The Longest Day Quotes

“Wearily, he swung the glasses over to the left again. Slowly, he tracked across the horizon. He reached the dead center of the bay. The glasses stopped moving. Pluskat tensed, stared hard. Through the scattering, thinning mist the horizon was magically filling with ships—ships of every size and description, ships that casually maneuvered back and forth as though they had been there for hours. There appeared to be thousands of them. It was a ghostly armada that somehow had appeared from nowhere. Pluskat stared in frozen disbelief, speechless, moved as he had never been before in his life. At that moment the world of the good soldier Pluskat began falling apart. He says in those first few moments he knew, calmly and surely, that “this was the end for Germany.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“(Actually, nobody at this time could even imagine the full extent of the Nazi barbarism that had washed across Europe—the millions who had disappeared into the gas chambers and furnaces of Heinrich Himmler’s aseptic crematoria, the millions who had been herded out of their countries to work as slave laborers, a tremendous percentage of whom would never return, the millions more who had been tortured to death, executed as hostages or exterminated by the simple expedient of starvation.) The great crusade’s unalterable purpose was not only to win the war, but to destroy Nazism and bring to an end an era of savagery which had never been surpassed in the world’s history.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“Across the nation, in sleeping towns and villages, lights flashed on. Quiet streets suddenly filled with sound as radios were turned up. People woke their neighbors to tell them the news, and so many phoned friends and relatives that telephone switchboards were jammed. In Coffeyville, Kansas, men and women in their night attire knelt on porches and prayed.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“Believe me, Lang, the first twenty-four hours of the invasion will be decisive … for the Allies, as well as Germany, it will be the longest day.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“By morning an immense fleet of five thousand ships would stand off the invasion beaches of Normandy.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“Sergeant Donald Gardner of the 47th and his men were dumped into the water about fifty yards from shore. They lost all of their equipment and had to swim in under machine-gun fire. As they struggled in the water, Gardner heard someone say, “Perhaps we’re intruding, this seems to be a private beach.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“Many grew introspective and talked of things men usually keep to themselves. Hundreds later recalled that they found themselves admitting their fears and talking of other personal matters with unusual candor. They drew closer to one another on this strange night and confided in men they had never even met before.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“This was the pattern. Brigadier General Cota, the 29th Division’s assistant commander, had been setting an example almost from the moment he arrived on the beach.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“Along Dog Green and Dog White, a crusty fifty-one-year-old general named Norman Cota strode up and down in the hail of fire, waving a .45 and yelling at men to get off the beach. Along the shingle, behind the sea wall and in the coarse beach grass at the base of the bluffs, men crouched shoulder to shoulder, peering at the general, unwilling to believe that a man could stand upright and live.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day

“At OKW the message was delivered to Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations. The message remained on Jodl’s desk. He did not order an alert. He assumed Rundstedt had done so; but Rundstedt thought Rommel’s headquarters had issued the order.”
― Cornelius Ryan, The Longest Day: The Classic Epic of D-Day