MovieChat Forums > The Horse Soldiers Discussion > 'How do you like your coffee, Colonel?'

'How do you like your coffee, Colonel?'

posted 17 years ago by MadTom
2 replies | jump to latest

Early in the movie, as the brigade arrives at Greenbriar and sets up its bivouac site, Kendall gets into an argument with Secord; when Marlowe intervenes, Kendall tells him, "As usual I'm just presenting the grim facts. Colonel Secord doesn't seem to understand that the coffee tastes better when the latrines are dug downstream instead of upstream. How do you like your coffee, Colonel?"

Much later in the movie, after the brigade has been on the move down the length of the state of Mississippi, someone hands Marlowe a cup off coffee. He takes a sip, spits it out and shouts, "You call that coffee?!?"

Does anyone else besides me get the inference from that scene that in that bivouac site, the latrines were dug upstream? GAAAACK!

;-)

[–] johsdahl 17 years ago

Ewwww... Yuk. Haven't seen that movie in years, but I remember that bit ;)

[–] yohojohn 16 years ago

A neat scene, but Civil War soldiers never dug "latrines." They dug what were called "sinks." The American military didn't start calling them latrines until 1918, a term they picked up in France during World War I.