- Mark Williams: Your folks are gonna get quite a kick out of reading about you.
- Lt. Sid Jacobs: [Taken aback] You mean all that stuff will be in the Schenectady paper?
- Mark Williams: Sure. You don't mind, do you?
- Lt. Sid Jacobs: Well, heck, no! What do you know, it's a small world, isn't it?
- Mark Williams: Yeah, and it's getting smaller. If only more folks back home would realize that Crane Street, Schenectady runs all the way to Burma, this would be the last war.
- Lt. Sid Jacobs: Amen.
- Capt. Nelson: [Seeing Gabby putting stagnant water in his canteen and getting ready to drink it] Hey, do you want to get sick? Where's your purifying tablets?
- Cpl. Gabby Gordon: I lost them when we made that last river crossing.
- [Nelson gives him some of his]
- Cpl. Gabby Gordon: They'll remember me in history. Gabby Gordon: the guy who purified all the stinkin' rivers in Burma!
- Mark Williams: What if my parachute doesn't open?
- Capt. Nelson: Then you'll be the first one on the ground.
- Paratrooper: [upon following the dead body of young paratrooper Hollis] So much for Mrs. Hollis' nine months of pain and twenty years of hope.
- Pvt. Nebraska Hooper: It's sure peaceful so far.
- Cpl. Gabby Gordon: That's the way I like it... peaceful. I already said when I starved to death, I want it to be peaceful.
- Capt. Nelson: [to Williams' dead body] Oh, we won't forget you, Pop. From now on, if I ever get to buy another newspaper, I'll remember what a few cents can buy. So long.
- Mark Williams: [Aghast and outraged at the atrocities] Hey, I've been a newspaperman for thirty years. I thought I'd seen or read about everything that one man can do to another from the torture chambers of the Middle Ages to the gang wars and lynchings of the day. But this... this is different! This was done in cold blood... by people who... who claim to be civilized. Civilzed? They're degenerate immoral idiots! Stinkin' little savages! Wipe 'em out, I say! Wipe 'em out! Wipe 'em off the face of the Earth! Wipe 'em off the face of the earth!
- [Walking offscreen]
- Mark Williams: The bastards! God!
- Cpl. Gabby Gordon: [about Nelson to the other men] C'm'on! I'll follow him down the barrel of a cannon!
- Col. J. Carter: [Pessimistically looking at aerial reconnaisance photos] Supply bundles lying where they were dropped. Three dead men to play host to every fly in Burma.
- Pvt. Nebraska Hooper: What are you thinkin' about, Gabby?
- Cpl. Gabby Gordon: [Chuckling] I wonder what happened to those two Zulus I had a date with last week.
- Mark Williams: Why didn't you join the Navy?
- Capt. Nelson: I can walk better than I can swim, brother.
- Capt. Nelson: [Looking at disfigured corpses of comrades] That's Harris... isn't it? But who are the others?
- SSgt. Treacy: [Visibly shaken] I don't know. How do I know who they are? If they were my brothers, I still wouldn't know.
- Capt. Nelson: Take it easy... they can't feel anything... now.
- Capt. Nelson: [Upon learning that Mr. Williams, an older journalist with no real military experience, will be going on the mission] Look, Mr. Williams, it's your life, so I'll give it to you straight. This isn't a job for you. It's a young man's job.
- Mark Williams: Well, I'm not exactly decrepit.
- Capt. Nelson: Well, maybe not. Do you know how old the colonel is in there? Thirty four. Do you know how old our commanding general is? Thirty seven. Young men, all of us. We've got to be. Do you know why? I'll give you two good reasons: We jump out of planes, and guys shoot at us. This isn't exactly healthy, unless you're young enough to take it.
- Capt. Nelson: Uh, pardon my asking, but how old are you, Mr. Williams?
- Mark Williams: That's a military secret. Now, wait a minute. Let me tell you something. You know what I did before the war? I sat on a nice soft cushion in a pine-paneled office and I gave orders, and people jumped and I made a bucket of dough per week. Now I'm out here. I came out here as I wanted to be here. Because I wanted to do what I could so the people back home would know a little better what war is about. I'm making no dough, Capt. Nelson, and I may wind up with a bullet through my, uh... typewriter. I know it isn't easy. I didn't come out here expecting it to be easy. But you're not fighting this war from behind a desk, are you?
- Capt. Nelson: No.
- Mark Williams: Well, I'm not writing it from behind one, either.
- Capt. Nelson: Okay, Pop. Maybe you're a little old, but you'll do. Glad to have you with us.