'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition'
When the classical statesman Demosthenes was asked what was first, second, and third in oratory he replied 'Action, action, action', and it is perhaps for this reason that so many famous quotations have come from battlefields. Some have been inspirational - we think of Winston Churchill in 1940 'Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour"' - while others have been short and to the point: the American general Anthony McAuliffe gave a very brief reply to the German demand for surrender at Bastogne, Belgium, in 1944: 'Nuts!'.
Another American general, Israel Putnam, gave some practical advice at Bunker Hill in 1775: 'Men, you are all marksmen - don't one of you fire until you see the white of their eyes'. Napoleon's saying 'An army marches on its stomach' is of course well-known, as is the French general Pierre Bosquet's view of the charge of the Light Brigade, 'C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre [It is magnificent, but it is not war]'. At Waterloo the Duke of Wellington's command was simple: 'Up Guards and at them!'
Some incidents have caught the imagination: the dying Sir Philip Sidney giving his water-bottle to another wounded soldier at Zutphen in 1586 with the words 'Thy necessity is yet greater than mine', or the Union general John Sedgwick asserting 'They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance' immediately prior to being killed by enemy fire at the battle of Spotsylvania in the American Civil War. Another striking image is that of the American naval chaplain Howell Forgy saying 'Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition' to sailors at Pearl Harbour.
Moving on to more recent times there are the words of the British journalist Brian Hanrahan on the number of British aeroplanes joining the raid on Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands: 'I counted them all out and I counted them all back', the popular interpretation of Saddam Hussein's description of the approaching Gulf War: 'The mother of battles', and the speech of British soldier Tim Collins to the men under his command on arrival in Iraq in 2003: 'I expect you to rock their world. Wipe them out if that is what they choose. But if you are ferocious in battle remember to be magnanimous in victory'.
Read the stories of the most dramatic, memorable, and important conflicts in world history in OUP's new A Guide to Battles: Decisive Conflicts in History edited by military historian and TV presenter, Richard Holmes, and prolific writer of military history, Martin Marix Evans. The book is publishing on 26th February 2009. Please click here for more details.
Susan Ratcliffe
19/02/2009
 Printer friendly version
| 
