Burke Davis > Quotes

“Sir, do you know they’ve cut us off? We’re entirely surrounded.” “Those poor bastards,” Puller said. “They’ve got us right where we want ’em. We can shoot in every direction now.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“We’ve been looking for the enemy for several days now. We’ve finally found them. We’re surrounded. That simplifies our problem of getting to these people and killing them.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“We must not be too proud or too stupid to profit by our mistakes—”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“between our enlisted men and young officers and those of the Army. There appears to be no example of leadership in the latter organization. No pride and nothing to look up to. The truth is unknown. …”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“The difference between success and failure in this life of ours is mostly hard work, so you must constantly work to try to improve yourself.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“When I entered the service, the regulations stated that the object of all military training is “success in battle.” This short sentence has been rewritten on three pages and I defy anyone to read it over three or more times and then explain what the object of military training is.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“The definition of military training is success in battle. In my opinion that is the only objective of military training. It wouldn’t make any sense to have a military organization on the backs of the American taxpayers with any other definition. I’ve believed that ever since I’ve been a Marine.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“A French count, as a volunteer officer with the Federal regiment, Gardes Lafayette, admired the delicious salad served in the headquarters mess.

"What meat is this?" he asked the cook one day. "I must take the recipe to France, It will be a sensation."

"Blacksnake," was the reply. The count paled, lost interest, and disappeared from the coterie of salad fanciers.”
― Burke Davis, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

“the last of the lordly planters who ruled this Southern world. His manners are unequalled still, but underneath this smooth exterior lies the grip of a tyrant whose will has never been crossed.… He came of a race that would brook no interference with their own sweet will by man, woman or devil …”
― Burke Davis, Sherman's March

“Stonewall Jackson was the symbol of Southern resistance, but his sister Laura, a Union sympathizer, remained unshaken in her devotion to the Old Republic, and was applauded for her stand by Federal soldiers. She sent a message by a Union soldier to the effect that she could "take care of wounded Federals as fast as brother Thomas would wound them.”
― Burke Davis, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

“Our trouble is that common sense has gone out the window, and we make generals today on the basis of their ability to write a damned letter. Those kinds of men can’t get us ready for war.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“Before they came in Lee had a couple of adventures. He first clashed with a sergeant of a Mississippi regiment who wandered over the wet field. Lee called out sharply: "What are you doing here, sir, away from your command?"

"That's none of your business," the ragged soldier said.

"You are a straggler, sire, and deserve the severest punishment."

The sergeant shouted in rage, "It is a lie, sir. I only left my regiment a few minutes ago to hunt me a pair of shoes. I went through all the fight yesterday, and that's more than you can say; for where were you yesterday when General Stuart wanted your cavalry to charge the Yankees after we put 'em to running? You were lying back in the pine thickets and couldn't be found; but today, when there's no danger, you come out and charge other men with straggling."

Lee laughed and rode off. Behind him an officer baited the sergeant, who thought he had been talking with a "cowardly Virginia cavalryman".

"No, sir, that was General Lee."

"Ho-o-what? General Lee, you say?"

"Yes."

"Scissors to grind, I'm a goner." The sergeant tore out of sight along the muddy road.”
― Burke Davis, Gray Fox: Robert E. Lee and the Civil War

“We must not be too proud or too stupid to profit by our mistakes—and God knows we make ’em.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“We’ll have to get over the idea that we’re the greatest people on earth in every respect, that we’re infallible and that no one else has ideas worth considering. One of the reasons we had to fight against odds on Guadalcanal was this insufferable American notion of superiority, and our carelessness in face of danger. It goes back to Pearl Harbor and far beyond.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“You just simply cannot learn warfare in a schoolroom, or anywhere else except in combat. And you’ll never know whether you’re a fighting man until you’re under fire.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“On the other hand, a New Yorker charged me with hero worship of Lee and more: "Over-emphasis upon the Christianity of the butcher in a human slaughter business by one who was a parasitic blueblood all his life." This one is filed under "Views of the War, Marxist.”
― Burke Davis, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

“Never underestimate the enemy, boys. If you don’t figure him to have as much sense as you’ve got you’ll have trouble.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“A Virginia woman assailed me as "non-Southern" because of my account of the burning of Richmond by Confederates in To Appomattox - before reading the book. In her broadside she lumped me with the Soviet Union, the United States Supreme Court and Certain Republican Presidents fore and aft.”
― Burke Davis, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

“In August, 1956, a Swedish bank teller cheerfully changed a $500 Confederate banknote for an enterprising customer, at the same favorable rate of exchange commanded by Federal currency in that season. His mistake was discovered only when it was much too late.”
― Burke Davis, The Civil War: Strange & Fascinating Facts

“I’ll quote Napoleon. He stated that the most important thing in military training is discipline. Without discipline an army becomes a mob.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“if he had attended burial services for one of his bitter enemies, said, “No, I didn’t patronize the funeral, but I approve of it.”
― Burke Davis, Sherman's March

“From the ranks of the Richmond militia across the square, a thin-shouldered infantryman glared at the hooded figure on the scaffold. The militiaman’s eyes were dark with excitement, as if he had quite lost himself in the spectacle. He was Private John Wilkes Booth.”
― Burke Davis, They Called Him Stonewall: A Life of Lieutenant General T. J. Jackson, CSA

“Criticism of Davis was neither new nor unusual, for his Confederacy was by no means a monolithic state. Secession had been imposed upon many loyal Unionists in the South, devoted patriots who, though subdued, remained hostile to the Rebel government; Union conventions had been held in the Confederacy during the war, and thousands of Southerners served in Union armies out of conviction that slavery and secession were twin evils. Many more thousands deserted the Confederate army to spend most of the war at home or in hiding. The more numerous poor whites and small farmers, who owned no slaves and worked their own lands, usually despised the few wealthy planters who controlled the slave system and the political apparatus as well. North Carolina’s Governor Zebulon Vance, in his forthright fashion, had put this issue to Jefferson Davis himself in terms that had become a rallying cry: “It’s a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.”
― Burke Davis, Burke Davis on the Civil War: The Long Surrender, Sherman's March, To Appomattox, and They Called Him Stonewall

“Mrs. Puller gave him a last-minute gift, a bathrobe. He thanked her tenderly, but growled to his staff: “I’ve got the world’s greatest wife, but my God, what do you do when she sends you off to war with a new red flannel bathrobe?” He had it secretly stowed away before boarding his transport, the U.S.S. Fuller.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller

“Among the eulogies raised to the departed general, the terse words of his friend Whitelaw Reid seemed to summarize most perceptively the mercurial Sherman: “He never acknowledged an error and never repeated it.”
― Burke Davis, Sherman's March

“Commodore Stephen Decatur. And he said, ‘My country, may she always be right—but my country, right or wrong.”
― Burke Davis, Marine!: The Life of Chesty Puller