An Army at Dawn Quotes

“Now arrogance and error would reap the usual dividends”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

“In battle, topography is fate.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

“A soldier doesn’t fight to save suffering humanity or any other nonsense. He fights to prove that his unit is the best in the Army and that he has as much guts as anybody else in the unit.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“A soldier would snake his way painfully through rocks and rubble to set up a light machine gun, raise his head cautiously to aim, and find a dozen natives clustered solemnly around him. Street”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

“Mail finally arrived for some troops—many had received nothing for two months or more—and Christmas packages often implied a certain homefront incomprehension of life in the combat zone: bathrobes, slippers, and phonograph records were particularly popular.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“September 1, 1939, was the first day of a war that would last for 2,174 days, and it brought the first dead in a war that would claim an average of 27,600 lives every day, or 1,150 an hour, or 19 a minute, or one death every 3 seconds.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Always do whatever you can to keep your superior from making a mistake.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“The more stars you have, the higher you climb the flagpole, the more of your ass is exposed,”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Brooke’s deputy, General Sir John Kennedy, observed of Churchill: “He is difficult enough when things are going badly, more difficult when nothing is happening, and quite unmanageable when all is going well.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Draconian censorship was soon imposed, with correspondents advised that no dispatches would be allowed that made people at home feel unhappy. Equally rigorous censorship of letters home inspired one soldier to write his parents: After leaving where we were before we left for here, not knowing we were coming here from there, we couldn’t tell whether we had arrived here or not. Nevertheless, we now are here and not there. The weather here is just as it always is at this season. The people here are just like they look. On this page a censor scribbled simply, “Amen.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“The flashy, publicity-seeking type of adventurer can grab the headlines and be a hero in the eyes of the public, but he simply can’t deliver the goods in high command. On the other hand, the slow, methodical, ritualistic person is absolutely valueless in a key position.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“In his rapid rise, talent, opportunity, and fortune converged improbably—to many, it seemed, providentially. Patton—who earlier in the year had told Eisenhower, “You are my oldest friend”—privately claimed the initials “D.D.” stood for “Divine Destiny.” Thirty months earlier, Eisenhower had been a lieutenant colonel who had never commanded even a platoon in combat. Young Ike, the third son of a failed Midwestern merchant turned creamery worker, had chosen a military career because West Point provided a free education. After an indifferent cadetship he embarked on an ordinary career as a staff officer, stalled at the middling rank of major for sixteen years. Even his first venture into the rarefied circles he would inhabit for two decades was inauspicious: the White House usher’s log for February 9, 1942, recorded the initial visit to the Oval Office of one “P. D. Eisenhauer.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Troops caught nibbling their emergency D- ration chocolate bars were dubbed Chocolate Soldiers and punished by forfeiting two meals. This was a happy penance. The galleys served so much fatty mutton that derisive bleating could be heard throughout the convoy and the 13th Armored Regiment proposed a new battle cry: 'Baaa!' Crunchy raisins in the bread proved to be weevils; soldiers learned to hold up slices to the light, as if candling eggs. The 1st Infantry Division on Reine de Pacifico organized troop details to sift flour through mesh screens in a search for insects. Wormy meat aboard the Keren so provoked 34th Division soldiers that officers were dispatched to keep order in the mess hall. When soldiers aboard Letitia challenged the culinary honor of one French cook, he 'became quite wild and threatened to jump overboard.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943

“The dawn was bright and blowing. Angels perched unseen on the shrouds and crosstrees. Young men, fated to survive and become old men dying abed half a century hence, would forever remember this hour, when an army at dawn made for the open sea in a cause none could yet comprehend. Ashore, as the great fleet glided past, dreams of them stepped, like men alive, into the rooms where their loved ones lay sleeping.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“One of the first lessons that battle impresses upon one,” he later observed, “is that no matter how large the force engaged, every battle is made up of small actions by individuals and small units.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“True merit is like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Even Colonel Lang, watching the Americans from the other side of Djebel Naemia, had been surprised by their timid initial approach to the Maknassy heights; a more forceful attack, he concluded, could have shortened the Tunisian campaign by weeks. In his view, the Americans appeared reluctant to risk heavy casualties in a decisive battle, preferring to crush their foes with material superiority even if that meant extending the fight. There was truth in that assessment too.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“In a phone call one evening the corps commander grew incensed when Ward mentioned his good fortune in losing no officers in combat that day. “Goddammit, Ward, that’s not fortunate. That’s bad for the morale of the enlisted men,” Patton snapped. “I want you to get more officers killed.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“One man who did not understand was the New Zealanders’ legendary commander, Lieutenant General Bernard C. Freyberg. English-born but raised in New Zealand, Freyberg had been a dentist before finding his true calling as warrior of Homeric strength and courage. Known as Tiny to his troops, he had a skull the size of a medicine ball, with a pushbroom mustache and legs that extended like sycamore trunks from his khaki shorts. In the Great War, he had won the Victoria Cross on the Somme, served as a pallbearer for his great friend Rupert Brooke, and emerged so seamed by shrapnel that when Churchill once persuaded him to display his wounds the count reached twenty-seven. More were to come. Oarsman, boxer, swimmer of the English Channel, he had been medically retired for “aortic incompetence” in the 1930s before being summoned back to uniform. No greater heart beat in British battle dress. Churchill a month earlier had proclaimed Freyberg “the salamander of the British empire,” an accolade that raised Kiwi hackles—“Wha’ in ’ell’s a ‘sallymander’?”—until the happy news spread that the creature mythically could pass through fire unharmed.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“pump,” Marshall added. Brooke had spotted a whimbrel, a yellow wagtail, and five small owls. He had also seen this American argument winging around Anfa many times by now. Out came the red leather folders. “The Germans have forty-four divisions in France,” he said in a monotone that implied exasperation. “That is sufficient strength to overwhelm us on the ground and perhaps hem us in with wire or concrete…. Since we cannot go into the Continent in force until Germany weakens, we should try to make the Germans disperse their forces as much as possible.” There it was, and there it remained. The Americans, whose delegation included but a single logistician frantically thumbing through three loose-leaf notebooks, tended toward observation and generality. British statements bulged with facts and statistics from Bulolo’s humming war room. The Americans had an inclination; the British had a plan.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“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 execution at the front has to be turned over to someone else.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“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 cheers. “Lay it on them!” the men yelled. “Give it to the bastards!” And the poignancy of young men dying young intruded every hour of every day. This farewell note was found in a dead pilot’s sunglasses case: Mother, please do not grieve but rather console yourself in the fact that I am happy. Try to enjoy the remainder of your life as best you can and have no regrets, for you have been a wonderful mother and I love you. Jim. It was enough to incite a man to murder.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“As required by the unwritten rules of military calamity, the initial attack went well.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Captain Evelyn Waugh of the British Army wrote of the Stuka, “Like all things German, it is very efficient and goes on much too long.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Proverbially, no military plan survives contact with the enemy. That is never truer than when there is no plan to begin with.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“In contemplating who should command the Army’s multiplying regiments and divisions, Marshall and his training chief, Lesley J. McNair, kept a list in a safe of more than 400 colonels with perfect efficiency reports. Allen, neither a full colonel nor perfect, was not on it. Rather, he was facing court-martial for insubordination in 1940 when word arrived of his double promotion, from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general. He was the first man in his former West Point class to wear a general’s stars. No man better exemplified the American military leadership’s ability to identify, promote, and in some cases forgive those officers best capable of commanding men in battle. Among the encomiums that followed Allen’s promotion was a penciled note: “Us guys in the guardhouse want to congratulate you, too.”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Ten miles to the southeast the war went on, badly, for Drake and his men. With nearly a thousand troops already dug in on Djebel Ksaira, Drake decided to herd the rest of his command—now bivouacked in various wadis southeast of Sidi bou Zid—onto Garet Hadid, a slightly loftier escarpment four miles west of Ksaira. Soon 950 riflemen, musicians, cooks, and clerks were perched on the barren rock like nesting birds. Nearly one-third lacked weapons. After watching the artillery flee near Djebel Lessouda, Drake had called McQuillin at eight A.M. on a field phone to report the makings of a rout. When Old Mac disputed his characterization, Drake snapped, “I know what I’m talking about. I know panic when I see it.” McQuillin hesitated, then told Drake: “You are on the spot. Take command and stop it.” The”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“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 piracy; ransom paid for Christian slaves had built the Grand Mosque. Even with its corsairs long gone, the seaport remained, after Algiers, the greatest on the old Pirate Coast. Immense barrels of red wine and tangerine crates by the thousands awaited export on the docks, where white letters painted on a jetty proclaimed Marshal Pétain’s inane slogan: “Travail, Famille, Patrie.” A greasy, swashbuckling ambience pervaded the port’s many grogshops. Quays and breakwaters shaped the busy harbor into a narrow rectangle 1½ miles long, overwatched by forts and shore batteries that swept the sea to the horizon and made Oran among the most ferociously defended ports in the Mediterranean. Here”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943

“Terry Allen and a larger portion of his 1st Division descended on Oran from the sandstone hills above St. Cloud, a key crossroads east of the city, and the salt lakes farther south. Children in dirty kaftans shouted “Hi yo, Silver!” or flung stiff-arm Fascist salutes to liberators they presumed to be German. Veiled Berber women with indigo tattoos peered through casement shutters, and in cafés men wearing fezzes looked up from their tea glasses long enough to applaud the passing troops, African-style: arms extended, clapping hands hinged at the wrists, no pretense of sincerity. A war correspondent seeking adjectives to describe the locals settled on “scrofulous, unpicturesque, ophthalmic, lamentable.” Exhausted”
― Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in Africa, 1942-1943