The Vietnam War/Quotes

"He fired at it [the baby] with a .45. He missed. We all laughed. He got up three or four feet closer and missed again. We laughed. Then he got up right on top and plugged him."

- Transcript of the Court Martial for the My Lai Massacre

"Private Robert Maples: Calley and Meadlo were firing at the people. They were firing into the hole. I saw Meadlo firing into the hole.

Interrogator: Well, tell me, what was so remarkable about Meadlo that made you remember him?

RM: He was firing and crying.

I: He was pointing his weapon away from you and then you saw tears in his eyes?

RM: Yes."

- Transcript of the Court Martial for the My Lai Massacre

"Mike Wallace: So you fired something like sixty-seven shots?

Paul Meadlo: Right.

Wallace: And you killed how many? At that time?

Meadlo: Well, I fired them automatic, so you can’t- You just spray the area on them and so you can’t know how many you killed ‘cause they were going fast. So I might have killed ten or fifteen of them.

Wallace: Men, women, and children?

Meadlo: Men, women, and children.

Wallace: And babies?

Meadlo: And babies."

- Interview with Meadlo on CBS News

"'It became necessary to destroy the town to save it,' a United States major said today. He was talking about the decision by allied commanders to bomb and shell the town regardless of civilian casualties, to rout the Vietcong."

- Journalist Peter Arnett in The New York Times

"We sure liberated the hell out of this place."

- Attributed to an anonymous soldier, on a village destroyed during a firefight

"Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners.

Archie: Winners?

Otto: Yeah. Winners.

Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam?

Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie.

Archie: I'm tellin' ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD."

- A Fish Called Wanda

"Bomb the village

Kill the people

Throw some napalm in the square

Do it on a Sunday morning

Kill them on their way to prayer

Ring the bell inside the schoolhouse

Watch the kiddies gather round

Lock and load with your 240

Mow them little motherfuckers down"

- "Napalm Sticks to Kids" - US Army Military Cadence during the Vietnam War

"They're sending me to Vietnam. It's this whole other country."

- Forrest Gump

"The Vietnamese people deeply love independence, freedom and peace. But in the face of United States aggression they have risen up, united as one man."

- Ho Chi Minh

"In the final analysis, it's their war: they're the ones who have to win it or lose it."

- President John F Kennedy

"And it's 1, 2, 3, what're we fighting for?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn

Next stop is Vietnam.

And it's 5, 6, 7, open up the pearly gates

Well there ain't no time to wonder why

Whoopee! We're all gonna die."

- "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die Rag", Country Joe and the Fish

"How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

- John Kerry, addressing a U.S. Senate subcommittee in April, 1971

"How are you, GI Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what's going on."

- North Vietnamese propaganda broadcast directed at US troops

"Lyndon Johnson told the nation,

"Have no fear of escalation.

I am trying everyone to please.

Though it isn't really war,

We're sending fifty thousand more,

To help save Vietnam from Vietnamese.""

- "Lyndon Johnson Told the Nation", Tom Paxton

"We're waist deep in the Big Muddy

And the big fool says to push on."

- "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy", Pete Seeger

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read: Vietnam."

- Martin Luther King

"We weren't on the wrong side. We were the wrong side."

- Daniel Ellsberg