The last sure war

“The times were full of certainty, ” [A.J.] Liebling later wrote.  “I have seldom been so sure I was right since.”  An AAF crewman who completed fifty bomber missions observed, “Never did I feel so much alive.  Never did the earth and all of the surroundings look so bright and sharp.”  A combat engineer mused, “What we did was something awfully damned good, something I don’t think we’ll ever have again as long as we live.”

Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light: The War in Western Europe, 1944-1945, 640 (2013).

“A complete lack of imagination”

Everybody gets more and more on edge.  A sense of humor and a great faith, or else a complete lack of imagination, are essential to the project.

Eisenhower, in a private letter, on the days leading up to the invasion of Europe, as reported in Rick Atkinson, The Guns at Last Light 14 (2013).