Harry Turtledove

“It’s never too early for the truth,” Summers said, which proved he’d never been a lawyer.

“We are going to drive the enemy out of Pennsylvania,” the lieutenant said grandly.

“What? All by ourselves?” Pound said.

Don Griffiths wagged a finger in his face. “I’ve heard about you, Sergeant—don’t think I haven’t,” he said. “You haven’t got the right attitude.”

“Probably not, sir,” Pound agreed politely. “I do object to being killed for no good reason.”

“Besides, when you’re smoking you can’t smell the goddamn war so much.”

You can’t smell the goddamn war so much. Dowling wouldn’t have put it that way, which didn’t mean the kid was wrong. Even here in Washington, well back of the line, you noted whiffs of that smell. Dowling didn’t know what all went into it. Among the pieces, though, were unburied corpses, unwashed men, and uncovered latrine trenches. Cordite and smoke were two other constants. The smell had a sharper note in this war, for exhaust fumes had largely ousted the barnyard aroma of horses.

And there was one other stink that never went away. It blew out of the War Department. With luck, it blew out of the War Department on the other side, too. And it usually did, for most wars went on for a long, long time. No, there was no escaping the all-invasive, all-pervasive reek of stupidity.

When you got past fifty, you had to take care of yourself the way you took care of a motorcar. You’d break down if you didn’t, and replacement parts for your carcass were mighty hard to come by.

Anyone who used a word like obstructions in a sentence was bound to have other things wrong with him, too.

“This would involve cooperation with the Navy,” he said at last. By the way he said it, he might’ve been talking about eating with his fingers. The Army always had the feeling that the Navy didn’t quite pull its weight.

A man who expended power on a whim was a fool.

He never asked for Pound’s opinion. He didn’t seem to think the War Department had issued opinions to enlisted men. If he’d had a better notion of what he was doing himself, Pound wouldn’t have minded so much. But he never had been able to suffer fools gladly, and he never had been able to suffer in silence, either.

That was either the most brilliant analysis she’d ever heard—or the most breathtakingly cynical one. For the life of her, she couldn't decide which. Maybe it was both at once. Was that better or worse? She couldn't make up her mind there, either.

Hardly anything is more pleasant than talking about why other people are a pack of damn fools.

Never can tell with this, though. That there man taught the Mississippi to be twisty.

One of the drawbacks of being President, he’d discovered, was that you couldn’t always call a damn fool a damn fool to his face. Sometimes, no matter how big a damn fool he was, you knew you might need him again one of these days.