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e9163f5
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In one of his last newsletters, Mike Ranney wrote: "In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I'm treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, 'Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?' No,'" I answered, 'but I served in a company of heroes." --
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war
heroism
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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cd54264
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Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.
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war
prepared
to-die-for
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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ca44a85
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We know how to win wars. We must learn now to win peace...
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war
win
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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89d22a3
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We can't make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had. - Army saying
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army
obedience
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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7946dea
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Chickenshit is so called - instead of horse- or bull- or elephant shit - because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously.
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small-mindedness
petty
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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cf26b0d
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Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win.
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death
win
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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2b48d44
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Ronald Spiers: The only hope you have is to accept the fact that you're already dead. The sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll be able to function as a soldier is supposed to function: without mercy, without compassion, without remorse. All war depends upon it.
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war
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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dcfd328
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It all happened," Lipton summed up, "because Shifty saw a tree almost a mile away that hadn't been there the day before."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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19ffe48
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Older British observers complained, "The trouble with you Yanks is that you are overpaid, oversexed, and over here." (To which the Yanks would reply, "The trouble with you Limeys is that you are underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.")"
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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96e1634
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In Austria after VE Day) Sergeant Mercier...dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs. Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped ..
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speirs
bob
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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7617a13
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Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country against losing time in th..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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35c63ca
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Hitler made only one big mistake when he built his Atlantic Wall," the paratroopers liked to say. "He forgot to put a roof on it."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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fe3b19d
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The first man stepped up to the open door. All the men had been ordered to look out at the horizon, not straight down, for obvious psychological reasons.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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290df32
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The medics were the most popular, respected, and appreciated men in the company. Their weapons were first-aid kits, their place on the line was wherever a man called out that he was wounded.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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a1454cc
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At the hangars, each jumpmaster was given two packs of papers, containing an order of the day from Eisenhower and a message from Colonel Sink, to pass around to the men. "Tonight is the night of nights," said Sink's. "May God be with"
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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7012901
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Speirs was an officer with a reputation. Slim, fairly tall, dark hair, stern, ruggedly handsome, he cultivated the look of a leader, and acted it.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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25c1ebf
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All that existed was precious in Crazy Horse's religion--whatever a man did or thought was good, was wakan, so long as he obeyed his own inner voice, for that too was wakan.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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3a7469b
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plan your work and work your plan" "where there is a will, there is a way"
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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60c888a
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In October 1805, Stoddard's tour left St. Louis, including forty-five Indians from eleven tribes. They arrived in Washington in January 1806. Jefferson gave them the standard Great Father talk: "We are become as numerous as the leaves of the trees, and, tho' we do not boast, we do not fear any nation. . . . My children, we are strong, we are numerous as the stars in the heavens, & we are all gun-men." He followed the threat with the carrot:..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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2098e48
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Routine wears down vigilance.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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01c92d9
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The Enlightenment taught that observation unrecorded was knowledge lost.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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be61df7
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Anyone who has ever canoed on the upper Missouri River knows what a welcome sight a grove of cottonoods can be. They provide shade, shelter, and fuel. For Indian ponies, they provide food. For the Corps of Discovery, they provided wheels, wagons, and canoes. Pioneering Lewis and Clark scholar Paul Russell Cutright pays the cottonwoods an appropriate tribute: 'Of all the wetern trees it contributed more to the success of the Expedition than ..
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lewis-and-clark
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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d147a9f
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Jefferson could write, "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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f2c3010
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Burial practices illustrated the two men's different outlooks. Custer believed a body should be buried in a long-lasting metal casket, thus removing the body from the ecological system by preventing bacteria from breaking it down and feeding it back into the soil. Crazy Horse believed in wrapping a body inside a buffalo robe and placing it on a scaffold on an open hillside, where the elements could break it down in a year or two. It would t..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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d915630
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you liked him so much you just hated to let him down." He was, and is, all but worshiped by the men of E Company."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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3e0167e
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These are some of the qualities that make for a good company commander. Lewis had them in abundance, plus some special touches that made him a much-loved commander. He had a sense, a feel, for how his family was doing. He knew exactly when to take a break, when to issue a gill, when to push for more, when to encourage, when to inspire, when to tell a joke, when to be tough. He knew how to keep a distance between himself and the men, and jus..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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b2c0759
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They were white, because the U.S. Army in World War II was segregated. With three exceptions, they were unmarried. Most had been hunters and athletes in high school.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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ef4654b
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How he led is no mystery. His techniques were time-honored. He knew his men. He saw to it that they had dry socks, enough food, sufficient clothing. He pushed them to but never beyond the breaking point. He got out of them more than they knew they had to give. His concern for them was that of a father for his son. He was the head of a family. He
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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7f2b786
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Profitable as it was to him, Jefferson hated slavery. He regarded it as a curse to Virginia and wished to see it abolished throughout the United States. Not, however, in his lifetime. He said that his generation was not ready for such a step. He would leave that reform to the next generation of Virginians, and was sure they would make Virginia the first southern state to abolish slavery. He thought the young men coming of age in postwar Vir..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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91423da
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When a man was hit hard enough for evacuation, he was usually very happy, and we were happy for him--he had a ticket out to the hospital, or even a ticket home--alive. "When a man was killed--he looked 'so peaceful.' His suffering was over."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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3a091b1
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That evening, the first Americans ever to enter Montana, the first ever to see the Yellowstone, the Milk, the Marias, and the Great Falls, the first Americans ever to kill a grizzly, celebrated their nation's twenty-ninth birthday.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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36dd4cd
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No wrong will ever be done you by our nation."3"
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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3a12eaf
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Despite himself, Webster was drawn to the people. "The Germans I have seen so far have impressed me as clean, efficient, law-abiding people," he wrote his parents on April 14. They were churchgoers. "In Germany everybody goes out and works and, unlike the French, who do not seem inclined to lift a finger to help themselves, the Germans fill up the trenches soldiers have dug in their fields. They are cleaner, more progressive, and more ambit..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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b0fa337
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The men of Easy Company lined the rails to see the Statue of Liberty slip astern. For nearly every one of them, it was his first trip outside the United States. A certain homesickness set in, coupled with a realization, as the regimental scrapbook Currahee put it, of "how wonderful the last year had been."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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a42044f
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No war can be won without young men dying. Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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989c77f
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Each man in his own way had gone through what Richard Winters experienced: a realization that doing his best was a better way of getting through the Army than hanging around with the sad excuses for soldiers they met in the recruiting depots or basic training. They wanted to make their Army time positive, a learning and maturing and challenging experience.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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5086c32
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On his thirty-first birthday, Lewis wrote, in a famous passage, "This day I completed my thirty first year. . . . I reflected that I had as yet done but little, very little indeed, to further the hapiness of the human race, or to advance the information of the succeeding generation. I viewed with regret the many hours I have spent in indolence, and now soarly feel the want of that information which those hours would have given me had they b..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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50c2695
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Army was boring, unfeeling, and chicken, and hated it. They found combat to be ugliness, destruction, and death, and hated it. Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands made on the body--anything, that is, except letting down their buddies. They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in their foxhole more..
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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a55c18f
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The Easy Company men began throwing grenades at the retreating enemy. Compton had been an All-American catcher on the UCLA baseball team. The distance to the fleeing enemy was about the same as from home plate to second base. Compton threw his grenade on a straight line--no arch--and it hit a German in the head as it exploded. He,
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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2910bdd
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There are trees growing in Philadelphia (at Fourth and Spruce Streets) and the University of Virginia (at Morea, a guest house) today that grew from the cuttings Lewis sent.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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f5242eb
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They knew they were going into great danger. They knew they would be doing more than their part. They resented having to sacrifice years of their youth to a war they never made. They wanted to throw baseballs, not grenades, shoot a .22 rifle, not an M-1. But having been caught up in the war, they decided to be as positive as possible in their Army careers.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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0d1f7cd
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The Indian, in truth, no longer has a country. He is reduced to starvation or to warring to the death. The Indian's first demand is that the white man shall not drive off his game and dispossesses him of his lands. How can we promise this unless we prohibit emigration and settlement...The end is sure and dreadful to contemplate. General John Pope
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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1a17d46
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Pvt. Robert Fruling said he spent two and a half days at Pointe-du-Hoc, all of it crawling on his stomach. He returned on the twenty-fifth anniversary of D-Day "to see what the place looked like standing up" (Louis Lisko interview, EC)."
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Stephen E. Ambrose |
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0d4e2e1
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A critical fact in the world of 1801 was that nothing moved faster than the speed of a horse. No human being, no manufactured item, no bushel of wheat, no side of beef (or any beef on the hoof, for that matter), no letter, no information, no idea, order, or instruction of any kind moved faster.
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Stephen E. Ambrose |