Captain Benjamin L. Willard quotes from Apocalypse Now (1979)

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Saigon ... shit; I'm still only in Saigon ... Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said "yes" to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now ... waiting for a mission ... getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

The crew were mostly just kids. Rock 'n' rollers with one foot in their graves.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

They'd traded in their horses for choppers, and went tear-assing around 'Nam looking for the shit ...

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Part of me was afraid of what I would find and what I would do when I got there. I knew the risks, or imagined I knew. But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear, was the desire to confront him.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

He was one of those guys that had that weird light around him. You just knew he wasn't going to get so much as a scratch here.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

I was going to the worst place in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable – plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory – any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

If that's how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn't just insanity and murder, there was enough of that to go around for everyone.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Oh man, the shit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command's ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

It's a way we had over here with living with ourselves. We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

The machinist, the one they called Chef, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam, probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. Lance on the forward 50's was a famous surfer from the beaches south of L.A. You look at him and you wouldn't believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life. Clean, Mr. Clean, was from some South Bronx shithole. The light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. Then there was Phillips, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure as shit was the Chief's boat.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Someday this war's gonna end. That'd be just fine with the boys on the boat. They weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Trouble is, I'd been back there, and I knew that it just didn't exist anymore.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep, or movin' too fast. His idea of R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death or victory.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole ****in' program.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

They were gonna make me a major for this, and I wasn't even in their ****in' army anymore.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Late summer-autumn 1968: Kurtz's patrols in the highlands coming under frequent ambush. The camp started falling apart ... November: Kurtz orders the assassination of three Vietnamese men and one woman. Two of the men were Colonels in the South Vietnamese army. Enemy activity in his old sector dropped off to nothing. Guess he must have hit the right four people. The army tried one last time to bring him back into the fold. And if he pulled over, it all would have been forgotten. But he kept going, and he kept winning it his way, and they called me in. They lost him. He was gone. Nothing but rumors and random intelligence, mostly from captured VC. The VC knew his name by now, and they were scared of him. He and his men were playing hit and run all the way into Cambodia.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I'd know what to do, but it didn't happen. I was in there with him for days, not under guard, I was free, but he knew I wasn't going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the Generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how far from them he'd really gone? He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.

Captain Benjamin L. Willard

"Dear son,
I'm afraid that both you and your mother would have been worried for not hearing from me these past weeks. But my situation here has become a difficult one. I've been officially accused of murder by the Army. The alleged victims were four Vietnamese double agents. We spent months uncovering and accumulating evidence. When absolute proof was completed, we acted, we acted like soldiers. The charges are unjustified. They are in fact, under the circumstances of this conflict, quite completely insane. In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action, for what is often called ruthless, what may in many circumstances be only clarity; seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it directly, quickly, aware ... looking at it. I would trust you to tell your mother what you choose about this letter. As for the charges, I'm unconcerned. I'm beyond their timid, lying morality. And so I'm beyond caring.
You have all my faith.
Your loving father."

Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.

Willard

Terminate?..... the Colonel?

General Corman

He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.

Terminate..... with extreme prejudice.

You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.

Willard

My mission is to make it up into Cambodia. There's a Green Beret Colonel up there who's gone insane. I'm supposed to kill him.

Chef

That's **** typical! Shit. ****in' Vietnam mission! I'm short and we gotta go up there so you can kill one of our own guys? That's ****in' great! That's just ****in' great, man. Shit. That's ****in'... crazy! I thought you were going in there to blow up a bridge, or, some **** railroad tracks or somethin'.

Willard

Could we, uh, talk to Colonel Kurtz?

Photojournalist

Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet-warrior in the classic sense. I mean, sometimes he'll, uh, well, you'll say hello to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you, and he won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? 'If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you'..." I mean, I'm no, I can't – I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's, he's a great man. I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas ... (Note: The last sentences here reference first Rudyard Kipling's poem If— and then T.S. Eliot's poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.)

Willard

Are you crazy, God damn it? Don't you think its a little risky for some R&R?

Kilgore

If I say it's safe to surf this beach Captain, then it's safe to surf this beach. I mean, I'm not afraid to surf this place, I'll surf this whole **** place!

Roxanne

Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?

Willard

Yeah, 'cause it's always moving.

Kurtz

Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?

Willard

I was sent on a classified mission, sir.

Kurtz

It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?

Willard

They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.

Kurtz

Are my methods unsound?

Willard

I don't see any method at all, sir.

Kurtz

I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?

Willard

I'm a soldier.

Kurtz

You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.

Willard

Who's in charge here, soldier?

Ain't you?
...

Willard

Soldier, do you know who's in command here?

Yeah. [turns away]

Willard

How long has this kid been on this boat?

Chief Phillips

Seven months.

Willard

He's really specializing in busting my balls.

Chief Phillips

Very possible, Captain, he thinks the same of you ...

Willard

Oh yeah? And what you think, Chief?

Chief Phillips

I don't think! My orders say I'm not supposed to know where I'm taking this boat, so I don't! But one look at you and I know it's gonna be hot, wherever it is. (Brief pause)

Willard

We're going about 70 klicks above the Do Lung bridge.

Chief Phillips

That's Cambodia, Captain.

Willard

That's classified. We're not supposed to be in Cambodia, but that's where I'm going. You just get me close to my destination, and I cut you and the crew loose.

Chief Phillips

All right, Captain.

I'm Lt. Carlsen. I was sent from Nha Trang with this message for you three days ago, sir. They expected you here a little sooner. This is mail for the boat's crew. You don't know how happy this makes me in delivering all this.

Willard

Why?

Because now I can get out of here...if I can find a way. [an enemy artillery shell lands dangerously close by as Lt. Carlsen runs away] You're in the asshole of the world, Captain!