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That speech is great. Very good time for American patriotism.
(of course Basketball is just a game) still it's worth posting
The Speech Given somewhere in England on June 5th, 1944
"Be seated."
Men, this stuff that some sources sling around about us wanting out of this war, not wanting to fight, is a crock of bull . We love to fight, traditionally. All real champions love the sting and clash of battle. You are here today for three reasons. First, because you are here to defend your homes. Second, you are here for your own self-respect, because you would not want to be anywhere else. Third, you are here because you are real men and all real men like to fight! When you, here, every one of you, were kids, you all admired the champion marble player, the fastest runner, the toughest boxer, the big league ball players, and the All-American football players.
Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.
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That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here.
If you're not alert, sometime, a German son-of-an-asshole- is going to sneak up behind you and beat you to death with a sockful of ! There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily, all because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bas asleep before they did!
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An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse . The bilious bas s who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about ing!
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My men don't surrender, and I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he has been hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight back. That's not just bull either. The kind of man that I want in my command is just like the lieutenant in Libya, who, with a Nazi Kraut poking a Luger against his chest, jerked off his helmet, swept the gun aside with one hand, and busted the out of the Kraut with his helmet. Then he jumped on the gun and went out and killed another German before they knew what the was coming off. And, all of that time, this man had a bullet through a lung. There was a real man!
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There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you WON'T have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, 'Well, your Granddaddy shoveled in Louisiana.'
No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, 'Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned- named Georgie Patton!'
That is all.
