Newspaper reporter: [speaking of Col. Thursday] But what of the men who died with him? What of Collingworth and...
Captain Yorke: Collingwood.
Newspaper reporter: Oh, of course, Collingwood.
Reporter: That's the ironic part of it. We always remember the Thursdays, but the others are forgotten.
Captain Yorke: You're wrong there. They aren't forgotten because they haven't died. They're living - right out there.
[points out the window]
Captain Yorke: Collingwood and the rest. And they'll keep on living as long as the regiment lives. The pay is thirteen dollars a month; their diet: beans and hay. Maybe horsemeat before this campaign is over. Fight over cards or rotgut whiskey, but share the last drop in their canteens. The faces may change... the names... but they're there: they're the regiment... the regular army... now and fifty years from now. They're better men than they used to be. Thursday did that. He made it a command to be proud of.
6 comments:
This kind of hyper-patriotism lets the Generals and Admirals get away with stealing billions...or is it trillions?
"Fight over cards or rotgut whiskey, but share the last drop in their canteens."
Lefties could never understand that, unless it was in Cause of Glorious World Socialist Revolution.
Idiot reporter: "Mr Ford, was it really that way?".
John Ford (veteran of Midway and the OSS): "If it wasn't, it should have been".
ricpic said...
This kind of hyper-patriotism lets the Generals and Admirals get away with stealing billions...or is it trillions?
Hardly hyper-patriotism, and it's Congress that spends the money. You can just as easily (in fact, much more so) invoke the schmaltz and violins of the SJW that keeps the Welfare-Industrial Complex going.
The serious dollars spent and wasted are on defense. Being honest is paramount if you want an intellectually honest conversation. I detest the SJW horseshit and the waste and fraud in those programs, and I support a strong defense. But, if you can't admit there is huge amounts of waste and fraud in defense then any discussion is a waste of time.
I'd say the waste is mostly on the welfare side.
Waste in defense? Of course, but fraud and duplication of effort (not to mention duplicity) are hallmarks of the Welfare Industrial complex.
Defense spending is about a sixth of the federal budget while "programs" and entitlements are about 5/8.
There is a lot of money wasted in defense, although I support the concept that the best way to stay out a war is to be prepared for one. I get R&D is expensive, but Eisenhower's warning comes to mind. We need to give support for those long term assets we can not fire up in a moment's notice and make sure we avoid expensive long term wars.
And Wayne's speech was not hyper patriotic (the movie was also rather scathing to the "career" types who put their own interests ahead of their men), rather, it was about saluting enlisted men of our country who actually fight wars.
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