Ira Hayes Quotes

The battalion, the whole battalion was affected by the two killed just within a week of being there, and I think that that pulled everybody up to make them realise that this was a very serious business.

I was drafted when I was 17, and I spent two years, and I lost a friend in war.

I didn't see conflict during the Vietnam War, but I did lose close friends.

I know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.

MY REGRETS ARE ABOUT THE PEOPLE I COULDN’T SAVE—Marines, soldiers, my buddies. I still feel their loss. I still ache for my failure to protect them.

Vets are close to my heart, okay, and it's not only because I served, okay. It's because of what they go through, okay. A lot of these people have gave their lives, a lot of them have gave their limbs, okay, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a heap, you know.

And much more am I sorrier for my good knights' loss than for the loss of my fair queen; for queens I might have enough, but such a fellowship of good knights shall never be together in no company.

I still have nightmares of dead comrades, a long time ago, talking to me. 'Emmanuel, don't forget about us, don't give up, keep telling our story.'

I suppose and I hope that the young guys who are out there losing their lives at least feel the same way I did. I shouldn't think about this very much because I'm almost weeping when I think about it.

I’m no hero. Hero’s don’t return from war. Survivors do.

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

I cry all the time. Remembrance Day in particular. In fact, anything to do with veterans makes me sob.

The most powerful Vietnam movie, to me, was 'The Deer Hunter,' which was more about what happened to the folks who went and about their relationships.

We never want to update 'Black Watch,' because it's about a moment in time, and through that moment, it manages to speak about Afghanistan and all other wars. This play is 'about' Iraq, but it's actually about every war that's ever been or will ever be.

I would like to have had that experience of combat. I would have liked to.

As a combat medic, I heard a lot of last words; I saw a lot of last breaths taken.

I should like to have been killed in the war.

There's nothing glorious about war. There's nothing glorious about holding your friends in your arms and watching them die. There's nothing glorious about having to leave your home for 6 to 8 months while your family's back here and you're away.

In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.

Society isn't good at dealing with people who have something concrete to feel guilty about or who are dealing with a loss.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I'm so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don't have the guts to take their names out of the book.

When my young men began the killing, my heart was hurt.

Before, I was so stupid. But, you know, when you have friends who died on the street, you say, okay, let's calm down. It's not the kind of energy I want to have in life. I want to go slower, and longer.

There's something about being amid the chaos and the horror of a war that makes you appreciate all you don't have - and all you may lose forever.

My second wife, the mother of one of my sons, died of murder. I was not with her, but I could have saved her. I think.