Sinner's Cross Quotes

“Just remember: when you lose, don't lose the lesson.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“Halleck came from people who regarded a slight change of facial expression as adequate to convey the pain of a severed limb.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“A good platoon sergeant, in the lieutenant’s mind, ought act like Kato on 'The Green Hornet' and not a disapproving uncle with a taste for the strap.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“This is your platoon sergeant, Halleck. This is your platoon medic, Holzinger. This is your radioman, Loomis, and this is your call-sign, Decoy Red One Six. These are your squad leaders—Ryerson, Spicer, and Keesey. Tonight’s password is 'Ontario.' Your position extends from the edge of that gully to the blowdown over there. We don’t expect a push here, so your job is to keep the Germans from infiltrating. That means a one hundred percent alert all night, every night. Listen for the enemy. Don’t make any noise at all or you’ll take fire from both sides. Don’t smoke, the Germans will see the light and blow you to hell. Don’t fall asleep, you’ll wake up with your throat cut. Don’t give any orders, you don’t know what you’re doing. Let Halleck run things until you know the score. A guide will relieve you at 0630 hours exactly. If you hear anyone come up behind you before that, shoot him.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“We’ve been catching hell ever since we got to this forest. Christ, I’ve heard guys praying they’ll lose a leg just to get out of here. That’s not normal. I mean, you hear guys praying to get a Million Dollar Wound all the time—you know, lose a finger or a toe or get shot through the ass. Something that’ll fuck ‘em up bad enough to get ‘em sent home but not bad enough to cripple ‘em. That’s normal. I been hearing that since Anzio. But I never heard anybody pray to lose a fucking leg. Not before I came here.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“The bigger a man’s balls are out here, Lieutenant, the more likely they are to get shot off.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“Breese was one of those people who thought of civilization as sitting atop the earth like a man on a throne, and not like a weed that had thrust itself up through a crack in the sidewalk.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“This cramped little space that stank of earth and smoke and sweat, that dripped water during every hard rain, and whose floor was often a half-frozen soup of mud and sunflower seeds and straw, now seemed to him more comfortable than Ketterling’s HQ could ever be, and he knew why. Here, surrounded by the weapons hanging from nails by their straps, the boxes of hand grenades, the cut-down artillery shells filled with cigarette butts, the crumpled moisture-bloated magazines and greasy playing cards, one lived an honest life. You couldn’t get that back home anymore. The radio and the newspapers were full of lies that would have been insulting even if the streets hadn’t been full of rubble and the air with the shriek of air-raid sirens, and it wasn’t enough for the government that the people merely endure it all, bombs and lies, without objecting. They had to believe the lies, had to parrot them back with sickly smiles plastered on their faces, lest they be branded defeatists and be taken away.

It wasn’t like that here. Nickolaus wanted it to be, but it wasn’t. Here, a man might be hungry, he might itch with lice, he might sting with pain from cuts that never healed, he might be empty-headed with fatigue and half-deafened from noise, but he always knew precisely where he stood—with his comrades and with the enemy. There were no intrigues, no politics, no flag-waving. A man never looked you in the eyes and told you black was white, or worse yet, demanded that you agree that black was white. There was no need because he had already asked you to die for him, and once you had agreed, what need was there for words?”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross