By Water Beneath the Walls Quotes

“Erasmo “Doc” Riojas, the platoon’s Korean War vet corpsman, carried a medical loadout that consisted, said one man, “of 50,000 rounds and one bandaid.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Forty-six pages long, each one vertically stamped Secret, the report’s language was diplomatic, almost sterile, but its contents were anything but, each enumerated bullet another carefully worded indictment of the Navy’s Vietnam planners, all guilty of the peacetime military’s most predictable blunder: They had brought the fleet they wanted to the battlefield instead of the fleet the battlefield needed.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Think,” he had told them. “Just think. And don’t stop thinking.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Before the ship sank and the transmission was cut off, Burke heard the young man say: “I will fight this ship to the best of my ability and forgive me the mistakes I am about to make.” The voice would haunt and steel him for the rest of his life.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“new war is marked by surprise adaptions [sic]…in the closing period of the last.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“I might have more [faith] in the Navy than the Navy has in itself,” MacArthur concluded before delivering his next line directly to Sherman, but “the Navy has never let me down in the past, and it will not let me down this time.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Experienced enough to know that no choice was still a choice, he picked the least bad option and ordered his boats back”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“After scouting the approaches to the island of Tsugen Shima, one UDT chief petty officer “bawled” out a pair of his swimmers for extending their reconnaissance past the beach. “I was perfectly safe, chief,” the accused responded indignantly. “My buddy was covering me with his knife.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“As it happened—as it always happens when opportunity meets courage—Draper arrived at exactly the right moment.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Unable to contain his delight at his own notional demise, and now surrounded by the smiling black shapes of the men who had demised him, Patton launched into a warm, by-God speech. “I’m not going to make the world safe for Democracy,” he said in his gravelly falsetto. “I’m going to make it unsafe for Dictators.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“For evidence of this, Edson to date had focused his battalion’s training not on behind-the-lines raiding, but mainly on the use of rubber boats to quietly paddle ashore ahead of a general invasion to knock out those beachside guns that threatened the landing fleet. After accomplishing this mission, Edson saw no reason his men should be held in reserve for future special assignments; rather, he wanted to refold them into the main advance. For Edson, his men weren’t commandos, they were simply Marines.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“Edson was a perfect Marine, and no perfect Marine has ever used his imagination unless ordered to do so.”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs

“paragraph order, a concise primer for planning”
― Benjamin H. Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs