The Day of Battle Quotes

“For war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and duty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage, of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Allied air forces flying from England lost twenty bombers a day in March; another three thousand Eighth Air Force bombers were damaged that month. Morale problems could be seen in the decision of nearly ninety U.S. crews in March and April to fly to neutral countries, usually Sweden or Switzerland, to be interned for the duration. The”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“You must never let the enemy choose the ground on which you fight. … He must be made to fight the battle according to your plan. Never his plan. Never. … You must never attack until you are absolutely ready.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“A later age would conflate them into a single, featureless demigod, possessed of mythical courage and fortitude, and animated by a determination to rebalance a wobbling world. Keith Douglas, a British officer who had fought in North Africa and would die at Normandy, described “a gentle obsolescent breed of heroes…. Unicorns, almost.” Yet it does them no disservice to recall their profound diversity in provenance and in character, or their feet of clay, or the mortality that would make them compelling long after their passing.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Never before in the history of warfare have so few been commanded by so many.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“The 608-day campaign to liberate Italy would cost 312,000 Allied casualties, equivalent to 40 percent of Allied losses in the decisive campaign for northwest Europe that began at Normandy. Among the three-quarters of a million American troops to serve in Italy, total battle casualties would reach 120,000, including 23,501 killed.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“On the day Rome fell, that great American Army numbered eight million soldiers, a fivefold increase since Pearl Harbor. It included twelve hundred generals and nearly 500,000 lieutenants. Half the Army had yet to deploy overseas, but the U.S. military already had demonstrated that it could wage global war in several far-flung theaters simultaneously, a notion that had “seemed outlandish in 1942,” as the historian Eric Larrabee later wrote.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“the combat career of a new German pilot now lasted, on average, less than a month.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“In one typical battalion, of forty-one officers who had landed on Sicily in July, only nine remained, and six of them had been wounded, according”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“carton of cigarettes would buy you a whole province here,” an American officer reported, “and a suit of clothes would get you the whole island.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“He looked as though he had just had a steam bath, a massage, a good breakfast and a letter from home,” wrote one journalist.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“The British had made extravagant claims—“over-egged the pudding,” as one critic put it—to overcome Yankee skepticism by asserting that Germany was unlikely to fight hard for mainland Italy; that the long-term Allied commitment in Italy was likely to call for only nine divisions and to require no substantial occupation; and that a hard fight in the Mediterranean could end the war in 1944. All of these prophesies proved false.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Yet there was also cold conviction in Roosevelt’s observation to his son Elliott: “Britain is on the decline.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Only the Washington heat remained inhospitable, forcing some wilting Brits to desperate measures: the wife of the economist John Maynard Keynes was found perched, entirely nude, before the open door of a Westinghouse refrigerator in the Georgetown house where the couple was staying.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“The first eighteen months of war for the United States had been characterized by inexperience, insufficiency, and, all too often, ineptitude.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Joseph Goebbels, propaganda minister for the Third Reich, described the Führer’s despair in his diary on May 9: “He is absolutely sick of the generals…. All generals lie, he says. All generals are disloyal. All generals are opposed to National Socialism.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“The German submariner casualty rate during the war, 75 percent, would exceed that of every other service arm in every other nation.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Months earlier, he had begun to dream about the postwar world, and if he kept Churchill at arm’s length it was partly because his vision did not include the restoration of colonial empires. Surely he had spoken from the heart in telling the prime minister, “It is fun to be in the same decade with you.” Yet there was also cold conviction in Roosevelt’s observation to his son Elliott: “Britain is on the decline.” America was ascendant, and Roosevelt had reason to hope that his countrymen possessed the stamina to remake a better world: a forthcoming Roper opinion poll, secretly slipped to the White House on Thursday, revealed that more than three-quarters of those surveyed agreed that the United States should play a larger global role after the war. Nearly as many believed that the country should “plan to help other nations get on their feet,” and more than half concurred that Americans should “take an active part in some sort of an international organization with a court and police force strong enough to enforce its decisions.” The president found it equally heartening that 70 percent approved of his war leadership and two-thirds favored him for reelection in 1944 if the world was still at war.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“By two A.M. the first waves had turned toward shore, using the burning wheat straw as a beacon or following compass headings. Gunboats with blue lights stood in toward shore, hailing the first waves: “Straight ahead. Look out for mines. Good luck.” Now the Navy guns opened up, their concussive booms and smoke rings carrying on the wind. Shells glowed cherry red against the starlight. In graceful arcs they floated over the puttering boats before splattering in sprays of white and gold on the distant shore. Coxswains steered by the shells, but soldiers instinctively slumped in their vessels, peering over the gunwales. Major General John P. Lucas, dispatched by Eisenhower as an observer of HUSKY, watched the spectacle from Monrovia’s bridge with Hewitt and Patton, then confided a small, filthy secret to his diary: “War, with all its terror and dirt and destruction, is at times the most beautiful phenomenon in the world.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“Nobody really knows what he’s doing, Bill Mauldin had written of his first week in combat with the 180th Infantry. Yet other primal lessons also could be gleaned, from Licata to Augusta. For war was not just a military campaign but also a parable. There were lessons of camaraderie and duty and inscrutable fate. There were lessons of honor and courage, of compassion and sacrifice. And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and the superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“thousand);”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“The doctor stopped in the middle of the operation to smoke a cigarette and he gave me one too.” Another sergeant from the same company told a medic, “Patch up these holes and give me a gun. I’m going to kill every son of a bitch in Germany.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“Three hundred DUKWs and other vessels swarmed between island and mainland “like so many gnats on a pond,” a witness reported, and this first invasion of continental Europe—an all-British operation code-named BAYTOWN—had proved so placid that Tommies soon called it the Messina Strait Regatta.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“British Spitfires, using signals intelligence to pinpoint the German Luftwaffe headquarters, shot up the San Domenico Palace—a grand hotel in Taormina, once favored by D. H. Lawrence—and unhinged the Axis air defenses just as invaders approached the island. Little”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“A single crude acronym that captured the soldier’s lowered expectations—SNAFU, for “situation normal, all fucked up”—had expanded into a vocabulary of GI cynicism: SUSFU (situation unchanged, still fucked up); SAFU (self-adjusting fuck-up); TARFU (things are really fucked up); FUMTU (fucked up more than usual); JANFU (joint Army-Navy fuck-up); JAAFU (joint Anglo-American fuck-up); FUAFUP (fucked up and fucked up proper); and FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition).”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“An attack against Sicily will be launched in 1943 with the target date as the period of the favorable July moon.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“Muses, launch your song! What kings were fired for war, what armies at their orders thronged the plains? What heroes sprang into bloom, what weapons blazed, even in those days long ago, in Italy’s life-giving land? Virgil, The Aeneid”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day Of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-44

“My life is a mixture of politics and war. The latter is bad enough…. The former is straight and unadulterated venom.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944

“A calculated risk is a known risk for the sake of a real gain. A risk for the sake of a risk is a fool’s choice.”
― Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944