Posted on 02/05/2005 2:46:01 PM PST by mdittmar
The bell has been rung.
It is the fighter speaking and he knows his feelings aren't geared to the politically correct sissies - there is nothing politically "correct" about war.
General Mattis, Bless you for your days, months and years spent defending all of us, I salute you for your bravery,
you "orate" as does our President, honest and blunt.
Thank you sir.
Still, they don't brag about it.
I've said my piece.
"Be Seated.
Men, this stuff we hear about America wanting to stay out of the war, not wanting to fight, is a lot of bullsh*t. Americans love to fight - traditionally. All real Americans love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble player; the fastest runner; the big league ball players; the toughest boxers. Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win - all the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in h**l for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost, not ever will lose a war, for the very thought of losing is hateful to an American.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you here today would die in a major battle. Death must not be feared. Every man is frightened at first in battle. If he says he isn't, he's a goddamn liar. Some men are cowards, yes! But they fight just the same, or get the h**l shamed out of them watching men who do fight who are just as scared. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour. For some it takes days. But the real man never lets fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to this country and his innate manhood.
All through your army career you men have bitched about "This chickenshit drilling." That is all for a purpose. Drilling and discipline must be maintained in any army if for only one reason -- INSTANT OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS AND TO CREATE CONSTANT ALERTNESS. I don't give a damn for a man who is not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready. A man to continue breathing must be alert at all times. If not, sometime a German son-of-a-b**ch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit.
There are 400 neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily all because one man went to sleep on his job -- but they were German graves for we caught the bastard asleep before his officers did. An Army is a team. Lives, sleeps, eats, fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is a lot of crap. The bilious bastards who wrote that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting, under fire, than they do about f**king. We have the best food, the finest equipment, the best spirit and the best fighting men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor sons-of-bitches we are going up against. By God, I do!
My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullsh*t, either. The kind of man I want under me is like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Lugar against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand and busted h**l out of the Boche with the helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German: All this with a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you.
All real heroes are not story book combat fighters either. Every man in the army plays a vital part. Every little job is essential. Don't ever let down, thinking your role is unimportant. Every man has a job to do. Every man is a link in the great chain. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells overhead, turned yellow and jumped headlong into the ditch? He could say to himself, "They won't miss me -- just one in thousands." What if every man said that? Where in h**l would we be now? No, thank God, Americans don't say that! Every man does his job; every man serves the whole. Every department, every unit, is important to the vast scheme of things. The Ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the Quartermaster to bring up the food and clothes to us -- for where we're going there isn't a h**l of a lot to steal. Every last man in the mess hall, even the one who heats the water to keep us from getting the GI shits has a job to do. Even the chaplain is important, for if we get killed and if he is not there to bury us we'd all go to h**l.
Each man must not only think of himself, but of his buddy fighting beside him. We don't want yellow cowards in this army. They should all be killed off like flies. If not they will go back home after the war and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I ever saw in the African campaign was the fellow I saw on top of a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were plowing toward Tunis. I stopped and asked what the h**l he was doing up there at that time. He answered, "Fixing the wire, sir." "Isn't it a little unhealthy right now?," I asked. "Yes sir, but this goddamn wire's got to be fixed." There was a real soldier. There was a man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty might appear at the time.
You should have seen those trucks on the road to Gabes. The drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they rolled over those son-of-a-bitching roads, never stopping, never faltering from their course, with shells bursting around them all the time. We got through on good old American guts. Many of these men drove over forty consecutive hours. These weren't combat men. But they were soldiers with a job to do. They did it -- and in a whale of a way they did it. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost. All the links in the chain pulled together and that chain became unbreakable.
Don't forget, you don't know I'm here. No word of the fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the h**l became of me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamn Germans. Someday I want them to raise up on their hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ, it's the goddamn Third Army and that son-of-a-b**ch Patton again."
We want to get the h**l over there. We want to get over there and clear the goddamn thing up. You can't win a war lying down. The quicker we clean up this goddamn mess, the quicker we can take a jaunt against the purple pissing Japs an clean their nest out too, before the Marines get all the goddamn credit.
Sure, we all want to be home. We want this thing over with. The quickest way to get it over is to get the bastards. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin. When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a Boche will get him eventually, and the h**l with that idea. The h**l with taking it. My men don't dig foxholes. I don't want them to. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. And don't give the enemy time to dig one. We'll win this war but we'll win it only by fighting and by showing the Germans we've got more guts than they have.
There is one great thing you men will all be able to say when you go home. You may thank God for it. Thank God, that at least, thirty years from now, when you are sitting around the fireside with your grandson on your knees, and he asks you what you did in the Great War, you won't have to cough and say, "I shoveled shit in Louisiana."
Source: http://www.military-quotes.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=605
If you can walk the walk, it's not bragging.
Amen
Critics take shots at net-centric warfare planning
Ralph Peters, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and the author of 20 fiction and nonfiction books:
"It's not about the technology you've got, but you're employment of it," Peters said. "Technology still doesn't win wars by itself."
The United States went into OIF with technology second to none, he said. Troops were supposed to prove that technology, coupled with airpower, could win a quick war and guarantee the peace. But the number of troops sent to Iraq was inadequate and that proved to be an insurmountable hurdle for technology to overcome, he said.
Another huge hurdle was the language barrier. Peters said the military needs to do a better job of hiring linguists and analysts who are skilled in local languages where personnel are deployed.
Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command:
"Where should we be putting our resources as we transform?"
Peters and Mattis, commanding general of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, said they disagree with retired Vice Adm. Art Cebrowski's vision and direction of force transformation.
Peters said Cebrowski, who has just retired from the job of Defense transformation chief, put a bigger emphasis on building the technology-laden future force without much consideration of the enemies troops will encounter.
"Don't build the force and then look for enemies to fight," Peters said. "Technology is great, but you've got to avoid becoming a prisoner of technology. I'm not anti-IT, but we're seduced by pure capabilities as opposed to relevant needs."
"I love Adm. Cebrowski, but not one of those [force transformation] technologies could have helped me these last three years," Mattis said, referring to an earlier keynote address Cebrowski gave yesterday morning. "It's not about the technology you got, but your employment of it."
But the critics didn't stop at Cebrowski. Peters slammed DOD's top contractor, Lockheed Martin Corp., as well as others, for being too driven by money and not on developing innovation.
"I don't think the big five [contractors] have done enough to peel back the acquisition system and look outside the box to find the changing nature of war,” Peters said. “War is changing and I believe there are opportunities for major contractors if they would step out of the box."
I was at the funeral home last night and it was a moving experience.
Couldn't help myself last night :o)
As MAJOR Mattis, he was my Commanding Officer in the 80s ... he kicked a lot of ass even back then (in a recruiting command). He was also fair, inspirational, and led by example.
"Still, they don't brag about it."
Depends how long the shot was. And I've known a few who did "brag" about it. The fact is that there are men who Col. John George once characterized as "combat jocks". Men who thrive on the rigors, demands, and talents needed in combat. Most fighter pilots have it. "Fun" might be a poor choice of words from a PR point, but I understand the General.
he's good enough for me.
You got nothing I wanna'hear.
I am.
ping
Reporter to Ranger sniper in Afganistan post-9/11: "So, what did you feel when shooting Taliban fighters?"
Sniper: "Recoil,.. then orgasmic".
Ok, ok ..it's an old sniper joke. But, WTH.
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