Saul David Quotes

If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.

Logistics is the ball and chain of armored warfare.

Leaders win through logistics. Vision, sure. Strategy, yes. But when you go to war, you need to have both toilet paper and bullets at the right place at the right time. In other words, you must win through superior logistics.

As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems.

Our artillery has really been sensational. For once we have enough of something and at the right time. Officers tell me they actually have more guns than they know what to do with.

The eventual place the American army should take on the western front was to a large extent influenced by the vital question of communication and supply.

If was, increased by a lack of railways in Russia - for bringing up supplies to our advancing troops.

We must either reduce the number of our engagements or increase the number of our troops.

The German Air Force was not sufficient to protect the sea crossing on its own. While the leading part of the forces might have landed, there was the danger that they might be cut off from supplies and reinforcements.

We entered the war with 12 divisions...now we have about 70.

If you contemplate some enterprise against the enemy, the commissary must scrape together all the beer and brandy that can be found so that the army does not lack either …

… you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

Our military plans for everything.

Amateurs do tactics, experts do logistics, as we learn in the military.

Logistics comprises the means and arrangements which work out the plans of strategy and tactics. Strategy decides where to act; logistics brings the troops to this point.

The battle is fought and decided by the quartermasters, long before the shooting begins.

There is nothing more common than to find considerations of supply affecting the strategic lines of a campaign and a war.

It has been said by a certain general, that the first object in the establishment of an army ought to be making provision for the belly, that being the basis and foundation of all operations.

We were fighting a war. We did not have time for duplicate vouchers and double-entry bookkeeping. It is a hell-fired shame for everybody [on this Congressional committee] to be trying to pick flyspecks on the greatest army the world ever knew. We did more organization despite our unpreparedness than the French and the British. What do you suppose we went to war for? We went to France to win the war [World War I] and we did it.

Supplies of the most essential kinds find their way not only to British ports and British armies at a distance, but the armies in our neighborhood with which our own are contending derive from our ports and outlets a subsistence attainable if at all from other sources.

I can make a brigadier general in five minutes, but it's not so easy to replace 110 horses.

Militia are difficult to be collected and almost impossible to be kept in the field.... Nothing short of a regular military force will answer.

If we were to embark on war with Russia, we must be prepared to be committed to a total war, which will be both long and costly. Our numerical inferiority on land renders it extremely doubtful whether we could achieve a limited and quick success…

The certain way to victory...lies in making everything on Imperial soil contribute to the war effort...combining the total material and spiritual strength of the nation...

The habitual relationships built through exercises and training is our biggest guarantor of access in time of need, over time, can develop into habitual use of certain facilities by deployed US forces with the eventual goal of being guaranteed use in a crisis, or permission to preposition logistics stocks and other critical material in strategic forward locations.