quite beyond the specifics of these missions, beyond the ledger of successes matched against failures, was a nagging question that Michael Burke had never found a satisfactory answer to: just what were they meant to accomplish? In World War II, the reason behind the risks couldn’t have been plainer—to help win the war—but what was the ultimate goal in this contest? Not the high-blown, flag-waving rhetoric about freedom and liberty and enslaved nations that the politicians trotted out, but the actual nuts-and-bolts, tangible results that would show it was all worth it.
