Richard Burton credited as playing...
Captain Leith
- Capt. Leith: [surveying the ruins of a Berber city in the desert] Tenth century, I'd say. Too modern for me.
- Capt. Leith: [on mercy-shooting one badly wounded soldier, and trying to save another who dies] I killed the living, and I saved the dead.
- Capt. Leith: You're afraid to go in and kill with your bare hands. That's what makes a soldier and destroys you as a man.
- Major Brand: War is not murder.
- Capt. Leith: [chuckling condescendingly] Brand, you're wonderful! You have the Christian decency that forbids killing a dying man but ignores the work of a sharpshooter.
- Major Brand: [defensively] Well, war is killing.
- Capt. Leith: [laughing] Better and better. So, the fine line between war and murder is distance... Anybody can kill at a distance with the same sort of courage that a man shoots rabbits, but when it cokes to the dirty work. you have to call on a civilian.
- Major Brand: What is it that you're trying to say?
- Capt. Leith: That I despise you for the professional coward that you are!
- Major Brand: What about the war?
- Capt. Leith: That's something you have to survive like... uh, like love.
- Major Brand: Are you trying to goad me into killing you?
- Capt. Leith: Perhaps...
- Major Brand: Why?
- Capt. Leith: Perhaps because... i haven't the courage to do it myself.
- Jane Brand: What if he doesn't come back?
- Capt. Leith: Then he and I and you become part of history, of its futility.
- Jane Brand: Don't talk to me in riddles, Jimmy.
- Capt. Leith: It's a long time since I was in Libya. The Romans built wonderful cities in Libya: dead bones sticking out of the sand. War rolled over them. It'll be good to see them again.
- Jane Brand: You always seemed to prefer stones to people.
- Capt. Leith: I've learned things from stones.
- Jane Brand: What?
- Capt. Leith: All that people have forgotten in the centuries.
- Jane Brand: I seem to remember I was less than a stone to you. I loved you, Jimmy.
- Capt. Leith: We'd better go in. There isn't much time.
- Jane Brand: What can I say to him?
- Capt. Leith: Tell him all the things that women have said to the men before they go to the wars. Tell him he's a hero. Tell him he's a good man. Tell him you'll be waiting for him when he comes back. Tell him he'll be making history.
- Major Brand: [walking into a room where Leith is adjusting the fan] Hello, Leith.
- Capt. Leith: [contemptuously after adjusting the fans downward] I thought that fan should. uh, cool the colonel's head and not the flies on the ceiling.
