Quotes that are sticking with me, from two Vietnam books

I don't often share specific quotes from the books I'm reading/listening to but two particular passages have stuck with me over recent weeks.  They are both from Vietnam War memoirs, and though very different they each speak about the best parts of men in battle.


From We Are Soldiers Still (audio disk 4, track 3):

I yelled at him, 'Gimme some water!" I was really thirsty. The guy looked at me and said, "You're shot in the stomach, I can't give you water." 

So I asked him for some morphine. I told him I'd used mine up on the other wounded and it really hurts. He said, "You're shot in the head, I can't give you morphine." 

So I said, "Well then, give me a cigarette." He gave me that.

This section was read by the narrator with a laugh in his voice, and honestly it made me laugh out loud as well.  It is so completely outrageous and horrible, yet the guy it happened to seemed to take it all in stride.


From Once A Warrior King (page 153):

[During an intense firefight in Vietnam Lt. Donovan recalls a lesson he learned in Officer Candidate School.]

[Major] Herbert said, "If your troops are down and won't move, you simply have to stand up and lead by personal example.  You have to calmly walk over and talk with your squad leaders, urge the men up, and give a personal demonstration that the danger isn't as bad as they thought."

"But sir," I had protested, "we're talking about really heavy stuff coming in. What if the fire is so hot you can't get up? You can't just stand up in a hail of bullets! You'd be cut to pieces!"

Major Herbert looked me dead in the eye and said, "You know that every enlisted man in this army has to salute an officer when he goes by?"

"Yes, sir." 

You know about the O-clubs, the BOQ's, and other privileges officers are given in this army?"

"Yes, sir."

"You know that you'll get better pay and housing than enlisted men who often have twice the knowledge and ten times the experience you do?"

"Yes, sir," I replied again, beginning to feel somewhat chagrined.

"Well, in point of fact you stand the risk of having to earn every little perk you ever get.  When all the chips are down, when the privates won't move and the sargeants won't move and fear has taken over everything, all the responsibility falls on your shoulders.  That's why you have the commission and they don't.  You took the rank, you took the priveleges, now you have to pay your dues.  You've got to stand up and by God lead those men! [...] You just remember this: the day you have to be the first one to stand up and say, 'Follow me,' that's the day you will earn every salute you ever get."

That quote reminds me so much of the movie We Were Soldiers, when Sgt. Maj. Plumley (played by Sam Elliot) walks around straight and tall while the rest of the men are lying on the ground.  That wasn't artistic license - according to the book (which I reviewed here) that's exactly what Plumley did.

My reviews of both of these books are coming in the next week or so, in case I've peaked your interest ...

Two Must-Read Quotes from "A Thread of Grace"

I'm currently reading A THREAD OF GRACE by Mary Doria Russell and this book is fantastic.
I'm leading an online discussion of this book at the Google Group for Reading With Becky this month which means that I'm slowing down my reading pace and examining different passages more closely than I normally would. This book is so good that I could have sped through it in just a few days. Instead I'm splitting it up throughout the month so we can discuss it in reasonable chunks.

Anyway, I can across the following quote in the 2nd quarter of the book (page 114) and it has really stuck with me. The characters are a Jewish father, Albert, and his 15 year old daughter, Claudette. It is 1943 and they are in Italy, hiding in the forest from the Germans. Claudette is trying to convince her father that it is safe to go into the nearby town.

"They’re ignorant, Claudette. […] They think we poison wells! They think we murder babies and use their blood to make matzoh! They hate us–”

“Name two.”

Albert blinks.

“Whenever we said ‘they,’ Mama told us to name two. […] Mama said if you can’t name two actual real people, then you’re just being prejudiced. So name two peasants who hate us. […] Mama said.”

Albert sighs. “All right,” he says, capitulating to hunger, […] and the ethical precepts of a wife whose face is more difficult to conjure as each day passes.

Is it just me, or is that a powerful statement? What an amazing lesson Claudette's mother taught her. And Albert not being able to clearly remember his wife's face? Heartbreaking.

There is another quote I really love that can be found on page 177. It does have some profanity in it, so be forewarned. In this quote, Renzo, a Jewish Italian partisan, is talking to Don Osvaldo, a Catholic priest.

"You know what I think? Ten percent of any group of human beings are shitheads. Catholics, Jews. Germans, Italians. Pilots, priests. Teachers, doctors, shopkeepers. Ten percent are shitheads. Another ten percent – salt of the earth! Saints! Give you the shirts off their backs. Most people are in the middle, just trying to get by. […] You are a very dangerous man, Padre. You are an ordinary, decent fellow who aspires to saintliness."

I'm amazed by Renzo here. The Germans are harassing and murdering Jews - Renzo's family, friends, acquaintances - yet he doesn't classify the world as Germans vs. Jews. Instead he realizes that every group of people will have it's good and it's bad. Again, is it just me, or does this quote grab you as well?

Lovely Links

Check out this post on avid readers - see if you identify with it as much as I did. Here's my favorite part:

The study also found that unlike nonreaders who claim they don’t read because they haven’t the time, avid readers build reading time into their day....

THAT'S what I tell people all the time! It's not that I have all this extra time to read; it's that reading is a priority and I MAKE time for it whenever I can.

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Here's a place where you can tell the world what book "got you hooked" on reading. Then you can vote for one state to receive 50,000 children's books.

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As if we need MORE ways to connect to book lovers here's a new article titled "100 Place to Connect with Other Bibliophiles Online". I'm familiar with most of the sites but there were some I'd never heard of.

The Value of Reading

I'll be traveling to California on Thursday and back on Sunday so I'll likely have very little time to post new tidbits over the next week. Hopefully I WILL have time to finish several of the books I'm reading now, and to start some new ones too!

I can't stand not posting something new today even though there's not much to report. SO ... here are a few quotes to consider:

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting. - Aldous Huxley

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writing so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for. - Socrates

It is chiefly through books that we enjoy the intercourse of superior minds. ... In the best books, great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. - William Ellery Channing

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. It is wholesome and bracing for the mind to have its faculties kept on the stretch. - Augustus Hare

To me, that's what reading is all about. I want to stretch my mind, learn new things, experience other places and times ... not just be mindlessly entertained. Call me a "book snob" if you like, but I'm really picky about what I read. The book has to have some value to me in order for me to invest my time in reading it.

That's not to say that everything I read has to be true or educational. I'm a big fan of Fantasy novels, in part because they make me think outside the box. I also love Historical Fiction because it makes me question what is commonly accepted as truth in our history.

If I book can make me think, bring out something inside me that I didn't know was there (check out my review of The Mermaid Chair!), or teach me something new, then it's a good read for me!