The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“To his brother Edgar he confided, “I suffer from the usual difficulty that besets the higher commander—things can be ordered and started, but actual… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“To make it perfectly clear to you: suppose you lose a hand or an ear is shot off, or perhaps a piece of your… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“I could hear them yell and laugh each time and there was nothing I could do about it…. I saw them do it, like… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“The largest contingent of invaders—drawn from the U.S. 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions aboard thirty-four transport ships—would storm ashore at Beach Z near… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
Global war is a clash of systems, not just battalions biffing one another in some godforsaken forest. — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“fifty-six, his hour had come round. He was a paradox and would always remain one, a great tangle of calculated mannerisms and raw, uncalculated emotion. Well-read, fluent in French, and the wealthy child of privilege, he could be crude, rude, and plain foolish. He had reduced his extensive study of history and military art to a five-word manifesto of war:… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share
“If U-boats torpedoed a transport during the Atlantic passage, how many destroyers should be left behind to pick up survivors? Hewitt was not certain he could spare any without jeopardizing the task force, and the prospect of abandoning men in the water gnawed at him. Had word of the expedition leaked? Every day he received reports that someone, somewhere had… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share
There were almost 11,000 American soldiers killed in Germany in April of 1945, the last full month of the war. That's almost as many… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“TWO hundred and thirty nautical miles southeast of Gibraltar, Oran perched above the sea, a splinter of Europe cast onto the African shore. Of the 200,000 residents, three-quarters were European, and the town was believed to have been founded in the tenth century by Moorish merchants from southern Spain. Sacked, rebuilt, and sacked again, Oran eventually found enduring prosperity in… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share
“blared “The Stars and Stripes Forever,” clearly audible on the hillcrest, where a lieutenant who was immune to the prevailing confidence of his seniors… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share Image
“The troops also edged toward that timeless state common to veteran armies in which the men trusted no one less wretched than themselves. Still they did not hate. But each time they had to bundle up unopened mail for the dead and return it to the rear, their blood rose. An officer noticed that American artillery barrages now elicited raucous… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share
“In the first half of 1944, battle casualty rates for every 1,000 bomber crewmen serving six months in combat included 712 killed or missing and 175 wounded: 89 percent. By one calculation, barely one in four U.S. airmen completed twenty-five missions over Germany, a minimum quota that was soon raised to thirty and then thirty-five on the assumption that the… — Rick Atkinson Copy Share
