Of Windmills and War (The War Trilogy #1)

by Diane Moody

But an orange? Then he realized the child, no more than four or five years of age, would never have known what it was like to live in a world not dominated by war and rationing. No wonder the tyke had no idea what an orange was.

“Okay, Lieutenant, you can cut the sarcasm.”

Huh? Why doesshe think it's sarcasm?

he wondered how many close calls a guy gets before he uses them all up.

“Sometimes our life stories are written in spite of us,”

“I used to think people were inherently good,” she said, barely over a whisper. “That deep down, most people try to live good lives and be kind to one another. But I know that’s not true. I believe it’s quite the opposite. The good ones are few and far between.”

He was handsome enough, but she had no doubt he had an ongoing love affair with every mirror he ever laid eyes on.

“But if we do not dream, we shall not survive, Anya. What good is life if we see only gloom and doom, eh?” He reached over to nudge her on the arm. “We are much too young to give up.

For months, the Allied commanders had wrestled over the rumored “National Redoubt”—a final stand by Hitler and his Wehrmacht, supposedly based in the rugged mountainous terrain in Bavaria and Austria.

it was believed that the dictator and what was left of his army would hide out in the Alps then reclaim a new Germany headquartered there.

“As you know, in retaliation for Holland’s part in last September’s Operation Market-Garden, the Germans cut off all shipments into Holland. The resulting ‘Hunger Winter’ that followed led to extreme hardships on the Dutch, including widespread starvation.

When he recognized his feelings as outright jealousy toward those already making the food drops, he knew he was bordering some kind of ridiculous outrage.

Who was that guy who let the roadblocks in his life almost destroy him? And for what?

the incredible symbolism of what they’d done that day. Food instead of bombs. Life instead of destruction. Hope instead of despair. Not a bad day’s work.

The house would surely feel betrayed and vacant, as though its family had deserted it somehow. A house feeling betrayed, as if it were a living, breathing organism? What a silly notion.

Jesus said, ‘Whatever you do to these least of these, you do it unto Me.’ And I am humbled to be His hands when others need a helping hand. Especially one as special as you.”

As the world began to learn what had been going on in the concentration camps, Allied commanders retaliated by requiring townspeople throughout Germany to tour the nearby camps and see for themselves what their silent indifference had allowed for so many years.

Allied commanders ordered the captured members of the SS who had run these camps to carry the corpses of thousands of their victims to mass graves.

“Because whenever he asked me to do something, I always said—” “—when pigs fly,” he said along with her.