A Walk in the Sun

Friedman:
You ever think you'll live to make corporal?

Rivera:
Baby, I just want to live long enough to make civilian.

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.

Rivera:
Nobody dies.

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.

Rivera:
It could've been something else. It could've been the engineers or the tanks. It could even have been the Navy. They looked at me and said, "Here's a guy that can walk." They finished me, all right.

Friedman:
Everybody walks. Even monkeys.

Friedman:
Where are we going, Rivera?

Rivera:
I am going someplace where I can set up this weapon. Then I am going to shoot this weapon. I am not gonna walk any more!

[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.

[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.

Pvt. Archimbeau:
Every dirty job in the army is my personal property.

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] Now ya got me thinking about something juicy.

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] - up there. Nothing in the world that can make you come out of it. Go ahead, Porter; keep crying - we understand.

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] 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.