She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949)

Irving Pichel: Narrator

Quotes 

• Narrator : So Nathan Brittles, ex-captain of cavalry U.S.A., started westward for the new settlements in California: westward toward the setting sun, which is the end of the trail for all old men. But the army hadn't finished with Nathan Brittles and it sent a galloper after him. THAT was Sgt. Tyree's department.

  Sgt. Tyree : Yo-oh! Capt. Brittles!

  [catches up to him] 

  Sgt. Tyree : Captain, sir.

  Captain Nathan Brittles : Huh?

  Sgt. Tyree : For you, sir. From the Yankee War Department.

  [hands him the dispatch] 

  Captain Nathan Brittles : I knew it. Dad blast it... I knew it!

  [reading the dispatch] 

  Captain Nathan Brittles : What? Sergeant... my appointment: chief of scouts! With a rank of Lt. Colonel. And will you look at those endorsements: Phil Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman and Ulysses Simpson Grant, President of The United States of America! There's three aces for you, boy!

  Sgt. Tyree : Yeah, but I kinda wish you'da been a-holdin' a full hand.

  Captain Nathan Brittles : Huh? Full hand? Whaddaya mean: full hand?

  Sgt. Tyree : Robert E. Lee, sir.

  Captain Nathan Brittles : Oh. Heh... wouldn't a been bad. Let's go.

• [last lines] 

  Narrator : [as the troop passes by]  So here they are: the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals... riding the outposts of a nation. From Fort Reno to Fort Apache - from Sheridan to Startle - they were all the same: men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode - and whatever they fought for - that place became the United States.