Not a command per se, but Winston Churchill was a damn good wartime speechifyer:
We shall not flag nor fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France and on the seas and oceans; we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air. We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be; we shall fight on beaches, landing grounds, in fields, in streets and on the hills. We shall never surrender and even if, which I do not for the moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, will carry on the struggle until in God’s good time the New World with all its power and might, sets forth to the liberation and rescue of the Old.
I was going to, but I decided not to be that guy and just made a stand-alone post, But I forgot I was still replying to you. That’s why I seem to be making a totally unrelated reply to your post
Actually what Perry did was have them embroidered on a flag that he flew from his ship. Lawrence was a friend of his, which is the main reason he did this.
MG Charles Canham is one of the great forgotten American heroes. He was highly decorated but never got the recognition some of his peers got. The unit depicted in Saving Private Ryan was his unit. He commanded the 116th Infantry Regiment that was the 1st wave on Omaha Beach. He was shot through the wrist but continued to stalk the line pushing his troops forward. He was seen yelling at a lieutenant that was taking cover “ Get your ass out of there and show some leadership!” Troops ran towards the Germans because he was scarier.
His most famous line came a little later. He was promoted to Brigadier General after D-Day and made assistant division commander of the 8th Infantry Division. After the Battle of Brest he went to take the surrender of the German commander. The general who was a three star equivalent was miffed that he was surrendering to a lower ranked officer. He demanded to see Canham’s credentials. Canham pointed to his dirty battle weary soldiers and said, “These are my credentials.” It became the motto of the 8th Infantry Division.
On ne passe pas was revived in the Spanish Civil War a few decades later (of course in Spanish as no pasaran), most famously by Communist Dolores Ibarriuri in a radio speech in 1939.
The irony doesn’t stop. Perry brought that flag with him as he abandoned his own heavily damaged ship during the battle. The moment was immortalized, and the irony seemingly lost, in a painting:
So really that motto is oh and two for a reality check. The man who uttered the words in the first place should have had the moral courage to order the surrender of his own ship rather than leave it to some poor junior officer to bear the blame (that officer was later court-martialed and disgraced even as his Captain, whose incompetence brought about the disaster, was lionized in death). Perry faired better, winning the battle from another ship in the end, but then he at least had the sense to (1) prepare before the battle and (2) not take those words too seriously after all.
Nope. The full story around those words is actually the opposite of inspiring. As likely as not to be used to (unfairly) berate the survivors of devastating losses, rather than inspire.
“You may fire when [you are] ready, Gridley.”
(Commodore George Dewey of the Pacific Fleet to the Captain of the USS Olympia at the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. The Olympia is still afloat, docked in Philadelphia.)
And, of course, Pogo Possum (Walt Kelly) improved on Captain Lawrence’s quote with “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
The 1862 Dakota war in Minnesota started with the quote from the Indian agent Andrew Myrick, who when told the Indians were starving because he was withholding their rations, said “Let them eat grass.” It could be said it was the start of the war, and you can be sure that an unrecorded equivalent phrase was said back to him, since when his body was found, his mouth was stuffed with grass. His original phrase was certainly an inspiration to the Dakota warriors.
