"The unwilling doing the unnecessary...."

[Jonathan Lighter]

 It's hard for me to believe that Google Books (and Amazon) turn up so
little for this quotation, which I first heard (or more likely read) in the
early 1970s (in the 1970 version) as applied to the Vietnam War.

My sincere apologies to Fred if he's already covered it.  Perhaps the
following, with variants, may be of some interest anyway.

1970 Jack Foisie, "Reds Stiff Fight Upsets GI Drive," _Washington Post_ (May
8) A22: They charged out of the helicopter under withering fire wearing such
hand-printed denunciations of war on their helmets as this: "We are the
unwilling, led by the unqualified, doing the unnecessary for the
ungrateful." But a lot of them also wore the crosses of Christ under the
bands of their helmets.

1974 Robert W. Witkin _The Intelligence of Feeling_  (London: Heinemann
Educational) 118: He does his duty grimly like a soldier in an unpopular
war, 'the unwilling doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful'

1996 _Journal of the Royal Musical Association_ CXXI 274: Albert Bradshaw,
Trinity College, Dublin: "'The Unwilling Doing the Unnecessary for the
Ungrateful' (Witkin): Research on Music Education in Ireland."

2003 _Usenet: ok.general_ (March 25) [
http://groups.google.com/group/ok.general/browse_thread/thread/9785eefde1fd64d7/1d703333b50dbf15?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22unwilling+doing+the+unnecessary+for+the+ungrateful%22&pli=1
]: The 'unofficial motto' of many members of the US forces in Vietnam:
"The unwilling
doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful".

2003 David R. Hackworth & Eilhys England _Steel My Soldiers' Hearts_ (N.Y.:
Random House) 41: Folks had shit written all over the camouflage covers —
"We are the unthanked doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful led by the
unqualified."

2003 Geoffrey Wawro _The Franco-Prussian War_ (Cambridge U.P.) 288: They
were the proverbial "unthanked doing the unnecessary for the ungrateful."

2005 Larry Heinemann _Black Virgin Mountain_ (N.Y.: Doubleday) 25: We
understood perfectly well that we were the unwilling doing the unnecessary
for the ungrateful.

(The two "Heinemanns" involved are, AFAIK, entirely unrelated.)

JL

-- 
"There You Go Again...Using Reason on the Planet of the Duck-Billed
Platypus"

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org