Infantryman Quotes

• Look at an infantryman's eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.

  Bill Mauldin

  Military, War, Eye

  Up Front cartoon caption (1945)

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• I'm convinced that the infantry is the group in the army which gives more and gets less than anybody else.

  Bill Mauldin

  Army, Giving, Groups

  "Up Front". Book by Bill Mauldin, 1945.

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• What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?

  George Grosz

  War, World, Firsts

  George Grosz (1982). “The autobiography of George Grosz: a small yes and a big no”

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• Pray use both cats as sponges if it pleases you, infatuated infantryman.

  Diana Wynne Jones

  Cat, Use, Praying

  Diana Wynne Jones (2002). “Wizard's Castle”

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• The infantryman slithers in the mud, while many teams of horses are needed to drag each gun forward. All wheeled vehicles sink up to their axles in the slime. Even tractors can only move with great difficulty. A large portion of our heavy artillery was soon stuck fast... The strain that all this caused our already exhausted troops can perhaps be imagined.

  Gunther Blumentritt

  Horse, Military, Team

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• Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade. When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to dig a hole in the ground beside him.

  Viktor Suvorov

  Military, Lying, Army

  Viktor Suvorov (1987). “Spetsnaz: The Story Behind the Soviet SAS”

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• They fought on with a devotion which would puzzle the generation of the 1980s. More surprising, in many instances it would have baffled the men they themselves were before Pearl Harbor. Among MacArthur's ardent infantrymen were cooks, mechanics, pilots whose planes had been shot down, seamen whose ships had been sunk, and some civilian volunteers.

  William Manchester

  Men, Volunteer, History

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• The impossibility of keeping Englishmen sober ashore was a constant source of complaint, It was the great weakness of 16th century English infantrymen, whose performance when sober was admired even by the Spaniards. Already it was true, as it was to be for centuries, that many saw and despised the drunken sailor ashore, but few knew and admired him at his work afloat.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Sailor, Saws, Weakness

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• My objective always is to stay as close as possible and shoot the pictures as if through the eyes of the infantryman, the Marine, or the pilot. I wanted to give the reader something of the visual perspective and feeling of the guy under fire, his apprehensions and sufferings, his tensions and releases, his behavior in the presence of threatening death.

  David Douglas Duncan

  Eye, Marine, Fire

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