World War Ii Soldier Quotes & Sayings

War is always a negative-sum outcome. It subtracts, removes, empties. No one who has witnessed combat can, with any honesty, describe it another way. "We know more about war than we know about peace," said five-star general Omar Bradley in an Armistice Day address a few years after the end of World War II, "more about killing than we know about living." Think of it like this. For every soldier's grave in places such as Arlington or Anzio or Normandy, there are more forgotten burial sites for civilians - parents, children, newlyweds, and newborns - claimed in some way by the same fighting. — Brian Murphy

The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them. — Guy Sajer

In researching this volume, I interviewed veterans who had been at the front during World War II. I read countless books, examined film footage, and listened to many detailed and intense stories firsthand, but the one comment that affected me the most came from a former soldier who lowered his gaze to the tabletop and said, 'I never watch war movies. — Hiromu Arakawa

War always reaches the depths of horror because of idiots who perpetuate terror from generation to generation under the pretext of vengeance. — Guy Sajer

What's it like to be that goofy little soldier, scared stiff, with his bayonet aimed at Christ? What's it like to have been a woman in a defense-plant job during World War II? What's it like to be a kid at the front lines? It's all funny and tragic at the same time — Studs Terkel

Only happy people have nightmares, from overeating. For those who live a nightmare reality, sleep is a black hole, lost in time, like death. — Guy Sajer

No time to spare: the expression assumed its full significance, as so many expressions do in wartime. — Guy Sajer

Then there was the war, and I married it because there was nothing else when I reached the age of falling in love. — Guy Sajer

I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive. — Guy Sajer

In the US. Infantry Manual published during World War II, the soldier was told what to do if a live grenade fell into the trench where he and others were sitting: to wrap himself around the grenade so as to at least save the others. (If no one "volunteered," all would be killed, and there were only a few seconds to decide who would be the hero. — Anatol Rapoport

I've played a super soldier, a doctor, a World War II fighter pilot, a professional footballer, and a meth-dealing junkie. All those things allow you to educate yourself about different worlds that you have to get familiar with. — Robert Kazinsky

When World War II started on September 1, 1939, the German army contained 3.74 million soldiers and 103 divisions. — John Mearsheimer

As I remember his laugh, there was nothing mad about it, it was more like the laugh of someone who has been the victim of a practical joke, a farce in which he had believed until suddenly he realized his folly. — Guy Sajer

The prospect of going home again scared them. They couldn't imagine how they could ever settle to it. How they could just walk around the streets and pretend to be normal, look women in the eye again after what they had done and seen, ride on trams, sit at a table with a white cloth, and control their hands and just slowly eat. It was the little things that scared them. The big things you could hide in. It was little ones that gave a man away. — David Malouf

In World War II in Germany, we had a ration for one U.S. soldier, or one allied soldier for every twenty inhabitants. The ratio in Iraq is about one for a hundred and sixty. — William Odom