“Fuck it, I thought. As Don Rumsfeld once said, "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had.”
“Vous travaillez pour l'armee, madame?' (You are working for the army?), a Frenchwoman said to me early in the Vietnam war, on hearing I had three sons.”
“We can't make you do anything, but we can make you wish you had. - Army saying”
“Life is a war, and the families are the armies. Even if you win the war, some will never see you plant the flag.”
“And now she has you seizing control of my army.”“Your army? I thought this was Gaunt’s.”“So did he.”
“When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it.”