I have suffered a loss, Forrest, far greater than my legs. It’s my spirit, my soul, if you will. There is only a blank there now – medals where my soul used to be.
Eleanor Roosevelt had just conducted a two-month, twenty-five-thousand-mile tour of American fighting units in the South Pacific. This included Guadalcanal and other of the Solomon Islands, during which she is said to have told an audience of marines: “The marines that I have seen around the world have the cleanest bodies, the filthiest minds, the highest morale, and the lowest morals of any group of animals I have ever seen. Thank God for the United States Marines!
I found the head nurse and asked her, and she said Dan has been flown back to America on account of they can take better care of him there. I asked her if he is okay, and she said, ‘Yeah, if you can call two punctured lungs, a severed intestine, spinal separation, a missing foot, a truncated leg, and third degree burns over half the body okay, then he is just fine. I thanked her, and went on my way.
Sure, Gump,” he say. “What the hell – we will even get him accommodations in first class.
I shrug my shoulders an nod my head, but somethin down in me sinkin fast. I am jus a po ole idiot, an now I have got the whole human race to look after.
I got to tell you, that if it weren’t for that harmonica music, i might of just packed up and gone home, but it made me feel so good, I can hardly describe it. Sort of like my whole body is the harmonica and the music give me goosebumps when I play it.
By 1929 a handful of farsighted flight pioneers had concluded that “aviation could not progress until planes could fly safely day or night in almost any kind of weather.” Foremost among these was Dr. Jimmy Doolittle, recently armed with a PhD in aeronautical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In.
One day we found them. They must of been holding a gook convention or something, cause it seem like the same sort of deal as when you step on a anthill and they all come swarming around.
After a trip to Japan Mitchell famously predicted that the next war would be fought in the Pacific after a Japanese sneak attack on a Sunday morning in Hawaii. Eddie Rickenbacker, who had served as Mitchell’s driver before becoming an ace combat pilot, wryly quipped that “the only people who paid any attention to him were the Japanese.” Most.
So I tole him a little bit about my checkered career, an after he listened for a while, Tom Hanks says, “Well, Mr. Gump, you are sure a curious feller. Sounds like somebody ought to make a movie of your life’s story.
You might not be the smartest feller in town, but you’ve got more sense than most people.
There was some people hurt far worst than I was in that hospital, let me tell you. Poor old boys with arms and legs and hands and who knows what else missing. Boys what had been shot in their stomach and chests and faces. At night the place sound like a torture chamber – them fellers be howling and crying and calling for their mamas.
Jesus, we forgot the goddamn ape!
The Cracked Eggs, he says, have broken up.
I know that bein a idiot an all, I ain’t sposed to have no philosophy of my own, but maybe it’s just because nobody never took the time to talk to me bout it.
The fact that I were too dumb to play college football did not seem to impress the United States Army none.
Be very suspicious if somebody says they want to make a movie of your life story.
Your chances of winnin’ the lottery get a lot better if you buy a ticket.
Dream, but don’t quit your day job.
Nobody ever went broke sayin’ ‘Good Mornin″ to folks.
Try not to screw up. This will satisfy a few people, and amaze everybody else.