Captain Ernest E. Evans of the USS Johnston:
While he said that before the ship left port, he meant it.
Slightly off topic but - Moose (with head mounted on wall of hunting lodge), “What is that? A gun?”
Same battle, not facing death, but they just had been: Admiral Sprague, on the bridge of the Fanshaw Bay (one of the escort carriers that the Johnston and others were valiantly protecting) later recounted that one of his signalmen shouted, “Goddamnit boys, they’re getting away!”
The “they,” in this case was the retreating surface action group of Japanese warships which included the largest battleship in the world, Yamato, and, not thirty minutes earlier, realistically threatened to kill them all. From here: The National Interest: Blog | The National Interest
Also not quite at the moment of death, but this one from Dienekes, who is much better known as one of the 300 at Thermopylae, is a goodie. From his wiki (Dienekes - Wikipedia), citing Herodotus: "
“Then we will fight in the shade!” is pithier, and further proof of Cicero’s genius.
He also said to his crew, when announcing that three destroyers were going to take on far superior odds at Leyte Gulf, "This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. "
Perhaps that should be in a different thread, “Real World Understatements in War Time”.
The Spartans also, when ordered to turn over their weapons by a much larger Persian army, supposedly replied, “Come and take them!”
“Thomas Jefferson still survives.” - John Adams.
Enjoy,
Steven
That is a more famous quote. Certainly on more bumper stickers, anyway. I think you could just go through the IMDB Quotes section from 300 and find a half dozen that’d qualify.
Another, not quite in the face of death, but bad ass all the same: It’s the Battle of the Bulge, December 23, 1944, and the Germans have been kicking the Americans’s asses up and down the Ardennes. As told by a soldier in a retreating tank destroyer,
http://www.517prct.org/documents/82nd_airborne_poster/82nd_airborne_poster.htm
There is a tale told of a French Foreign Legionnaire who shot a superior officer. He went to the hospital and apologized—for his poor marksmanship. “Je sui maladroit.”
That is correct.
According to biographer Roger Kahn, Dempsey’s wife (actress Estelle Taylor) called him by the pet name “Ginsberg” because Dempsey had a Jewish great-grandmother.
Google translate offers, “I’m awkward”.
I had been told the literal meaning was “I was clumsy.” The point being that he was not apologizing for assaulting his commanding officer; he was apologizing for failing to kill his commanding officer. And this, in an era before France abolished the death penalty.
When the goon squad brought Thomas de Mahy his death warrant, he read it and said, “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”
That guy posts on the 'Dope.
I visited Oscar Wild’s tomb in the Pere Lachaise Cemetary in Paris. Lots of people were sticking little notes into the stone, so I wrote one: “Oscar: the wallpaper is gone.”
But surely the best Spartan comeback was when Philip II send them the message:
The formal Spartan reply:
Outstanding!
I’m not sure this counts as a “quip”:
Correspondent Eric Sevareid was on a military transport flight to China in 1943 that crashed in a Burmese jungle. He jumped out at the last moment, got his parachute to open, and described hearing someone yelling “My God, I’m going to live!”, then realized it was his own voice. 
In the same battle, someone said, “We got them into 40 mm range now”. This was when some of the Japanese ships were that close to the Americans.
Not only this this fleet have 4 Battleships, they also had 4 Heavy Cruisers (which were MUCH bigger than the treaty cruisers that the Americans had) and if I remember right, these destroyers and escort destroyers sank 3 of these Heavy Cruisers:eek:
Correction 6 Heavy cruisers