Rick Atkinson · 793 pages
Rating: (9.8K votes)
“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, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“I must pursue the shadows to some middle ground,” wrote the pilot John Muirhead, “for I am strangely bound to all that happened to them.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks, is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum, in which men steal through existence, like sluggish waters through a marsh, without either honor or observation.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“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, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“A German pilot came out of his plane, drew his legs into a ball, his head down. Papers flew out of his pockets. He did a triple somesault through our formation. No chute.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“The rates of venereal disease soared and the 82nd Airborne opened a medically certified brothel in Trapani under a supervising officer soon known as the Madam;”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“That Allied victory had cost them 44,000 casualties since DIADEM began on May 11: 18,000 Americans—among them more than 3,000 killed in action—along with 12,000 British, 9,600 French, and nearly 4,000 Poles. German casualties were estimated at 52,000, including 5,800 dead. Americans”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“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.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“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.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“In Field Order No. 1, Patton had advised his commanders, “Attack both by day and night to the limit of human endurance and then continue to attack.” For”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“(It was said that Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, spoke only four words of English: “Yes,” “No,” and “Second front.”) Moscow”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“The Arab soldier is interested in just three things: women, horses, and guns,” a French officer told an American colonel, who replied, “The American soldier is the same, except that he doesn’t care anything about horses and guns.”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
“Mount up and continue,” Patton told his armor crews. “Don’t stop except for gas.” Omar”
― Rick Atkinson, quote from The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944
Rick Atkinson
Born place: in Munich, Germany
Born date January 1, 1952
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“Ah," said the magus, understanding at once. "I see that he means to be prepared if he meets him again."
"Surely that's unlikely," said Sounis.
"I don't think unlikely means to him what it does to the rest of us," said the magus.”
― Megan Whalen Turner, quote from A Conspiracy of Kings
“Not that traditional princess behavior was like Isabelle at all. Isabelle with her whip and boots and knives would chop anyone who tried to pen her up in a tower into pieces, build a bridge out of the remains, and walk carelessly to freedom, her hair looking fabulous the entire time.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from City of Bones / City of Ashes / City of Glass / City of Fallen Angels / City of Lost Souls
“Given that sin x = 1⁄4 and x is in Quadrant II, find the exact values of sin2 x and cos2 x WTF. He looked at this every day, and it was still like reading Chinese.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Spark
“Life is not yours to take.”
― Richard Paul Evans, quote from The Walk
“His Omnipotence means power to do all that is intrinsically possible, not to do the intrinsically impossible. You may attribute miracles to Him, but not nonsense. This is no limit to His power. If you choose to say, ‘God can give a creature free will and at the same time withhold free will from it,’ you have not succeeded in saying anything about God: meaningless combinations of words do not suddenly acquire meaning simply because we prefix to them the two other words, 'God can.' It remains true that all things are possible with God: the intrinsic impossibilities are not things but nonentities. It is no more possible for God than for the weakest of His creatures to carry out both of two mutually exclusive alternatives; not because His power meets an obstacle, but because nonsense remains nonsense even when we talk it about God.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from The Problem of Pain
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