Like every year, I am flying all my Buckeye flags at half staff in honor of the brave veterans of the Toledo War. They were willing to lay down their lives to keep us free from the tyranny of Lansing. But for their sacrifice, we'd all smell like hot dog water.
Never forget. NEVER FUCKING FORGET!
With apologies to the late great GSP.....
Be seated.
Men, all this stuff you hear about Buckeyes not wanting to fight, wanting to stay out of the war, is a lot of bullshit. Buckeyes love to fight. All real Buckeyes love the sting and clash of battle. When you were kids, you all admired the champion marble shooter, the fastest runner, the big-league ball players and the toughest boxers. Buckeyes love a winner and will not tolerate a loser. Buckeyes play to win all the time. That's why Buckeyes have never lost and will never lose a war. The very thought of losing is hateful to Buckeyes. Battle is the most significant competition in which a man can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
You are not all going to die. Only two percent of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a goddamn liar. But the real hero is the man who fights even though he's scared. Some men will get over their fright in a minute under fire, some take an hour, and for some it takes days. But the real man never lets his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his state, and his innate manhood.
All through this season you men have bitched about what you call 'this chicken-shit play calling.' That is all for a purpose—to ensure mental toughness and to create a sense of furious anger. This must be bred into every Buckeye. I don't give a fuck for a man who is not always pissed off and expecting more. But the play calling has made veterans of all you men. You are ready! A man has to be pissed off all the time if he expects to keep on breathing. If not, some M*ch*gan son-of-a-bitch will sneak up behind him and beat him to death with a sock full of shit. There are four hundred neatly marked graves in Ann Arbor, all because one man went to sleep on the job—but they are Wolverine graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before his coaches did.
Buckeye Nation is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for their blog don't know any more about real battle than they do about fucking. And we have the best team—we have the finest food and equipment, the best spirit and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity these poor bastards we're going up against.
All the real heroes are not storybook combat fighters. Every single person in Buckeye Nation plays a vital role. So don't ever let up. Don't ever think that your job is unimportant. What if every truck driver decided that he didn't like the whine of the shells and turned yellow and jumped headlong into a ditch? That cowardly bastard could say to himself, 'Hell, they won't miss me, just one man in thousands.' What if every man said that? Where in the hell would we be then? No, thank God, Buckeyes don't say that. Every man does his job. Every man is important. The ordnance men are needed to supply the guns, the quartermaster is needed to bring up the food and clothes for us because where we are going there isn't a hell of a lot to steal. Every last damn man in the mess hall, even the one who boils the water to keep us from getting the M*ch*gan shits, has a job to do.
Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don't want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men.
One of the bravest men I saw in the Toledo War was on a telegraph pole in the midst of furious fire while we were moving toward Ann Arbor. I stopped and asked him what the hell he was doing up there. He answered, 'Fixing the wire, sir.' 'Isn't it a little unhealthy up there right now?' I asked. 'Yes sir, but this goddamn wire has got to be fixed.' I asked, 'Don't those planes strafing the road bother you?' And he answered, 'No sir, but you sure as hell do.' Now, there was a real soldier. A real man. A man who devoted all he had to his duty, no matter how great the odds, no matter how seemingly insignificant his duty appeared at the time.
And you should have seen the trucks on the road to Detroit. Those drivers were magnificent. All day and all night they crawled along those son-of-a-bitch roads, never stopping, never deviating from their course with shells bursting all around them. Many of the men drove over 40 consecutive hours. We got through on good old Buckeye guts. These were not players. But they were members of Buckeye Nation with a job to do. They were part of a team. Without them the fight would have been lost.
Sure, we all want to go home. We want to get this war over with. But you can't win a war lying down. The quickest way to get it over with is to get the bastards who started it. We want to get the hell over there and clean the goddamn thing up, and then get at those purple-pissing Spartans in a rematch. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we go home. The shortest way home is through Ann Arbor and East Lansing. So keep moving. And when we get to Ann Arbor, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Harbaugh.
When a man is lying in a shell hole, if he just stays there all day, a scUMer will get him eventually. The hell with that. My men don't dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Vulvaerines that we've got more guts than they have or ever will have. We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks. We're going to murder those lousy scUM cocksuckers by the bushel-fucking-basket.
Some of you men are wondering whether or not you'll chicken out under fire. Don't worry about it. I can assure you that you'll all do your duty. War is a bloody business, a killing business. The Wolverines are the enemy. Wade into them, spill their blood or they will spill yours. Shoot them in the guts. Rip open their belly. When shells are hitting all around you and you wipe the dirt from your face and you realize that it's not dirt, it's the blood and gut of what was once your best friend, you'll know what to do.
I don't want any messages saying 'I'm holding my position.' We're not holding a goddamned thing. We're advancing constantly and we're not interested in holding anything except the enemy's balls. We're going to hold him by his balls and we're going to kick him in the ass; twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all the time. Our plan of operation is to advance and keep on advancing. We're going to go through the enemy like shit through a tinhorn.
There will be some complaints that we're pushing our people too hard. I don't give a damn about such complaints. I believe that an ounce of sweat will save a gallon of blood. The harder we push, the more *ichigan Men we kill. The more *ichigan Men we kill, the fewer of our men will be killed. Pushing harder means fewer casualties. I want you all to remember that. My men don't surrender. I don't want to hear of any soldier under my command being captured unless he is hit. Even if you are hit, you can still fight. That's not just bullshit either. I want men like the lieutenant in East Lansing who, with a Luger against his chest, swept aside the gun with his hand, jerked his helmet off with the other and busted the hell out of the scUMer with the helmet. Then he picked up the gun and he killed another *ichigander. All this time the man had a bullet through his lung. That's a man for you!
Don't forget, you don't know I'm here at all. No word of that fact is to be mentioned in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell they did with me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this army. I'm not even supposed to be in Ohio. Let the first bastards to find out be the goddamned *ichiganders. Some day, I want them to rise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl 'oh snap! It's the goddamned Buckeyes and that son-of-a-bitch Meyer again!'
Then there's one thing you men will be able to say when this war is over and you get back home. Thirty years from now when you're sitting by your fireside with your grandson on your knee and he asks, 'What did you do in the great Toledo War II?' You won't have to cough and say, 'Well, your granddaddy shoveled shit in Cincinnati.' No sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say 'Son, your granddaddy rode with the great Buckeye Army and a son-of-a-goddamned-bitch named Urban Meyer!'
All right, you sons of bitches. You know how I feel. I'll be proud to lead you wonderful guys in battle anytime, anywhere. That's all