Collection of Military Quotations

"No men undergo such hardship and hazard as the Souldier doth; none deserve better than they, either of Church, Commonwealth or posterity."
The Souldiers Catechism

"If your country's worth living in, it's worth fighting for ... you can't fight a war without losing lives. Although no one wants killing, sometimes it has to be. To keep your country free sometimes you have to fight and die. It was to be a great honour to us."
Shankill Road, 1916 Somme victim of the 36th (Ulster) Division, The Road to the Somme

"Rude am I in my speech, and little blessed with the soft phrase of peace."
Othello

"Faced with the destruction of our country, lives, homes, and families [the Bosnian Army was] born under the gun of brutal aggression .. But ours is not an Army of hatred, of anger, of revenge. In Tuzla, it was our Army which rebuilt an Orthodox church which was damaged by Serbian shelling. It is our Army which conducts its business on the battlefield and not in civilian centres. We are an Army of morals, of rules and of respect of international standards .. We have learned through genocide that the price of freedom and democracy is high. But we have also learned that this price is worth it .. We fight today for what the allied powers fought for and won 50 years ago. The lessons of that time should not be forgotten. The scourge of fascism has returned to European soil - but we are committed to fight it not only for our country, but for the world and for the memory of those who died fighting fascism in Europe 50 years ago."
Bosnian Defence Attaché at a Washington reception marking the third anniversary of the founding of the Bosnian Army, 08.05.95

(3rd c. AD) "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."

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
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.

"It was this kind of mental toughness [to walk for five days on suppurating flesh which had in places decayed to the bone] which the SAS was constantly looking for in the screening tests. Such qualities were not, of course, only to be found in the SAS but they were more in demand there than anywhere else. The order of priorities was intelligence, mental toughness, physical toughness. Without intelligence the other two qualities would not enable a man to survive and be useful, without mental toughness he would never reach the peak of his performance."

"In straightforward warfare a man in the line who breaks down or proves wanting can be sent back. But if he does so on an operation behind the enemy lines he is a menace to himself, to his companions and to the whole project and there are no means of getting him out of the way. Nor is it easy to pick the right men for the task. Those without experience of warfare of this nature are largely unknown quantities, while some who have distinguished themselves in this sphere have lost their nerve as a result, which may not be discernible to them or to selectors of the force until the operation is in progress; then it is too late."

"Faran, although himself a regular soldier, found the orthodoxy of some of his fellow regulars exasperating. They knew as well as he did that the British Army is second to none in training local forces to a high degree of efficiency. Being, however, somewhat of a perfectionist in these matters the British instructor will usually claim that he requires ten times as much time as he believes is strictly necessary."

"The SAS", Philip Warner

"Some men may join for the money in peacetime, but to be effective when they are needed they cannot be employees in uniform. To give them the necessary courage, they must have a collective self-confidence, based on emotional beliefs which may well be irrational and even obnoxious in the eyes of many civilians. An army .. does not march on its pay scales alone. 'If you turn us into a monetary organisation,' said a major from the Parachute Regiment, 'you get a monetary mentality'."
Inside the British Army, p. 196.

Anthony Beevor

"A [soldier] bitches when he is happy. Watch out when he's quiet." Battle Cry.

"A [soldier] has one item that can't be neglected. His feet. They are his wheels, his mechanised warfare."

"He [the soldier] has to be disciplined when he's afraid or he'll go to pieces. He relies on discipline the way other men rely on sympathy." [Crossfire, p. 79]

"It is good to be a soldier and a detrimental; you touch the hearts of women and charm them - old and young, high or low (excepting, perhaps, a few worldly mothers of marriageable daughters. They take the sticking of your tongue in cheek for the wearing of your heart on the sleeve." [Trilby]

George du Maurie

"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

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. British Private in Eye Deep In Hell: Trench Warfare in World War I

"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." Gulliver's Travels

"It is hard to say why I survived. I think it's the way that one is nurtured. In nature, plants and humans are the same: if they are well nurtured from an early age they will stand difficult circumstances far better than if they are poorly nurtured. It was also a state of mind: it was no good being afraid, it is a pointless exercise. Why make yourself, allow yourself to be mentally uncomfortable? I kept thinking that my mother would be unhappy if I didn't make it. The other thing was, is it all worth it? I believed that it was, and that helped greatly. in The Navy: 1939 to the present day, Max Arthur