Quotes from Rick Atkinson

One halfhearted effort had already been made in late March to force Fondouk Pass.

I have a feeling that he was a far more complicated man than he seemed to be," wrote Don Whitehead, "a man who shaped events with such subtlety that he left others thinking that they were the architects of those events. And he was satisfied to leave it that way.

And into the holds went: a platoon of carrier pigeons, six flyswatters and sixty rolls of fly-paper for each 1,000 soldiers, plus five pounds of rat poison per company.

The balance of the campaign—indeed, the balance of the war—would require learning not only how to fight but how to rule.

a vivid, wonderful world so full of winter and spring, warm rain and cold snow, adventures and contentments, good things and bad. How often you will have me near you when wood smoke drifts across the wind, or the first tulips arrive, or the sky darkens in a summer storm…. Think of me today, and in the days to come, as I am thinking of you this minute, not gone or alone or dead, but part of the earth beneath you, part of the air around you, part of the heart that must not be lonely.

more than 300 other ships bound for Algeria steamed from anchorages on the Clyde and along England's west coast. For all these vessels to shoot the Strait of Gibraltar in sequence and arrive punctually at various Barbary coast beaches, the

They believed they had been blooded. They believed that overpowering the feeble French meant something. They believed in the righteousness of their cause, the inevitability of their victory, and the immortality of their young souls. And as they wheeled around to the east and pulled out their Michelin maps of Tunisia, they believed they had actually been to war.

Shortly after sunset on November 5, the convoy began to swing east, past the Pillars of Hercules. Soon the fleet would split apart, with 33,000 soldiers bound for Algiers and 39,000 for Oran.

In a political democracy, every soldier's death is a public event. Every soldier's death ought to provoke the hard question: Why did he die?

Distrust is the mother of security," an American commander wrote.

There are apparently two types of successful soldiers," Patton had recently written his son. "Those who get on by being unobtrusive and those who get on by being obtrusive. I am of the latter type." True enough

Night would end, the tide would turn, and on that turning tide an army would wash ashore in Africa, ready to right a world gone wrong.

Eisenhower wrote his own son at West Point: "I have observed very frequently that it is not the man who is so brilliant [who] delivers in time of stress and strain, but rather the man who can keep on going indefinitely, doing a good straightforward job.

fifty-six, his hour had come round. He was a paradox and would always remain one, a great tangle of calculated mannerisms and raw, uncalculated emotion. Well-read, fluent in French, and the wealthy child of privilege, he could be crude, rude, and plain foolish. He had reduced his extensive study of history and military art to a five-word manifesto of war: "violent attacks everywhere with everything.

Where, precisely, was Private Anthony N. Marfione when he died on December 24, 1942? What were the last conscious thoughts of Lieutenant Hill P. Cooper before he left this earth on April 9, 1943? Was Sergeant Harry K. Midkiff alone when he crossed over on November 25, 1942, or did some good soul squeeze his hand and caress his forehead? The dead resist such intimacy. The closer we try to approach, the farther they draw back, like rainbows or mirages.

In less than three years he would be the most celebrated American battle captain of the twentieth century, a man whose name—like those of Jeb Stuart and Phil Sheridan—evoked the dash and brio of a cavalry charge. In less than four years he would be dead, and the New York Times obituary would offer the perfect epitaph: "He was not a man of peace.

Strange that the British, who so venerated their own churches, should thus have desecrated ours

Italian troops from the Assietta and Aosta Divisions surrendered by the thousands, grousing at German betrayal. "One never seemed to be able to do enough to please them," an Italian POW explained.

On March 12, Alexander offered his assessment of enemy intentions at Mareth in a lilting if ambiguous message drawn from the twelfth chapter of Revelation: "The devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

One can always do what one wants if it takes people by surprise," he explained. "There is not time for plotters to develop their nefarious plans.

Things are always confusing and mysterious in war," Pyle wrote. "I squatted there, just a bewildered guy in brown, part of a thin line of other bewildered guys.

The largest contingent of invaders—drawn from the U.S. 1st Infantry and 1st Armored divisions aboard thirty-four transport ships—would storm ashore at Beach Z near Arzew, a fishing town sixteen miles east of Oran. Two

The battle," Rommel famously observed, "is fought and decided by the quartermasters before the shooting begins.

Washington reserved his deepest contempt for Americans who had thrown in with the British. "One or two have done what a great many ought to have done long ago—committed suicide," he told his brother. For those obliged to flee so abruptly from their homeland, "the last trump could not have struck them with greater consternation.