“Retreat, hell! We’re just attacking in a different direction.” Smith later denied that he’d said it quite this way, but the quote caught on as reported and would live on as Smith’s most famous utterance. The more nuanced point that Smith sought to make was that he anticipated that their march to the coast would be a battle the entire way. When you are surrounded by overwhelming numbers of enemy soldiers who are trying to kill you, movement in any direction becomes, by definition, an attack.
