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I would have been a disastrous soldier.

Looking back, I'm almost happy I lost that fight. Just imagine if I would have come back to Germany with a victory. I had nothing to do with the Nazis, but they would have given me a medal. After the war I might have been considered a war criminal.

Frankly, I would not have made any difference in Vietnam, but much more is what difference it would have made in me.

If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics.

We knew what we were up against, but we were going to go down fighting. Hopefully people back home remember that we got this far. We've got nothing to be ashamed about.

The last thing I wanted to do was act, because it was the path of least resistance.

My duty to the army and to the republic whose battles we were waging forbade me assuming a position of seeming hostility to any portion of the brave men under my command.

I felt ashamed of being different and ashamed of feeling that way.

I think I'd be a better president because I was in combat.