“We were smart; there weren’t many flashy heroics. We had learned that heroics was the way to get killed without getting the job done, and getting the job done was more important.”
“Within Easy Company they had made the best friends they had ever had, or would ever have. They were prepared to die for each other; more important, they were prepared to kill for each other.”
“They also found in combat the closest brotherhood they ever knew. They found selflessness. They found they could love the other guy in their foxhole more than themselves. They found that in war, men who loved life would give their lives for them.”
“In thinking back on the days of Easy Company, I’m treasuring my remark to a grandson who asked, ‘Grandpa, were you a hero in the war?’
‘No,’ I answered, ‘but I served in a company of heroes.‘”
“The men were congratulating one another, talking about what they had accomplished; trying to piece together the sequence of events. They were the victors, happy, proud, full of themselves.”
“And he made a promise to himself: if he lived through the war, he was going to find an isolated farm somewhere and spend the remainder of his life in peace and quiet.”
“Perhaps for some men a period of violence and destruction at one time attracts them to look for something creative as a balance in another part of life.”
“They found combat to be ugliness, destruction and death and hated it. Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands on the body-anything that is, except letting down their buddies.”