The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.

The American public highly overrates its sense of humor. We're great belly laughers and prat fallers, but we never really did have a real sense of humor. Not satire anyway. We're a fatheaded, cotton-picking society. When we realize finally that we aren't God's given children, we'll understand satire. Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.

Humor is really laughing off a hurt, grinning at misery.

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

If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

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