Arnhem Quotes

“Polish paratroopers could not have been more different. They were not like the British who just wanted to make the best of a bad war by joking and referring to any battle as ‘a party’. Nor were they like the Americans who wanted to finish it quickly so that they could go home. The Poles were exiles, fighting for the very survival of their national identity. An American officer who saw them in training described them as ‘killers under the silk’. Polish patriotism was nothing like the rather embarrassed British equivalent: theirs was a burning, spiritual flame.”
― Antony Beevor, The Battle of Arnhem: The Deadliest Airborne Operation of World War II

“It is only when one faces death, observed one of the men there, that one realises the great value of life.”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

“The smell of roasted flesh permeated the air for hours afterwards with the stench of oily-black smoke from the blazing vehicles . Gräbner's body was never identified among all the other carbonized corpses.”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

“Airborne”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944

“Many historians, with an ‘if only’ approach to the British defeat, have focused so much on different aspects of Operation Market Garden which went wrong that they have tended to overlook the central element. It was quite simply a very bad plan right from the start and right from the top. Every other problem stemmed from that.”
― Antony Beevor, Arnhem: The Battle for the Bridges, 1944