Battalion Quotes

Colonel Sven Haverstrom of the Dalbreck Royal Guard, Assigned Steward of Crown Prince Jaxon. The others laughed at that title. They were free with their jest and jabs, even with an officer who outranked them, but Sven gave it back as good as he got it.
Officer Jeb McCance, Falworth Special Forces.
Officer Tavish Baird, Tactician, Fourth Battalion.
Officer Orrin del Aransas, Falworth First Archer Assault Unit. ~ Mary E. Pearson

In one typical battalion, of forty-one officers who had landed on Sicily in July, only nine remained, and six of them had been wounded, according ~ Rick Atkinson

Watch the road! Don't look at me, look at the road. Except it's not really a road. It's a track. What are these damn bushes, and why are they here?"
"It's fuchsia. Lovely, aren't they?"
They made her think of blood spatter, possibly resulting from a massacre by a battalion of farm animals. ~ J.D. Robb

Here we are, kiddies, sitting like a bug in a rug, snugly, surrounded by a battalion of bloodsuckers who wish no more than to sip freely of my bonded, 100 proof hemoglobin. Have a drink, men, this one's really on me. ~ Richard Matheson

War is like a game of chess ... but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can never be known to anyone ... Success never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers, and least of all on position. ~ Leo Tolstoy

The only black battalion on Iwo Jima was a small munitions supply unit that came to the beach. ~ Clint Eastwood

I used to write letters to the wounded in the Palace Hotel, and I used to drive a station wagon with blood in bottles to a battalion aid station. ~ Martha Gellhorn

It'll be an honour to serve you, sir," he added.
"In a French battalion?" Gudin teased him.
"If you don't flog, sir, and you don't carve up pricks, then it'll be more than an honour. ~ Bernard Cornwell

Then, just as d'Alembord was about to sell his commission and retire to one of his prospective father-in-law's farms, Napoleon had returned to France. Colonel Ford, worried that he was losing his veteran Captain of skirmishers, had begged d'Alembord to stay for the impending campaign and implicit in the Colonel's plea was a promise that d'Alembord would receive the next vacant majority in the battalion. That enticement was sufficient. The captaincy would sell for fifteen hundred pounds which was a good enough fortune for any young man contemplating marriage, but a majority would fetch two thousand six hundred pounds, and so d'Alembord, with some misgivings, but reassured by the prospects of a fine marriage portion, had agreed to Ford's request. ~ Bernard Cornwell

From the first, I realized that being organized was the key to real compassion. There was a natural tendency for Annie, me, and other key leaders to flock to the bedsides of injured paratroopers or spend time with grieving, frightened family members. But organizing and focusing the paratroopers and spouses of the battalion allowed us to have a greater impact. ~ Stanley McChrystal

Maybe the same essential download was also being delivered to other people - a massive, compassionate battalion of us - at the same time. ~ Jonathan Talat Phillips

Dad mistook - for some reason unbeknownst to me - he mistook his family for a platoon of Marines. I mean, he - the exact same thing he brought to the disciplining of a squadron, a battalion, a platoon, he brought to the disciplining of his children. He ran the house - he had Saturday morning inspections for us, he had white-glove inspections for us as kids. ~ Terry Gross

My father, a captain in the 5th Battalion of the Queen's Own Cameron Highlanders, landed in Normandy the day after D-Day. ~ Craig Brown

You lose them the same way your lose a battalion; by errors of judgment, orders that are impossible to fulfill, and through impossible conditions. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Then the soldiers of the governor took Jesus into the praetorium, and they gathered the whole battalion before him. And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!" And they spat upon him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. And when they had mocked him, they stripped him of the robe, and put his own clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn't know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel. ~ Eugene B. Sledge

Without core convictions to help us navigate, we stand uneasily on shifting sand, and we lack the solid footing with which to stage a life of principle and character. Today is a call to biblical conviction ... What is needed today is a battalion of believers who follow Christ and stand for Him and His truth. ~ Dennis Rainey

What America is thirsting for now is a battalion of strong, down-to-earth 'doers' - managers, frontline activists, business and social entrepreneurs engaged in tackling America's manifold problems of unemployment, education, and competitive slouch. ~ Tina Brown

We are at war, and in time of war there is only one rule. Form your battalion and fight. ~ Kermit Roosevelt III

Marching thus at night, a battalion is doubly impressive. The silent monster is full of restrained power; resolute in its onward sweep, impervious to danger, it looks a menacing engine of destruction, steady to its goal, and certain of its mission. ~ Patrick MacGill

He ought to be up there, guarding the pass, or at least striving in some way to keep his country.
His. The thought never failed to thrill him. It was worth death. Worth almost anything to become again the person he had been before the Herran War. Yet here he was, gambling the frail odds of success.
Looking for a plant.
He imagined Cheat's reaction if he could see him now, scouring the ground for a wrinkle of faded green. There would be mockery, which Arin could shrug off, and rage, which Arin could withstand--even understand. But he couldn't bear what he saw in his mind.
Cheat's eyes cutting to Kestrel. Targeting her, stoking his hatred with one more reason.
And the more Arin tried to shield her, the more Cheat's dislike grew.
Arin's hands clenched in the cold. He blew on them, tucked his fingers under his arms, and began to walk.
He should let her go. Let her slip into the countryside, to the isolated farmlands that had no idea of the revolution.
If so, what then? Kestrel would alert her father. She'd find a way. Then the full force of the empire's military would fall on the peninsula, when Arin doubted that the Herrani could deal even with the battalion that would come through the pass in less than two days.
If he let Kestrel go, it was the same as murdering his people.
Arin nudged a rock with his boot and wanted to kick it.
He didn't. He walked.
Thoughts chipped at his sanity, proposing solutions only to reveal pr ~ Marie Rutkoski

I'm sorry," I say, bringing my hand over my mouth. "I'm so sorry, Erik."

Erik shakes his head. "I'm useless to you now," he says. "I have no army for you, Theo. I can't lead a battalion. I'm not even sure I could lead the way out of this tent."

"You're blind," Heron says, finding his voice again finally.

"Half," Erik says, motioning to the swollen eye. "This one should heal, I think. But with no depth perception and a narrower field of vision - "

"No," Heron says. "I mean you're blind - you aren't dead. You want to help, you want to save your people, then do it. You don't have to lead an army to do that. ~ Laura Sebastian

Save for minor ailments and accident, my battalion is practically immune from sickness; colds come and go as a matter of course, sprains and cuts claim momentary attention, but otherwise the health of the battalion is perfect. ~ Patrick MacGill

Peacekeeping there is still just totally ineffective. The UN is now saying they are sending reinforcements in the area, but I have no particular reason to believe that they will be any stronger than the force there. In Southern Kordofan, it's mostly an Egyptian battalion, and that's really problematic because the population already doesn't trust the Egyptians; they think they're on payroll of the north. So we already have a force that is seen as compromised. ~ Rebecca Hamilton

Srebrenica was officially 'protected' not just by UN mandate but by a 400-strong peacekeeping contingent of armed Dutch soldiers. But when Mladic's men arrived the Dutch battalion laid down its arms and offered no resistance whatsoever as Serbian troops combed the Muslim community, systematically separating men and boys from the rest. The next day, after Mladic had given his 'word of honor as an officer' that the men would not be harmed, his soldiers marched the Muslim males, including boys as young as thirteen, out into the fields around Srebrenica. In the course of the next four days nearly all of them - 7,400 - were killed. The Dutch soldiers returned safely home to Holland. ~ Tony Judt

A large battalion of my thoughts was marching determinedly on its way to Annoyance but it was distracted and took a wrong turn at Adam and found, to its surprise, that it had ended up in the entirely different destination of Dreamy Contentment. ~ Marian Keyes

Captain Christopher Phelan
1st Battalion Rifle Brigade
Cape Mapan
Crimea

June 1855

Dearest Christopher,

I can't write to you again.

I'm not who you think I am.

I didn't mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.

Come back, please come home and find me.

--[unsigned] ~ Lisa Kleypas

He started to talk about my writing and I stopped listening. I was embarrassed and it made me feel sick for people to talk about my writing to my face, and I looked at him and his marked-for-death look and I thought, you con man conning me with your con. I've seen a battalion in the dust on the road, a third of them for death or worse and no special marks on them, the dust was for all, and you and your marked for death look, you con man, making a living out of your death. Now you will con me. Con not, that thou be not conned. Death was not conning with him. It was coming all right. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love. ~ King George

Huxley: "Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?"
Bryce: "No."
Huxley: "Seabags Brown does."
Bryce: "I don't see what that has to do..."
Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?"
Bryce: "Not much."
Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too."
Bryce: "I don't..."
Huxley: " What do you know about astronomy?"
Bryce: "A little."
Huxley: "Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship."
Bryce: "This is most puzzling."
Huxley: "What about Homer, ever read Homer?"
Bryce: "Of course I've read Homer."
Huxley: "In the original Greek?"
Bryce: "No"
Huxley: "Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek."
Bryce: "Would you kindly get to the point?"
Huxley: "The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass. ~ Leon Uris

As a battalion commander in France, it was said, he had once pulled a pistol on a hesitant junior officer and shot him in the buttocks. "There," Allen said. "You're out. You're wounded." Such gestures would be unnecessary here. ~ Rick Atkinson

when I look at people fighting with ammunition and weapons of all kind I ponder within me;somehow as a cynic. Ammunition's and weapons are good for war; Yes,they are better necessities to winning battle but the best choice of weapons are neither ammunition nor the strength of a battalion of army but wisdom; a pen on a paper backed by a great mind ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Come, get out of the way, boys
Quick, get out of the way
You'd better watch what you say, boys
Better watch what you say

We've rammed in your harbor and tied to your port
And our pistols are hungry and our tempers are short
So bring your daughters around to the port
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys

We're the Cops of the World
We pick and choose as please, boys
Pick and choose as please
You'd best get down on your knees, boys

Best get down on your knees
We're hairy and horny and ready to shack
We don't care if you're yellow or black
Just take off your clothes and lie down on your back

'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World
Our boots are needing a shine, boys
Boots are needing a shine

But our Coca-cola is fine, boys
Coca-cola is fine
We've got to protect all our citizens fair
So we'll send a battalion for everyone there

And maybe we'll leave in a couple of years
'Cause we're the Cops of the World, boys
We're the Cops of the World
Dump the reds in a pile, boys

Dump the reds in a pile
You'd better wipe of that smile, boys
Better wipe off that smile
We'll spit through the streets of the cities we wreck

We'll find you a leader that you can't elect
Those treaties we sighned were a pain in the neck
'Cause we're the Cops of the Worl ~ Phil Ochs

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon ~ Allen Ginsberg

Never send a battalion to take a hill if a regiment is available. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

I proudly served in the United States Army during the Korean War as an artillery operations specialist in the all-black 503rd Field Artillery Battalion in the Second Infantry Division. ~ Charles B. Rangel

In bitter safety I awake, unfriended;
And while the dawn begins with slashing rain
I think of the Battalion in the mud.
'When are you going out to them again?
Are they not still your brothers through our blood? ~ Siegfried Sassoon

Raphael had taken notice of Greg at lunchtime - it was hard not to being that he was the biggest human at school. Raphael was pleased to have a class with him. I knew this because he said so in his non-stop Gregory Johnson commentary: What astounding athletic skills that Gregory Johnson must have. Gregory Johnson could slay a battalion of enemy soldiers wielding nothing but a sword. What a pity Gregory Johnson's soul was not meant to become an angel. My hairstyle would look exceptional on Gregory Johnson. Evidently, the human-first-name-only-concept was lost to Archangels. ~ Ashlan Thomas

The day after the prison was transferred to the military intelligence command, they had an entire battalion - 1,200, 1,500 soldiers - arrive at Abu Ghraib just for force protection alone. ~ Janis Karpinski

What the hell is so funny?"
"First of all," she said, her confidence growing, "they're not my MASTERS. I don't have a MASTER. Second, they don't need a battalion to take you down. And third
and this is really the most important point
whoever said I came alone? ~ Derek Landy

Towards the end of the Second World War, when I was sixteen years old, I was taken out of school and forced into the army. After a brief period of training at a base in Wüzburg, I arrived at the front, which by that time had already crossed the Rhine into Germany. There were well over a hundred in my company, all of whom were very young. One evening the company commander sent me with a message to battalion headquarters. I wandered all night long through destroyed, burning villages and farms, and when in the morning I returned to my company I found only the dead, nothing but dead, overrun by a combined bomber and tank assault. I could see only dead and empty faces, where the day before I had shared childhood fears and youthful laughter. I remember nothing but a wordless cry. Thus I see myself to this very day, and behind this memory all my childhood dreams crumble away. ~ Johann Baptist Metz

Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Parry of 2nd Battalion the Cheshire Regiment at once requisitioned 'extra attractive women' from the cantonment magistrate at Amballa, arguing that he had only six women for 400 men. ~ Richard Holmes

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. ~ Peter Scott

I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation. ~ Lawrence Durrell

There is no destiny for all of mankind, only for some. To recover their divinity, but not as the "unconscious Gods," but with full consciousness, as a Total-Man, in the sense of the Jungian "individuation," a God conscious of Himself which is only possible to achieve on this earth. To achieve this is the meaning of Esoteric Hitlerism. When one arrives at such a state, one becomes the UFO, or the Vimana itself, without need of an external new science or a new technology, because one has achieved a parallel world, or a new place-situation, where we shall meet the Fuhrer and the warriors of the Last Battalion. This will be the real space colonization as the ultimate expression of the Faustian soul. ~ Miguel Serrano

By this time, around 0745, unknown others were doing the same, whether NCOs or junior officers or, in some cases, privates. Staying on the beach meant certain death; retreat was not possible; someone had to lead; men took the burden on themselves and did. Bingham put it this way: The individual and small-unit initiative carried the day. Very little, if any, credit can be accorded company, battalion, or regimental commanders for their tactical prowess and/or their coordination of the action. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

There are other colors, pink for instance: pink is supposed to weaken your enemies, make them go soft on you, which must be why it's used for baby girls. It's a wonder the military hasn't got onto this. Pale-pink helmets, with rosettes, a whole battalion, onto the beachhead, over the top in pink. Now is the time for me to make the switch, I could use a little pink right now. ~ Margaret Atwood

In the World War nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes, improvised or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of leading, leading, leading. ~ J. F. C. Fuller

when you do great things, think as if you missed the mark by an inch; walk as if you are yet to face the greatest task; talk as if you are yet to have the best preparation for the momentous moment and dream as if you are fighting a battalion of tasks ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

How are you off for drink? We have got everything in the world on board here. Can you catch?' and almost immediately a large bottle of champagne was thrown from the gunboat to the shore. It fell in the waters of the Nile, but happily where a gracious Providence decreed them to be shallow and the bottom soft. I nipped into the water up to my knees, and reaching down seized the precious gift which we bore in triumph back to our mess.

This kind of war was full of fascinating thrills. It was not like the Great War. Nobody expected to be killed. Here and there in every regiment or battalion, half a dozen, a score, at the worst thirty or fourty, would pay forfeit; but to the great mass of those who took part in the little wars of Britain in those vanished and light-hearted days, this was only a sporting element in a splendid game. Most of us were fated to se a war where the hazards were reversed, where death was the general expectation and severe wounds were counted as lucky escapes, where whole brigades were shorn away under the steel flail of artillery and machine-guns, where the survivors of one tornado knew that they would certainly be consumed in the next or the next after that.

Everything depends upon the scale of events. We young men who lay down to sleep that night within three miles of 60,000 well-armed fanatical Dervishes, expecting every moment their violent onset or inrush and sure of fighting at latest with the dawn – we may perhaps be pardoned if ~ Winston S. Churchill

If your tank battalion has the choice of a good highway or a bad road, take the bad road ~ Edward N. Luttwak

Like a battalion of marines at roll call, her neck hairs marshaled to five-alarm status. She stumbled back to her desk, jerked open the botton drawer, retrieved a pair of Nighthawk binoculars, fixed the scopes on him, and fiddled with the focus. Gotcha. Hair the colour of coal. Chocolate brown eyes. A five-o'clock shadow ringing his craggy jawline. Handsome as the day was long ...
He sauntered towards her, oozing charisma from every pore. Charlee forgot to breathe. And then he committed the gravest sin of all, knocking her world helter-skelter. The scoundrel smiled. ~ Lori Wilde

I hate to call it crossfire, what the rapid action battalion attributes for the custodial deaths, as there must be two parties in any such incident. But the reality is the just found body of the victim. ~ Irene Khan

Adora Belle looked down at a face that would take a frantic battalion of mothers to love, ~ Terry Pratchett

I believe that one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear.One has to up among the forward brigade commanders, even as far as battalion commanders, especially if one is fighting a defensive action. One simply has to know what is going on. ~ Christopher Vokes

For if there are no waving flags and marching songs at the barricades as Walter marches out with his little battalion, it is not because the battle lacks nobility. On the contrary, he has picked up in his way, still imperfect and wobbly in his small view of human destiny, what I believe Arthur Miller once called "the golden threat of history." He becomes, in spite of those who are too intrigued with despair and hatred of man to see it, King Oedipus refusing to tear out his eyes, but attacking the Oracle instead. He is that last Jewish patriot manning his rifle at Warsaw; he is that young girl who swam into sharks to save a friend a few weeks ago; he is Anne Frank, still believing in people; he is the nine small heroes of Little Rock; he is Michelangelo creating David and Beethoven bursting forth with the Ninth Symphony. He is all those things because he has finally reached out in his tiny moment and caught that sweet essence which is human dignity, and it shines like the old star-touched dream that it is in his eyes. ~ Lorraine Hansberry

But to betray her with battalion ... That is against decency, against Nature ... And for him, Christopher tietjens, to come down to the level of the men you met here! ~ Ford Madox Ford

In Holland, Ron was the battalion S-2 Intelligence officer for Colonel Robert Strayer. While on reconnaissance, Ron paddled across the Neder Rhine alone at night. The enemy opened fire on him and he dove into the water with a German bullet in his butt. He finished recrossing the river by swimming and was found bleeding and exhausted on the south shore. In spite of his wound, he brought back critical information and later received the Silver Star for that adventure. ~ Marcus Brotherton

It was five months since Haig had told the British War Council: 'The machine gun is a much over-rated weapon and two per battalion is more than sufficient.' He was once again being proved terribly wrong. ~ Martin Gilbert

IT IS SO EASY TO GIVE IN
I have been thinking about the man who gives in.
Have you heard about him? In this story
A twenty-eight-foot pine meets a small wind
And the pine bends all the way over to the ground.
I was persuaded," the pine says. "It was convincing."
A mouse visits a cat, and the cat agrees
To drown all her children. "What could I do?"
The cat said. "The mouse needed that."
It's strange. I've heard that some people conspire
In their own ruin. A fool says, "You don't
Deserve to live." The man says, "I'll string this rope
Over that branch, maybe you can find a box."
The Great One with her necklace of skulls says,
I need twenty thousand corpses." "Tell you what,"
The General says, "we have an extra battalion
Over there on the hill. We don't need all these men. ~ Robert Bly

The Germans have done wonderful work. Not long ago, a German battle group battalion conducted a very impressive counterinsurgency operation in a portion of Baghlan province. I think these are the first counterinsurgency operations conducted by any German element after World War II. And they did a very impressive job. ~ David Petraeus

Another success is the post-office, with its educating energy augmented by cheapness and guarded by a certain religious sentimentin mankind; so that the power of a wafer or a drop of wax or gluten to guard a letter, as it flies over sea over land and comes to its address as if a battalion of artillery brought it, I look upon as a fine meter of civilization. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

In marked contrast to the relaxed, typically Latin attitude of the Dominicans the Protestant missionaries were still proceeding at full blast with the fight for souls. These North American evangelists of strictly fundamentalist inclination combined in a curious fashion strict adhesion to the literal meaning of the Old Testament With mastery of the most modern technology. Most of them came from small towns in the Bible Belt, armed with unshakably clear consciences and a rudimentary smattering of theology, convinced that they alone were the repositories of Christian values now abolished elsewhere. Totally ignorant of the vast world, despite their transplantation, and taking the few articles of morality accepted in the rural Amenca of their childhoods to be a universal credo, they strove bravely to spread these principles of salvation all around them.
Their rustic faith was well served by a flotilla of light aircraft, a powerful radio, an ultra-modern hospital and four-wheel-drive vehicles -- in short, all the equipment that a battalion of crusaders dropped behind enemy lines needed. ~ Philippe Descola