Thursday, March 12, 2009

Quotes: Military (4)

Military 237 The General at the front, noting that the men were settling in: "Once they halted and stayed in one place long enough for it to assume familiar connotations, it was immeasurably harder to get them to fight again." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead. Probably true.

Military 250 The General: T"hey liked their bivouacs…there were methods of fixing that; tomorrow, there could be a general troop movement to one side or another, adjustments of a few hundred yards with new fox holes to be dug, new barbed wire to be laid, new tents to be put up." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Military 250 The General: "And if they started laying duck walks again, and improving their latrines, there could be still another movement…the American’s capacity for real estate improvement: build yourself a house, grow fat in it, and die." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Military 292 Red: "If they get ya to hate ‘em enough, you’ll crack a nut before you’ll go to ‘em and that way they keep you on the line…a guy dies now and then, but what the hell’s another guy to the Army…you’d think we weren’t men." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead. They're not men. They are pawns in a game of chess.

Military 300 The General: "The men who would land at Botoi would be in the enemy rear without any safe way to retreat, and their only security would be to drive ahead and meet their own troops…would have to advance." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead. Military psychology.

No comments: