The First Wave Quotes

“He wrote a scintillating and deeply affecting memoir, March Past, in which he concluded that the “causes of war are falsely represented: its purpose dishonest and the glory meretricious. Yet we remember a challenge to spiritual endurance and the awareness of a common peril endured for a common end.” It was the sacred duty of the warriors who had survived the “shattering experience” of combat in Normandy to “enshrine the memory of those brave men who did not return.”[15]”
― Alex Kershaw, The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II

“It is better to be here ready to protect the peace than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent.”
― Alex Kershaw, The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II

“Since January, when he had arrived in England to command Overlord, Eisenhower had been under crushing, ever greater strain. Now it had all boiled down to this decision. Eisenhower alone—not Roosevelt, not Churchill—had the authority to give the final command to go, to “enter the continent of Europe,” as his orders from on high had stated, and “undertake operations aimed at the heart of Germany and the destruction of her armed forces.”3 He alone could pull the trigger. Marshaling the greatest invasion in the history of war had been, at times, as terrifying as the very real prospect of failure. The last time there had been”
― Alex Kershaw, The First Wave: The D-Day Warriors Who Led the Way to Victory in World War II