Quotations and Literature Forum

From the movie "We Were Soldiers Once," (Mel Gibson) is the title a quote of his own or did Lt. Gen. Moore quote someone? His book is called
WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE...AND YOUNG.

In an inteview, Joseph Galloway, one of the authors, said that they got the title from the last line of a poem by A. E. Housman (1859-1936).

A book published posthumously of A.E. Houseman's poems called "More Poems" (1936), has these lines from poem number 36:

Here dead lie we because we did not choose
To live and shame the land from which we sprung.
Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose;
But young men think it is, and we were young.

Chances are they rephrased the last line to become the title of the film.