jefferson: message to Congress, Nov. 1808
Obsolete weapons do not deter.
- Margaret Thatcher
War is the province of uncertainty; three-fourths of the things on which action in war is based lie hidden in the fog of uncertainty.
- Karl von Clausewitz
Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is very difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.
- Karl von Clausewitz
Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.
- Budda
The battlefield is a scene of constant chaos. The winner will be the
one who controls that chaos, both his own and the enemies.
- Napoleon
We normally count only the two great wars of our own century as "world wars," but what this phrase means in practice is a war in which all the great powers of the time are involved. By that criterion, there have been six world wars in modern history: the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648, the War of the Spanish Succession 1702-1714, the Seven Years War of 1756-63, the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars of 1791-1814 and the two World Wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945.
This is not a catalogue of random disasters. The list has an alarmingly cyclical character. Apart from the long nineteenth-century gap, the great powers have all gone to war with each other about every fifty years throughout modern history. Even the "long peace" of the last century is deceptive. Right on schedule, between 1854 and 1870, practically every great power fought one or several others. . . .
So why do the great powers all go to war about every fifty years? It is almost certainly because the most important international facts in any interwar period are determined by the peace treaty that ended the last war. . . . At the instant it is signed, the peace settlement is generally an exact description of the true power relationships in the world. . . . [Once these relationships change] some frustrated power whose allotted role in the international system is too confining, or some frightened nation in decline that sees its power slipping away, kicks over the apple cart and initiates the next reshuffle of the deck. . . . It is easy to list the key changes that would violate or undermine the 1945 settlement in dangerous ways: the reunification of Germany, the rearmament of Japan to a level commensurate with its economic strength, or the relative economic decline of the Soviet Union to the point where it could no longer credibly sustain its role as a superpower and a guardian of the status quo.
- Gwynne Dyer, War, 1985
Gentlemen, you may be sure that of the three courses open to the enemy, he will always choose the fourth.
- Field Marshall Helmuth von Moltke to his staff
Never interrupt the enemy when he is doing something wrong.
- Erwin Rommel
Pretend inferiority and encourage
his arrogance.
Sun Tzu.
The will to fight is the nub of all defeat mechanisms. . . . One should always look for a way to break the enemy's will and capacity to resist.
- Brig. Gen. Huba Wass de Czege
War is nothing but the continuation of state policy by other means.
- Carl von Clausewitz, 1833
In a situation where the consequences of wrong decisions are so awesome, where a single bit of irrationality can set a whole train of traumatic events in motion, I do not think that we can be satisfied with the assurance that "most people behave rationally most of the time."
- C.E. Osgood
How terrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.
- Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a radio broadcast, 27 September 1938 referring to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia
My good friends, for the second time in our history, a British Prime Minister has returned from Germany bringing peace with honour. I believe it is "peace for our time." Go home and get a nice quiet sleep
- Neville Chamberlain, on the steps of 10 Downing Street, 30 September 1938, on his return from meeting Adolf Hitler at the notorious Munich Conference
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping it will eat him last.
- Sir Winston Churchill
The peace-at-any-price party would leave an unarmed Europe a prey to Russia.
- Karl Marx, 1867
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
- Robert Lynd
I remember that a fortnight or so before the last war, the Kaiser's friend Herr Ballin, the great shipping magnate, told me that he had heard Bismarck say towards the end of his life, If there is ever another war in Europe, it will come out of some damned silly thing in the Balkans.' The murder of the Archduke of Sarajevo in 1914 set the signal for the First World War. I cannot conceive that the elements for a new conflict do not exist in the Balkans today. I am not using the language of Bismarck, but nevertheless not many Members of the new House of Commons will be content with the new situation that prevails in those mountainous, turbulent, ill-organized and warlike regions.
- Sir Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 16 Aug 1945
The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does not lose.
- Henry Kissinger, Foreign Affairs, Jan 1969
Let us learn our lessons. Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations - all take their seat at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war.
- Sir Winston Churchill, My Early Life, 1930
Peace - In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
[A direct attack] guarantees the greatest resistance, not the least. A direct attack also forces the enemy back on his reserves and supplies, while it constantly lengthens the supply and reinforcement lines of the attacker. The better strategy is to separate the enemy from his supplies and reserves. That is why an attack on the flank is more likely to be successful.
- Bevin Alexander, How Hitler Could Have Won World War II
In most wars, the inherent strength of the belligerents becomes more and more important once past the initial or opening campaign or phase. If a power is unable to achieve a decision with its original force, then long term factors generally decide the war. Superior power exerted over time to wear down an opponent is called attrition. This is the single greatest danger that a weaker belligerent encounters.
- Bevin Alexander
- Antoine-Henri Jomini
Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.
- Erwin Rommel
What difference does it make if you have two tanks to my one, when you spread them out and let me smash them in detail?
- Erwin Rommel, to a captured British officer in
Thus, what is of supreme importance
in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.
- Sun Tzu
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation form their purposes.
- Carl von Clausewitz
No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his
own thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account.
I doubt seriously whether a man can
think with full wisdom and with deep convictions regarding certain of the basic
issues today who has not at least reviewed in his mind the period of the
Peloponnesian War and the fall of
A great part of the information obtained in war is contradictory, a still greater part is false and by far the greatest part is of doubtful character.
- Carl von Clausewitz
All warfare is based on deception.
- Sun Tzu.
Now the reason the enlightened
prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their
achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.
- Sun Tzu
The same winter the Athenians resolved to
sail again to Sicily, with a greater armament than that under Laches and Eurymedon, and, if
possible, to conquer the island; most of them being ignorant of its size and of
the number of its inhabitants, Hellenic and barbarian, and of the fact that
they were undertaking a war not much inferior to that against the
Peloponnesians. For the voyage round
- Thucydides
- Carl von Clausewitz
On the battlefield of the future, enemy forces will be located, tracked
and targeted almost instantaneously through the use of data-links,
computer-assisted intelligence evaluation and automated fire control. With
first-round kill probabilities approaching certainty, and with surveillance
devices that can continuously track the enemy, the need for large forces to fix
the opposition physically will be less important.
Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
- Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Nothing, especially in the trade of war, is sooner forgot than experience.
- Colonel Ardant du Picq
With 2000 years of examples behind us we have no excuse when fighting, for not fighting well.
- T.E. Lawrence
The best form of welfare for the troops is first-class training, for this saves unnecessary casualties.
- Erwin Rommel
Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.
- William Shakespeare, Othello, I:2
Qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
(Let him who desires peace prepare for war.)
A soldier should never be led into battle unless you have made trial of him first.
Men are seldom born brave but they acquire courage through training and discipline - a handful of men inured to war proceed to certain victory; while on the contrary numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter.
- Vegetius
Skill and confidence are an unconquered army.
- George Herbert
Perfer et obdura; dolor
hic tibi proderit olim
(Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you)
abeunt studia in mores
(studies develop into habit)
- Ovid
The military machine--the army and everything related to it-- is
basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in
mind that none of its components is of one piece: each piece is composed of
individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction. ... A
battalion is made up of individuals, the least important of whom may chance to
delay things or somehow make them go wrong.
Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.
- George S. Patton
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is a habit.
- Socrates
War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.
- Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince
By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
- Benjamin Franklin
Pleasure is what nearly all cavalry training involves. It is the closest a man can get, as far as I know, to flying, and that is something people long to be able to do.
- Xenophon, How to be a Good Cavalry Commander
Tradition is a wonderful servant and a terrible master.
- Field
Tradition is the "means by which the vitality of the past enriches the life of the present."
- T.S. Elliot
It takes the navy three years to build a ship, but three hundred years to build a tradition; we must not let the army down.
- Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, when one of his staff officers suggested it
was too dangerous for the Royal Navy to evacuate British soldiers from
In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, goodwill.
- Sir Winston Churchill, used as "a moral of the work" in his book The Second World War
Moribus antiquis res stat Romana virisque
(On ancient ways and heroes stands the Roman state)
- Ennius
They are too near
To be great
But our children
Shall understand
When and how our
Fate was changed
And by whose hand.
- Rudyard Kipling, 1917
The universe is so vast and so ageless that the life of one man can only be justified by the measure of his sacrifice.
- Pilot Officer V.A. Rosewarne, 1940
History is less concerned with what happened then than with how it is remembered now.
- Edward J. Ingebretsen, SJ
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.
- General George Patton
In
In
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
- John McCrae