Few great men would have got past personnel.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy. They told me, now forgotten, just how many pictures of ships they took out of the White House after he died. But he could choose good men.
I would have been a disastrous soldier.
Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats.
In my opinion, most of the great men of the past were only there for the beer - the wealth, prestige and grandeur that went with the power.
Without any formal orders to retreat, what was left of the several organizations yielded to a general impulse to abandon the field. Officers and men became controlled by the one thought of getting as far as possible from the enemy.
Only four secretaries of defense served longer than Robert M. Gates. Many others were as dedicated; many sacrificed a great deal. Alone among them all, however, Mr. Gates had the task of turning around two wars that the U.S. was losing.
The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.
Men were not intended to work with the accuracy of tools, to be precise and perfect in all their actions.
I'd come out of the army after five years as a medic. I was a medical administrator and we ran hospitals, and I was a Captain in the army at the end, in 1945.
These people are very unskilled in arms... with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.