Introduction
There is a fascination about what is contemporaneously said and written about the battlefield, and by those on active service when the fighting is actually taking place. The often self-serving memoirs and analyses of later years have by no means the same immediacy. Or, if the truth is known, the same veracity: the passing months or years frequently adjust the recall of the raconteur to a more personally positive reading of what took place, or produces wisdom after the event. Accordingly, the scope of these quotations is restricted to entries with an attributable date within the 51 months of the duration of the Great War. In a single exception to this rule, quotations have been included by Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, that were made on the 3rd
Not surprisingly, one of the most prolific sources of notable battlefield quotations over the last 250 years was Napoleon Bonaparte. A more unexpected source was the commanders of the American Civil War, who produced an amazingly large selection. The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln on the 19th November 1963 - on the battle fought from 1st - 3rd July 1863 - whilst the war still raged on, being one of them and, perhaps, the most famous war quotations ever.
Considering the number of men involved in the Great War, the numbers of notable quotations on the Great War that can be found in standard dictionaries is comparatively small; certainly less prolific than one might expect. The selection made here is has no rationale other than it meets the inclusion criteria and caught the author's eye and sense of appositeness. Wherever possible the most accurate dating available to the author is given. For the purposes of balance, care has also been taken to include a few less than famous but relevant quotations from the other ranks of the Armed Services and from the other combattant nations. There are even a couple of anonymous authors.
As the events of August 1914 - November 1918 represented a truly World War, the quotations about the Western Front cannot always be usefully separated from those of the Great War in general: many quotations refer to the whole gamut of the fighting. But where appropriate, attribution to the Western Front is made.
List of war quotations
ALEXANDER, Earl Harold Rupert Leofric George. Field Marshal, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1917: [Then Lieutenant] I'm afraid the war will end very soon now, but I suppose all good things must come to an end, so we mustn't grumble.
ALLENBY, Edmund Henry Hynman. General, Commander (British) Egyptian Expeditionary Force.
1917: In pursuit you must always stretch possibilities to the limit. Troops having beaten the enemy always want to rest. They must be given as objectives, not those that you think they will reach, but the farthest away they could possibly reach. [Surely he had in mind the successful follow-up attack he launched with a weary EEF on the 17th December 1917 against the reeling Turkish 7th and 8th Armies in
ANONYMOUS COMMANDER, Guards Brigade Battalion, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1917: You [Subaltern E. K. G. Sixsmith] can forget all your training; you have come here to show all your men how to die.
BEATTY, Sir David. Admiral, Commander-in-Chief, British Battle Cruiser Fleet, Royal Navy.
30th May 1916: There's something wrong with our bloody ships today. [At the Battle of Jutland after the battlecruisers HMS Indefatigable and HMS Queen Mary were quickly hit, blew up and sank with the loss of almost all hands].
BINYON, Robert Lawrence. Poet/ Medical Orderly, Red Cross Ambulance Unit, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
September 1914: They shall not grow old as we who are left grow old;/ Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn./ At the going down of the sun and in the morning/ We will remember them. [Perhaps the most quoted poem of the Great War].
July 1916: I had them placed in special rooms, nude, but with their full army kit on the floor for them to put on as soon as they were minded. There were no blankets or substitute for clothing left in the rooms, which were quite bare. Several of the naked men held out for several hours but they gradually accepted the inevitable. Forty of the conscientious objectors who passed through my hands are now quite willing soldiers. [Quoted in the Daily Express of 4th July 1916].
CHARTERIS, John. Brigadier, Chief Intelligence Officer, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
September 1914: The angel of the Lord on the traditional white horse and clad all in white with flaming sword, faced the Germans at
CHURCHILL, Winston Leonard Spencer. British First Lord of the Admiralty (Naval Minister).
27th December 1914: Are there not any alternatives than sending our armies to chew barbed wire in
1914: [Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, Commander-in-Chief, British Grand Fleet is?] The only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.
CLEMENCEAU, Georges. Newspaper owner/French Prime Minister.
1914: War is too important to be left to the Generals.
COLE, Charles. Private, Coldstream Guards, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1916: Something was brought [up] near the reserve trench, camouflaged with a big sheet. We didn't know what it was and were very curious and the Captain got us all out on parade, He said, 'You are wondering what this is. Well it's a tank' and he took the covers off and that was the very first tank. He told us what we had to do when we made the attack at Zero Hour was just to wait for the tank to go by us and all we had to do was mop up, and consolidate our trench. Well we were all at the parapets, waiting to go over [the top] and waiting for the tank. We heard the chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, then silence! The tank never came. [Many of the early tanks broke down before they reached the start-line].
DALEY, Daniel 'Dan' Joseph Daly. 1st
4th June 1918: Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?
DEWEY, George.
1917: Gentlemen, the battle is done, the victory is ours.
FERRY, Abel. Lieutenant, French Army/Deputy, French Assembly.
1916: They claim that to fire human grapeshot at the enemy without preparation gives us moral ascendancy. But the thousands of dead Frenchmen, lying in front of the German trenches, are instead those who are giving moral ascendancy to the enemy. If this waste of human material keeps on, the day is not far off when the offensive capacity of our army, already seriously weakened, will be entirely destroyed. [There were several French Deputies who were also serving soldiers].
FISHER, Sir John Arbuthnot. Admiral,
1914: The whole principle of naval fighting is to be free to go anywhere with every damn thing the navy possesses.
January 1915: In war the first principle is to disobey orders. Any fool can obey orders!
[Fisher was Churchill's First Sea Lord in 1914/15].
FOCH, Ferdinand. Marshal of
7th September 1914: [Then a General field commander] Victory will come to the side that outlasts the other.
8th September 1914: My centre is giving way, my right is in retreat: situation excellent. I shall attack. [First
26th March 1918: [Then Chief of Staff, Allied Supreme Command] I would fight without a break. I would fight in front of
26th August 1918: [Then Allied Supreme Commander for Western Front] It is this persistent and intensifying of the offensive - this pushing vigorously forward on carefully chosen objectives without excessive regard to alignment or close touch - that will give us the best results with the smallest losses. [The Final 100 Days Allied Offensive, 1918].
FRENCH, Sir John Denton Pinkstone. Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1914: I have no more reserves. He only men I have left are the sentries at my gates. I will take them where the line is broken, and the last of the English will die fighting. [First
FULLER, John Fredrick Charles. Major General, British Army, Western Front.
1916. Do not let my opponents castigate with the blather that Waterloo was won on the playing fields of England, for the fact remains geographically, historically and tactically, whether the great Duke uttered such nonsense or not, that it was won on the fields of Belgium by carrying out a fundamental principal of war, the principle of mass; in other words marching onto those fields three Englishmen, Germans or Belgians to every Frenchman.
1917: Cambrai has become the Valmy [ Battle of, in
1918: The objective of fighting is to kill without getting killed. Don't disburse your force; you can't punch with an open hand; clench your fist; keep your command together.
Fight when holding, advancing or retiring: always fight or be ready to fight.
Aim at surprise; see without being seen. If you meet a man in a dark room you jump; you should always be ready to make your enemy jump, either by day or by night. A jumping man can't hit.
Never remain halted without a lookout. Sentries must be posted no matter what troops are supposed to be in front of you. Guard your flanks and keep in touch with neighbouring units. Try to get at the enemy's flanks.
Send information back to your immediate Commander. Negative information is as important as positive.
State time and place of your message. You cannot expect assistance from your superiors unless you tell them where you are and how you are situated.
Hold what you have got and what you gain. Never withdraw from a position until told to do so.
1918: Presumably victory is our object. This war is a business proposition; it therefore requires ability. Nevertheless, our army is crawling with 'duds', though habitual offenders, they are tolerated because of the camaraderie of the old Regular Army: an army so small as to permit all of its higher members being personal friends. Good-fellowship ranks with us above efficiency: the result is a military trade union that does not pay a dividend. [Fuller was said to be one of the leading strategists of the Great War, and after, but some war historians consider his views on tank warfare dangerously misguided].
GREY, Sir Edward. British Foreign Secretary.
3rd August 1914: I ask the House [Parliament] from the point of view of British interests to consider what may be at stake. If France is beaten to her knees; if Belgium fell under the same dominating influence and then Holland and then Denmark; if in a crisis like this we run away from these obligations of honour and interests as regards the Belgian Treaty, I do not believe for a moment that, at the end of this war, even if we stood aside, we should be unable to undo what happened, in the course of the war, to prevent the whole of the West of Europe opposite us from falling under the domination of a single power. And we would, I believe, sacrifice our respect and good name and reputation before the world and should not escape the most serious and grave economic consequences.
3rd August 1914: A friend came to see me on one of the evenings of last week - he thinks it was on Monday August 3rd. We were standing at a window of my room in the Foreign Office. It was getting dark and the lamps were being lit in the space below on which we were looking. My friend recalled that I remarked on this with the words: 'The lamps are going out all over
GURNEY, Ivor. Poet/Composer. Lieutenant, Machine Gun Corps, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1917: In the mind of all the English soldiers is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though contemptuous - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.
HAIG, Earl Douglas. Field Marshal, Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1st June 1915: After lunch we went into the garden for coffee and I turned on the Surgeon General with his graphics, percentages etc. of sick and wounded to entertain the Premier [Herbert Henry Asquith].
1917: Oh God - let there be victory before the Americans arrive [in 1917].
11th April 1918: Every position must be held to the last man: there must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on until the end. The safety of our Homes and the Freedom of mankind alike depend on the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment. [Against Ludendorff's German Friedensturm (Peace) Offensive].
HAMILTON, Sir Ian Standish Montieth.General, Commander-in-Chief, British Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (Gallipoli).
30th May 1917: There are poets and writers who see naught in war except carrion, filth, savagery and horror. They refuse war the credit of being the only exercise in devotion on the large scale existing in this world. The superb moral victory over death leaves them cold. Each one to his taste. To me this is no valley of death - it is a valley brim full of life at the highest power.
1917: In wartime no soldier is free to say what he thinks; after a war no one cares what a soldier thinks.
[
HEINEMANN, Fritz. Gefreiter [Private], 165th Infantry Regiment, German Army, Western Front.
26th September 1916: One of the enemy soldiers removed his water bottle and passed it around. I will never forget this gesture as long as I live. These troops occupying our positions I now found out to be Canadians. After being searched for documents and weapons we were led away. Passing through the enemy lines we saw an enormous number of artillery pieces, collected and lined up in unending rows. But at the same time we saw the evidence of the work of our own guns - dead Englishmen were lying everywhere. So marched into captivity all that was left of the 2nd Company of the 165th Infantry Regiment: two officers and 12 men.
HOFFMANN, Carl Adolf Maximilian. General, German Eastern Armies, Eastern Front.
9th September 1917: I have been awarded the Iron Cross for my modest share in the battle of Tannenburg. I had never thought that this finest of all military decorations would be won sitting at the end of a telephone line. However, I realise now that there must be someone there who keeps his nerve, and by brute determination and will to victory overcomes difficulties, panics and suchlike nonsense.
November1915: The incompetence of the authorities and of GHQ is greater on the other side than us; and that is saying a good deal.
[Hoffmann was Lundendorff's deputy and later German Commander on the Eastern Front].
JOFFRE, Joseph Jacques Césaire. Marshal of
August 1914: [Then Marshal]. I cannot believe that the British Army will refuse to do its share in this supreme crisis. History would surely judge your absence. Monsieur le Maréchal [Field Marshal Sir John French], the honour of
September 1914: We are about to engage in a battle on which the fate of our country depends and it is important to remind all ranks that the moment has passed for looking to the rear; all our efforts must be directed towards driving back the enemy. Troops that can advance no farther must, at any price, hold onto the ground they have conquered and die on the spot rather than give way. Under the circumstances which face us, no act of weakness can be tolerated.
KIPLING, Joseph Rudyard. Author/ Poet/ Head, British War Propaganda Bureau (Later Ministry of Information).
June 1915: However, the world pretends to divide itself, there are only two divisions in the world today - human beings and Germans. [Quoted in the Morning Post Newspaper, 22nd June 1915. Kipling's only son, John, was killed/missing in action at
KITCHENER, Earl Herbert Horatio. Field Marshal, British Army/ British Secretary of State for War.
August 1917: You are ordered abroad as a soldier of your King to help our French comrades against the invasion of a common enemy. You have to perform a task which will need your courage, your energy, your patience. Remember that the honour of the British Army depends on your individual conduct. It will be your duty not only to set an example of discipline and steadiness under fire but also to maintain the most friendly relations with those whom you are helping in this struggle. In this new experience you may find temptations in both wine and women. You must entirely resist both temptations, and, while treating all women with perfect courtesy you should avoid any intimacy. Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honour the King. [On the departure of the British Expeditionary Force for
18th December 1914: I don't mind being killed, but I object to your [The Prince of Wales] being captured.
[
1915: If you are only ready to go when fetched, where is the merit in that? Are you only going to do your duty when the law says you must? Does the call to duty find no response to in you until reinforced, let us rather say, superseded, by the call of compulsion? [To potential recruits to
LUDENDORFF, Erich von. General, First Quartermaster General, German Third Supreme Command.
8th August 1918: The black day of the German Army in the history of the war. [First day of the Battle of Amiens].
MATA HARI, (Margaretha Geertruida Zella). Dutch dancer, prostitute and spy.
1917: The officer is a being apart, a kind of artist breathing the grand air in the brilliant profession of arms, in a uniform that is always seductive. To me the officer is a separate race. [Mata Hari was executed as a German spy by a French firing squad on 15th October 1917].
McCRAE, John. Captain, Medical Officer, Canadian Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
3rd May 1916: In Flanders fields the poppies blow/ Between the crosses, row on row,/That mark our place.
MONASH, Sir John. General, Commander, Australian Corps, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
1918: The main thing is to always have a plan; if it is not the best plan, it is at least better than no plan at all.
[Monash was acknowledged as
MORTIMORE, H. W. Captain, Royal Navy, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
15th September 1916: I managed to get astride one of the German trenches and opened fire with Hotchkiss machine guns. There were some Germans in the dugouts and I shall never forget the look on their faces as they emerged. [It is to be assumed that Captain Mortimer was a member of the Royal (Naval) Division].
NEVILLE, Robert Georges. General, French Army Commander-in-Chief, Western Front
23rd June 1916: Ils ne passeront pas. [They shall not pass. Also attributed to Marshal Henri-Philippe Benoni Omer Joseph Pétain, Neville's predecessor at
OWEN, Wilfred Edward Salter. Lieutenant, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
January 1917: [Le Serre Sector of the
1917: I you could hear at every jolt, the blood/ Come gargling from the froth corrupted lungs,/ My friend, you would not tell with such high zest/ To children ardent for some desperate glory,/ The old lie; Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria Mori.
PATTON, George Smith Jnr. General,
1918: I'd rather be a Second Lieutenant with a DSC [Distinguished Service Cross] than a General without it.
RICHTHOFEN, Manfred Freiherr von. Rittmeister [Cavalry Captain] German Army Air Service, Western Front.
21st April 1918: Don't you think I'll be back? [The day his famous red Fokker
triplane was shot down by ground fire behind the British lines, between Corbie and Bray in the Somme Sector. He was killed by a single 0.303-in round through the chest].
ROBERTSON, William Robert. Field Marshal, Chief of the British Imperial Staff.
May 1915: 'Orace [General Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien] you're for 'ome'. {Robertson was onerously set the task by Field Marshal Sir John French, G-in-C BEF, of confirming the sacking, by telegram, of Smith-Dorrien].
ROMMEL, Erwin. Field Marshal, German Army, Western Front.
1914: [Then Lieutenant] Passing through Douclon Woods [
SLIM, William Joseph. Field Marshal, British Army.
1916: [Then Lieutenant. Quoting Private Richard Chuck in the Mesopotamian Campaign]. ''Up
SPENGLER, Reinholf. Geifreter [Private], 1st Bavarian Infantry Regiment, German Army, Western Front.
1916: The brutality and inhumanity of war stood in great contrast to that I had heard and read about as a youth.
VAUGHAN, Edwin. Captain, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, British Expeditionary Force, Western Front.
27th August 1917: The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell holes. [Probably during the Third
WILHELM II, Kaiser (King of Prussia and Emperor of
August 1914: You will be home before the leaves have fallen from the trees. [Addressing the German troops engaged in implementing the German Schlieffen Plan].
1st October 1914: It is my Royal and Imperial Command that you ? exterminate first the treacherous English, and ? walk over General French's contemptible little Army. [Kaiser's declaration to the German Army on the Western Front].
Acknowledgements
To assemble this personal selection of quotations, the author has gratefully consulted many reference sources. One the author found particularly useful, and likely to be on the shelves of the local public library and book shops, is: The Daily Telegraph Dictionary of Military Quotations, Edited by Peter G. Tsouras (2005), Greenhill Books/Lionel Leventhal Ltd. ISBN 1-85367-666-7. However, any errors and omissions herein are the sole responsibility of the author.
