"The unwilling doing the unnecessary...."

[Stephen Goranson]

I recall that quote from, oh, "way back," too. I. F. Stone picked it up
from the
Wash. Post and put it in his bi-weekly (maybe vol. 18 1970) and a later book,
interrupted thus: "We are the unwilling," it said, "led by the
unqualified...."

Stephen Goranson
http://www.duke.edu/~goranson




Quoting Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>:

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

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