[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.


--John Ireland (as Pfc. Windy Craven) in A Walk in the Sun

[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.


--John Ireland (as Pfc. Windy Craven) in A Walk in the Sun

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.


--John Ireland (as Pfc. Windy Craven) in A Walk in the Sun

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.


--John Ireland (as Pfc. Windy Craven) in A Walk in the Sun