Neptune Quotes

“Alas, all that sound and fury disguised the fact that on Omaha Beach at least, the bombs fell too long, the rockets fell too short, and the naval gunfire was too brief.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“In the two weeks after D-Day, the Allies landed a total of 618,855 men, 93,986 vehicles, and 245,133 tons of supplies over the five Normandy beaches, even though most of the unloading at Sword Beach had to be halted due to continuing German artillery”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“On one occasion when an artillery shell whistled overhead, some sailors from LST-75 who had been sent ashore to help unload a nearby LCT took shelter against the cliff. They were standing there when the beach master came over to ask them what they were supposed to be doing. They explained about unloading the LCT, and the beach master told them: “Well then, get the hell over there and unload it, or pick up one of these rifles and get up the hill and start shooting them damn Germans.” Given that choice, they decided the stevedore work was preferable.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“The Allies’ ability to launch two major seaborne offensives on opposite sides of the globe less than two weeks apart was testimony to the remarkable productivity of American industry,”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“You have never ridden a ship until you have ridden an LST in the North Atlantic in the month of February.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“The ship’s head was directly behind these bunks, and one veteran recalled that the LSTs “stank of diesel oil, backed-up toilets, and vomit.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“In the whole of the war, though the Germans sank nearly twenty-eight hundred Allied ships, not one troopship escorted by U.S. Navy ships was ever lost.*”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“The American view was quite different. To them, the invasion was not to ratify a victory already won; it was to seize that victory by brute force. To the British, it was to be a victory lap; to the Americans it was a death grapple. In the long history of the alliance, this gap in perceptions was never bridged.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings

“Here was the conundrum: they could fight elsewhere in 1942, or they could fight in Europe in 1943, but they could probably not do both. They must choose.”
― Craig L. Symonds, Neptune: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D-Day Landings