Up Front (1945)
Context: I don't make the infantryman look noble, because he couldn't look noble even if he tried. Still there is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and niceties.
Their nobility and dignity come from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help each other. <!-- p. 14
Bill Mauldin: Quotes about the trip
Bill Mauldin was American editorial cartoonist. Explore interesting quotes on way.
Bill Mauldin:
30
quotes
1
like
Up Front (1945)
Context: Many celebrities and self-appointed authorities have returned from quick tours of war zones (some of them getting within hearing distance of the shooting) and have put out their personal theories to batteries of photographers and reporters. Some say the American soldier is the same clean-cut young man who left his home; others say morale is sky-high at the front because everybody's face is shining for the great Cause.
They are wrong. The combat man isn't the same clean-cut lad because you don't fight a kraut by Marquess of Queensberry rules. You shoot him in the back, you blow him apart with mines, you kill or maim him the quickest and most effective way you can with the least danger to yourself. He does the same to you.
He tricks you and cheats you, and if you don't beat him at his own game you don't live to appreciate your own nobleness.
But you don't become a killer. No normal man who has smelled and associated with death ever wants to see any more of it. In fact, the only men who are even going to want to bloody noses in a fist fight after this war will be those who want people to think they were tough combat men, when they weren't. The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry. <!-- p. 12 - 14
As quoted in The Good War (1985) by Studs Terkel
Context: Willie and Joe are my creatures. Or am I their creature? They are not social reformers. They're much more reactive. They're not social scientists and I'm not a social scientist. We're moral people who do not belong to the moral majority. One of my principles is, Thou shall not bully. The only answer is to muscle the bully. I'm very combative that way.
Up Front (1945)