Brute Quotes

“The two defining characteristics of a successful assault are detailed planning and violent execution. And once a beachhead is established, it is crucial to push inland as quickly as possible. The idea is not simply to seize a beach but to take enemy-held territory”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“In his book Joker One, Campbell tells how after the platoon’s first prolonged engagement, one of his Marines came up to him and said, “Sir, do you think we fought well today, sir? I mean, that was our first big fight. Would the Marines who fought at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, you know, be proud of us?” Campbell had to turn away and compose himself before he answered that the Marines had indeed acquitted themselves well. And as time passes, the battle for Fallujah, some of the bloodiest door-to-door fighting in history, will rank among the great battles of the Marine Corps.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“During the assault on Fallujah, Marine commanders intercepted an enemy radio conversation and heard an insurgent say, “We are fighting, but the Marines keep coming. We are shooting, but the Marines won’t stop.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Vic remembers well the admonitions he received as a boy. Any gift or favor to him quickly resulted in a thank-you note, always on off-white paper and always written in black ink.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Krulak had done the right thing, but there is often a price to pay for doing the right thing.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Marines say that the difference between a Marine general and God is that God doesn’t think he is a general. If Krulak decreed that a new world would be created in two weeks, his will would be done. And it was.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“As CGFMFPac, Krulak was concerned about the strategic side of the war being directed from Washington. He favored stopping the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam because this would aid in implementing his ideas about counterinsurgency. Thus he was in favor of both mining the harbor at Haiphong and bombing the north. Such actions were external to his theater of operations but would have a direct impact on his ideas. The next-lowest level of war is the operational level, where Krulak’s ideas about counterinsurgency were most important. The third level is tactical. This is about individual battles.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“The great gulf between the story told by the young reporters and the story that military people knew as their truth may be the reason that, almost a half century later, the Vietnam War remains the source of a cultural rift in America. Today a small but growing group of writers is looking back and finding a different story than the one told by many reporters of the day.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Krulak wrote back that the United States did not need the Marine Corps; the Army and Air Force could do anything the Marines could. The Marine Corps flourished, he said, because of what “the grassroots of our country believes we are and believes we can do.” He said that America had three beliefs about the Marine Corps. First, when troubles come, the Marines will take care of them and do so at once. Second, Americans had an “almost mystical” belief that when the Marines go to war, their performance will be “dramatically and decisively successful—not most of the time, but always.” And third, Americans saw the Marines as masters of an “unfailing alchemy” that converts “unoriented youths into proud, self-reliant, stable citizens into whose hands the nation’s affairs may safely be entrusted.” He ended by saying that although America did not need the Marines, it wanted them. But, he warned, if Marines ever lost the ability to meet the high, almost spiritual standards of the American people, “the Marine Corps will then quickly disappear.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“If you knew your job and you did your job, you could not have a better friend in the Corps than General Krulak.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Barely six months after Ribbon Creek, Krulak had lost eleven Marines in another training accident. How he handled the incident is an example of the public relations axiom, “Tell the truth. Tell it all. And tell it quickly.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Every leader who wants to make significant change needs a “resident son of a bitch” who can make hard decisions without regard to rank or personality.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“From the day he assumed command, Krulak’s leadership theory was the same one he had learned from Holland Smith in the Caribbean and from Lemuel Shepherd in the Pacific: training, training, and more training.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“KRULAK and Dyer wrote the first textbook for Marine helicopter pilots and war planners. Usually doctrine and tactics are developed after a weapon is available, but Krulak believed that doctrine should drive, not follow, the development of the helicopter. He”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“The two defining characteristics of a successful assault are detailed planning and violent execution. And once a beachhead is established, it is crucial to push inland as quickly as possible. The idea is not simply to seize a beach but to take enemy-held territory”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Brute spent almost as much time with frontline units as he did at Shepherd’s command post. For his role in the invasion, he would receive the Legion of Merit, the citation for which praises him for bringing the division to “a state of complete readiness” and for providing Shepherd with advice “of immeasurable value, being always sound, and based upon comprehensive and excellent tactical judgment and a consistently complete grasp of the situation.” It also notes that to better acquaint himself with fluid battlefield conditions, Krulak frequently was on the front lines, where he exposed himself to enemy artillery and small-arms fire, and that his coordination of subordinate units “contributed materially to the success of this difficult operation.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor… together. Here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men, there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy…. Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, then, as our solemn duty, sacred duty do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price. We here solemnly swear that this shall not be in vain. Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“The life of a military wife is so subordinated to her husband’s career that when he receives transfer orders, she says, “We received orders.” The status of a military wife is directly related to her husband’s rank, and she must show the same deference to the wife of a superior officer that her husband shows to the officer. She must master the intricacies of entertaining in a hierarchal society, knowing that a single misstep could affect her husband’s career. But most of all—and this is always mentioned by nonmilitary people—the military wife has no life of her own; her entire existence revolves around her husband’s career. Having a job is frowned upon because her full-time job is being a military wife. To many bright young women who marry military officers, the challenges are enormous.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Even in peacetime, a military man is deployed for long periods, leaving his spouse to take care of the children and their schooling, to pay the bills, to make sure the lawn is mowed and the oil in the car is changed, and to handle dozens of other tasks usually done by him. During wartime, always hanging over the military wife is the fear that her husband may be wounded or killed in combat.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“The sacrifices, duties, and obligations of a military wife have no equivalent in the civilian world, and many women are not cut out for the job.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“AFTER World War II, General Holland M. Smith said that if Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the great battles of the Pacific were won in the Caribbean.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“On the wall over his head as he worked was a framed quote from President Calvin Coolidge: “Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“And once a beachhead is established, it is crucial to push inland as quickly as possible. The idea is not simply to seize a beach but to take enemy-held territory.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“The two defining characteristics of a successful assault are detailed planning and violent execution.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Krulak knew he would pay a price, and he still did the right thing. At a time when he had everything to lose, he was the only general in the American military whose sense of duty and love of country were greater than his careerism.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“When America goes to war, finding troops with brave hearts is not a problem. The problem is finding the right men to lead them.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“President Calvin Coolidge: “Doubters do not achieve; skeptics do not contribute; cynics do not create.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine

“Once he told me that the greatest weapon that one can have is controlled anger, and the greatest defect that one can have is uncontrolled anger.”
― Robert Coram, Brute: The Life of Victor Krulak, U.S. Marine