Combat Situations Quotes

You can't save everybody. In fact, there are days when I think you can't save anyone. Each person has to save himself first, then you can move in and help. I have found this philosophy does not work during a gun battle, or a knife fight either. Outside of that it works just fine.

I am sometimes perplexed by people who refer to defensive rifles, or defensive rifle shooting. The defensive arm is the pistol, since you have it at hand to meet situations that you do not anticipate. If you have the luxury of anticipating a lethal encounter, you pick up a long arm, either a rifle or a shotgun, but in that case you go on to the attack. Thus rifle shooting is offensive, and pistol shooting is defensive. Of course, life does not always duplicate theory, and there are exceptions to everything, but nevertheless the rifle is not a defensive weapon in concept.

I've certainly been mortared and rocketed a few times.

How many times did someone have to run in front of a machine gun before it became an act of cowardice?

In many situations that seemed desperate, the artillery has been a most vital factor.

If our planes were shot down, yes, they's wake me right away. If the other fellows' were shot down, why wake me up?

I hang out with my dad mostly, my dad was in the military. He's at that age now where his war stories and other stories have blended together, so now you don't know what he's talking about. One time, we were surrounded, then we ran out of ammo, then we were fighting hand-to-hand, then we started dancing, and that's how I met your mother.

I'll tell you what. I've been in combat. I've seen it, I've been close to it... and if my unit is danger, and I've got a captured guy, and the guy knows where the enemy is, and I'm looking him in the eye, the guy better tell me. That's all I'm gonna tell you. The guy better tell me. If it's life or death, he's going first.

In war-time a man is called a hero. It doesn't make him any braver, and he runs for his life. But at least it's a hero who is running away.

When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets.

War buddies don't exist in the meeting room. It's a battle between a lot of different officers. Some continue fighting when they don't realize that they have been shot.

As far as I can see it, anyone who has a problem with what guys do over there is incapable of empathy. People want America to have a certain image when we fight. Yet I would guess if someone were shooting at them and they had to hold their family members while they bled out against an enemy who hid behind their children, played dead only to throw a grenade as they got closer, and who had no qualms about sending their toddler to die from a grenade from which they personally pulled the pin....they would be less concerned with playing nicely.

Your war memories will be with you forever, you'll be asked about them thousands of times after the war is over. People will get their respect for you from that-partly from that, don't get me wrong-but if you can say that you were up front where there was some real shooting going on, then that will mean a whole lot to you in years to come.

A lot of the great pieces of journalism from Iraq showed how important command influence was in violent, aggressive environments, where Marines and soldiers had a constrained set of choices to make in sudden moments.

No officer wants to be involved in a justified use of force proven unnecessary after the fact, any more than soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to make what proved to be the wrong decision in a shoot-don't-shoot situation. Those decisions, even if justified, live with you forever, believe me.

Human beings, like plans, prove fallible in the presence of those ingredients that are missing in maneuvers - danger, death, and live ammunition.

The sermon was based on what he claimed was a well-known fact, that there were no Atheists in foxholes. I asked Jack what he thought of the sermon afterwards, and he said, "There's a Chaplain who never visited the front.

When you deal with somebody in the heat of battle, you see the best or the worst of them. So when you get through all that there is a great deal of respect.

From inside fortifications, the gun has no equal among weapons. It is the supreme weapon on the field before the ranks clash, but once swords are crossed the gun becomes useless.

In a hospital, there's not anyone who's generally trying to do you harm. You're generally given a backstory about what happened to them, but not about their life, so you get to work on saving their life. But you know whose lives you're saving overseas, in the Army, to a certain degree. You know whether's it your guy or a bad guy, and it's generally not anybody in between.