- Windy: [looking at Sergeant Porter, sobbing face down on the ground] Keep crying, Porter. You're crying because you're wounded. You don't have to be bleeding to be wounded; you just had one battle too many. Yeah, you're out of it now. No more guesswork, waiting and wondering, for you. You've built yourself a foxhole
- [taps his own helmet]
- Windy: - up there. Nothing in the world that can make you come out of it. Go ahead, Porter; keep crying - we understand.
- Sergeant Tyne: It's a funny thing, how many people you meet in an army that cross your path for a few seconds and you never see 'em again.
- Sergeant Tyne: Nothing slower than crawling. Nothing in the world. How long would it take to crawl around the world? A hundred years? A thousand years?
- Sergeant Tyne: Wonder what it'll be like when we hit France, Mac.
- McWilliams: I don't know. I never seen France.
- Sergeant Tyne: I bet its just a long concrete wall with a gun every yard. Maybe they'll set the water on fire with oil, too. Boy, when that day comes I wanna be somewhere else.
- Windy: A man's hands never seem to get clean, even if he don't touch nothing. They just stay dirty. Sort of a special kind of dirt. G.I. dirt. I bet one of those criminologists could take a sample out of a guy's fingernail, put it under a microscope, and say, "That's G.I. dirt." The dirt's always the same color, no matter what country you're fighting in.
- Windy: Hey, Tinker? How do you spell "Mare Nostrum?"
- Tinker: What's that?
- Windy: The Mediterranean. It's what the Eye-ties call it. It means "our sea."
- Tinker: Why?
- Windy: I'm writing to my sister.
- Tinker: Whattya mean, you're writing to your sister? You're packed on a landing barge, bouncing on your Mare Nostrum, and waiting to hit the beach like the rest of us slobs.
- [last lines]
- [after a desperate battle with many casualties Windy's platoon captures their objective]
- Windy: Dear Frances, we just blew a bridge and took a farmhouse. It was so easy... so terribly easy.
- Sgt. Ward: Apples.
- Windy: What'd you say, Sergeant?
- Sgt. Ward: [surprised] Guess I said 'apples.'
- Windy: Why?
- Sgt. Ward: Just thinkin' of 'em.
- Windy: Oh.
- Riddle: What kind of apples, sergeant?
- Sgt. Ward: All kinds. Baldwnis, McIntosh, Reds, Pippins, Russets... I was thinkin' I'd like to be cuttin' one open, right now. And lickin' that juice off the knife.
- Riddle: Cut it out, willya, Sarge?
- [grinning]
- Riddle: Now ya got me thinking about something juicy.
- Rivera: Did you ever go camping when you were a kid?
- Friedman: Every time we get in a bunch of trees, you ask me the same question.
- Rivera: Every time I get in a bunch of trees, I remember it.
- Friedman: For the millionth time, no - I never went camping when I was a kid. I lived in the city.
- Rivera: I lived in the city, too, schmeggege. I got on the train.
- Friedman: Yeah, you told me.
- Rivera: Well, I'm telling you again.
- Friedman: You're a jukebox, Rivera. Somebody keeps putting nickels into you.
- Rivera: [turning away from Friedman] I ain't talkin' to you no more. Hey, Judson!
- Pvt. Judson: [running up from the rear] Yeah?
- Rivera: You ever go camping in the woods?
- Pvt. Judson: What woods?
- Rivera: [to Friedman, jerking thumb towards Judson] Get that, willya?
- [to Judson]
- Rivera: ANY woods!
- Pvt. Judson: No.
- Rivera: That's it! You don't know what you missed. You ain't never lived until you toasted a mickey over the coals. It ain't like Army chow. You can sit around the campfire - you can shoot it all nght, if you want to. You can go fishing - all that kinda stuff.
- Friedman: [sarcastically] Outdoor man.
- Rivera: Next time they make you a civilian, Judson, try a camp in the woods. Tell 'em I sent you.
- Pvt. Judson: Tell who?
- Rivera: The birds - and the bees! Did your old man ever tell you about the birds and the bees?
- Pvt. Judson: No.
- Rivera: Hear that, Friedman? Judson never heard of the birds and bees.
- Friedman: That's terrible!
- Rivera: Shall we tell him?
- Friedman: Maybe we'd better.
- Rivera: Give us a butt, Judson; we'll tell you alllll about the birds and the bees.
- Pvt. Judson: Ain't got a butt.
- Rivera: Good thing they invented trains for travelling salesmen.
- Friedman: OK, kill me: what's the gag?
- Rivera: No gag. But if they didn't have trains, all the travelling salesmen would have to walk.
- Friedman: *You're* a travelling salesman; you ain't been taking any trains lately.
- Rivera: Whaddaya mean, *I'm* a travelling salesman? I'm a murderer!
- Friedman: You're a travelling salesmen. You're selling democracy to the natives.
- Rivera: So that's what I am, huh? Whaddaya know. Where'd you get that malarkey, Jake?
- Friedman: Out of a book.
- Rivera: A book!
- Friedman: You're a decadent democrat, Rivera.
- Rivera: [as the two Italian soldiers are being interrogated for information by Tyne and Porter] Rivera: Ask 'em if they know where I can get a pizza.
- [Windy composes a letter while his landing craft is heading for the beachhead at Salerno under heavy fire]
- Windy: Dear Frances, I am writing you this letter relaxing on the deck of a luxury liner. On shore the natives have evidently just spotted us and are getting up a reception - fireworks, music and that sort of stuff. Ha. The musicians in our own band have also struck up a little tune. Ha ha.