Jean Larteguy Quotes

When you talk about aiding this country against that country or about fighting terrorism, when you actually take that decision and strip it down, it always comes down to one person in the field giving specialized training to somebody else in the field.

A barracks is meant to be a place where real soldiers were to be fed and equipped for war, not a place to settle down in or as a comfortable snuggery in which to enjoy ourselves. I hope that if ever they, our soldiers, do settle down God will burn their barracks over their heads!

Whenever armed forces . . . are used, the idea of combat must be present. . . . The end for which a soldier is recruited, clothed, armed, and trained, the whole object of his sleeping, eating, drinking, and marching is simply that he should fight at the right place and the right time.

Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.

They say in the military that a good battle plan can last as long as five minutes in real fighting. After that, it comes down to if the general is favored by fate and the spirits.

I trained with an ex-Navy Seal. We shot a lot of guns. Real bullets... I underwent commando training.

We should never lose sight of the ethos that has made the Marine Corps - where 'every Marine is a rifleman' - one of America's cherished institutions and one of the world's most feared and respected fighting forces

Examples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.

My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back.

In all their wars against the French they [the Americans] never showed such conduct, attention and perseverance as they do now.

I am going to Spain to fight an army without a general, and thence to the East to fight a general without an army.

A people [America] that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.

In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as in the military.

If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.

Few men are killed by the bayonet, many are scared by it. Bayonets should be fixed when the fire fight starts

A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.

Every decision in government is so important, especially when it comes to the military where thousands of people can lose their lives.

Well we always need brave, capable young men and women who can run a tactical operation and take risks on the battlefield but you should know when we need you to go in there, that if there's any other way to do it, that we could do this without risking your life, we wouldn't ask you to risk your life.

You are part of the world's most feared and trusted force. Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

No great dependence is to be placed on the eagerness of young soldiers for action...fighting is agreeable to those who are strangers to it.

I've always had the fantasy of doing a boot camp for a military film, at some point. I've always wanted to know what the experience is like, to feel that mounting pressure of going off to war and needing to be so present and physically aware of your body because you ultimately need to fight for your life and for your country.

In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.

Many opportunities have been lost and hundreds of valuable lives uselessly sacrificed for want of a strict observance of discipline. Its object is to enable an army to bring promptly into action the largest possible number of its men, in good order and under the control of their officers. Its effects are visible in all military history, which records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than those of numbers and resources.

The military is not a social experiment. The purpose of the military is kill people and break things.