A Walk in the Sun (1945)

John Ireland: Pfc. Windy Craven

Photos 

Quotes 

• 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.

• 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.

• [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.