Steven Erikson Quotes

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

As a soldier, I survived World War I when most of my comrades did not.

Generals make plans. Plans go wrong. And soldiers die.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.

The real heroes of WWII never came home.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.

Every day, more and more of our young men are shipped to Vietnam and forced to fight under conditions carefully contrived to ensure the maximum loss of American life and to ensure eventual defeat.

I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes. I see it as a large thing too, only I break it into small units of one man at a time, and see it as a large and monstrous thing for each man involved. I see the war as death in one form or another for men dressed as soldiers, and all the men who survived the war, including myself, I see as men who died with their brothers, dressed as soldiers

It’s very hard really to look a soldier in the eye when you fear that you are sending him to his death.

A nation's youths shouldn't be sent off to die.

To die in the act of killing is, in essence, to die defeated.

Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was...What was in doubt, in all our minds, was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end, or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gun and gunner.

If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base,And speed glum heroes up the line of death.

The soldiers in Iraq are fighting, suffering and dying . . . anonymously and pointlessly, while the rest of us are free to buckle ourselves into the family vehicle and head off to the malls and shop.

When you go to war, it's important for everybody to know that they're going to come home in one way or other.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.

Washington has thrown their soldiers on the fire.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.

For the sake of the troops, for the love of the troops, we must not add yet another casualty to this war. We must not let truth be a casualty of this war.

Someday, I have no doubt, the dead from today's wars will be seen with a similar sense of sorrow at needless loss and folly as those millions of men who lie in the cemeteries of France and Belgium - and tens of millions of Americans will feel a similar revulsion for the politicians and generals who were so spendthrift with others' lives.

We have long honored those who gave their lives during the unfortunate reality of war.