M: McAuliffe “Nuts” – Tu Mu Military Quotes and Quotations
“Nuts”
– Brig. General Anthony C. McAuliffe
Brig. General Anthony C. McAuliffe was Acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division during the Battle of the Bulge in World War 11. He was in charge of the defense of Bastogne on December 22nd 1944 when the garrison was called on by advancing German forces to surrender. McAuliffe’s initial response was ‘Aw, Nuts!’ When he came to compile a written reply he could think of nothing more appropriate: ‘To the German Commander: NUTS! The American Commander.’ Bastogne was successfully held by the Americans and Anthony C. McAuliffe became immortalized for a single word “NUTS!”.
“If your country’s worth living in, it’s worth fighting for … you can’t fight a war without losing lives. Although no one wants killing, sometimes it has to be. To keep your country free sometimes you have to fight and die. It was to be a great honor to us.”
– Billy Mabin
Shankill Road, 1916 Somme victim of the 36th (Ulster) Division, The Road to the Somme
“A general must be shot or befriended – but never hurt.”
– Salvador de Madariaga, Spanish politician and historian
Those far distant, storm-beaten ships, upon which the Grand Army never looked, stood between it and the dominion of the world.
– Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914): The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (1892)
“”The allies we gain by victory will turn against us upon the bare whisper of our defeat”
– Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, Naval Historian 1911
“Free supplies and open retreat are two essentials to the safety of an army or a fleet”
– Rear Admiral Mahan
“Only destruction of the enemy can be called victory”
– Admiral Stepan O. Makarov, 1904, Port Arthur
“To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less.”
– Andre Malraux (“Man’s Hope”)
“A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination.”
– Nelson Mandela
“For a strong adversary (corps) the opposition of twenty-four squadrons and twelve guns ought not to have appeared very serious, but in war the psychological factors are often decisive. An adversary who feels inferior is in reality so.”
– Field Marshal Carl Gustav Baron Von Mannerheim, 1953
“The warrior’s gift is to willingly storm Hell
that Heaven may remain unstained.”
– R.V.A. Marcell
“Stonewall Jackson would rather lose one man to hard marching, than lose five men to hard battle. Perspiration saves blood!”
– Colonel Marttinen (to his tired and battle weary men in Infantry Regiment 61)
“Patriotism…is the egg from which wars are hatched.”
– de Maupassant
“An Army cannot preserve good order unless its soldiers have meat in their bellies, coats on their backs and shoes on their feet.”
– The Duke of Marlborough, 1703.
“Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.”
– Groucho Marx
“When a general complains of the morale of his troops, the time has come to look at his own.”
– George C. Marshall, American general
“We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand, of overwhelming power on the other.”
– George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff
“There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
– General George C. Marshall
“Battles are won through the ability of men to express concrete ideas in clear and unmistakable language.”
– Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, U.S. Army
“The starting point for the understanding of war is the understanding of human nature.”
– S.L.A. Marshall, Men Against Fire
“Also remember that in any man’s dark hour, a pat on the back and an earnest handclasp may work a small miracle”
– Brigadier-General S.L.A Marshall, “The Armed Forces Officer” 1950
“A political problem thought of in military terms eventually becomes a military problem.”
– George C. Marshall
“There is no limit to the good you can do if you don’t care who gets the credit.”
– General George C. Marshall
“Sighted sub, sank same.”
– Enlisted pilot Donald F. Mason: radio dispatch, Jan. 28, 1942
Mason believed that he had sunk a German U-boat off Argentina, Newfoundland.
“Simple sounds simple”
– CWO2 Mayfield (Operation Iraqi Freedom – 2003)
“Modern war has become a struggle for men’s minds as well as for their bodies”.
– Brigadier General Robert McClure, Korean War
“Today the real test of power is not the capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it”
– Anne O’Hare McCormick
“As an American asked to serve, I was prepared to fight, to be wounded, to be captured, and even prepared to die, but I was not prepared to be abandoned.”
– Former POW Eugene “Red” McDaniel
“Everybody in Afghanistan ought to know we’re coming in and hells coming with us.”
– former National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane
(CBS Face the Nations, Oct. 28 2001.)
“It doesn’t require any particular bravery to stand on the floor of the Senate and urge our boys in Vietnam to fight harder, and if this war mushrooms into a major conflict and a hundred thousand young Americans are killed, it won’t be US Senators who die. It will be American soldiers who are too young to qualify for the senate”
– George McGovern
“I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in”
– George McGovern
“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.”
– Francis Meehan
“We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.”
– Prime Minister of Israel, Golda Meir, 3 October 1969
“Lo nislach lachem shegramtem lanu lahrog et bneihem.”
Translation:
“We will not forgive you for making us kill your sons.”
– Prime Minster Golada Meir addressing the Arab nations
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
– H. L. Mencken
“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.”
– Henry Louis Mencken
“War may make a fool of man, but it by no means degrades him; on the contrary, it tends to exalt him, and its net effects are much like those of motherhood on women.”
– Henry L. Mencken
“If the enemy stays spirited it is difficult to crush him.”
– Musashi Miyamoto
“Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it’s be brave or else be killed.”
– Margaret Mitchell
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
– John Stewart Mill
“Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe.”
– Milton
“Never forget that a corpse never cares how it got to be so cold. Commanders should always keep in mind that they wage war through a wall of human blood, sweat, and tears whose pain they can never truly feel and whose loss they can never truly know. For they are become death: they are the destroyer of worlds.”
– Ellen Mogensen
“The Army is the most outstanding institution in every country, for it alone makes possible the existence of all civic institutions”
– Field Marshal Helmut Graf von Moltke (1800-1891)
“In the long run luck is given only to the efficient.”
– Helmuth von Moltke
“No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
– Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke.
“The strongest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.”
– Michel de Montagne, 1533-1592
“The number of medals on an officer’s breast varies in inverse proportion to the square of the distance of his duties from the front line.”
– Charles Edward Montague
“War hath no fury like a non-combatant”
– Charles Edward Montague
” It is a paradox to hope for victory without fighting. The goal of the man who makes war is to fight in the open field to win a victory”
– Field Marshal Prince Raimond Montecuccoli, 1703
“I will take care of the Spaniards in due time”
– Montezuma II (Moctezuma II) c1470–1520, last Aztec emperor of Mexico 1502–20
“I’ve got to go to meet God – and explain all those men I killed at Alamein”
– Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery, near the end of his life in 1976
“If we loose the war in the air, we loose the war, and we loose it quickly”
– Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery of Alamein
“The morale of the soldier is the greatest single factor in war.”
-Field marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery
“American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some presidents say on T.V., they don’t fight for mom, apple pie, the American flag. They fight for one another.”
– Col Hal Moore (7th Calvary, Vietnam)
“If you wish to feign confusion in order to lure the enemy on, you must first have perfect discipline; if you wish to display timidity in order to entrap the enemy, you must have extreme courage; if you wish to parade your weakness in order to make the enemy over-confident, you must have exceeding strength”
– Tu Mu / Du Mu, (803–852) leading Chinese poet of the late Tang Dynasty
“If I wish to wrest an advantage from the enemy, I must not fix my mind on that alone, but allow for the possibility of the enemy also doing some harm to me… If I wish to extricate myself from a dangerous position, I must consider not only the enemy’s ability to injure me, but also my own ability to gain an advantage over the enemy”
– Tu Mu / Du Mu
“If the enemy is the invading party, we can cut his line of communications and occupy the roads by which he will have to return; if we are the invaders, we may direct our attack against the sovereign himself.”
– Tu Mu / Du Mu
I can’t guarantee that these quotations are correct or true, but I have tried to verify as many of the quotes as possible. Please contact me if you find any errors in the quotes, have some additional information about the quotes or if you know any more quotations that are not listed here.
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