It’s a complete mess everywhere, there’s no discipline. The army has everything, but there is absolutely no control, while there is an absolute paranoid gap between that which is happening in the trenches, and that which they know and think about in headquarters

You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

It is not possible to foretell the reaction of certain elements in the Army and Navy.

The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.

The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front.

A field commander never has the information he needs. He has to go with his best hunch. The more information he has, the easier it is for him to win the battle.

He is blind to the dead, to the burning villages, to the starving children. As is the Rebel. Two blind armies, able to see nothing but one another.

Michael: "March here, march there, present arms, where's your cap?" — you've no idea, the whole Army's obsessed with playing at soldiers.

They give me an update on the situation, but I can't recall the decisions made because it's been so long. Due to the emergency, we do not keep minutes. An army could be sent out by Babucarr Jatta without my knowing.

He saw it all summed up in the blind marching of that nameless unit. A vision of gaunt shapes, sharp shiny steel, dim lamps flaring in the rain. The war machine was rolling.

The Spanish fleet thou canst not see, because—it is not yet in sight!

It’s very difficult to say who has power now. The army does not seem to want to lose it. I have no military, no police force, and no control of the media. I have nothing.

I have no detailed information about what soldiers you are talking about.

But sitting here beside this girl as unknown to him now as outer space, waiting for whatever she might say to unfreeze him, now he felt like he could see the edge or outline of what a real vision of hell might be. It was of two great and terrible armies within himself, opposed and facing each other, silent. There would be battle but no victor. Or never a battle- the armies would stay like that, motionless, looking across at each other and seeing therein something so different and alien from themselves that they could not understand, they could not hear each other's speech as even words or read anything from what their faces looked like, frozen like that, opposed and uncomprehending, for all human time. Two hearted, a hypocrite to yourself either way.