Good Wwii Quotes

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated,

You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world. Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely. But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of 1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats, in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced their strength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory! I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.

We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good. -from her blog

Good had defeated evil, people proclaimed, a justification for atrocities best left forgotten. They would cling to this oversimplified truth while trading pats on the back and placing flowers on graves.

Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces. You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew. I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.

But we are the good guys. Aren't we, Uncle?" "I hope so. I hope we are.

We ate, did our homework, got good grades, kissed our parents goodnight and always had the secret door and shared experiences to go to. It was truly remarkable, and doing it as a group made us feel invulnerable. As soon as the drums and amps were set up and Jean and Kathie hit it, I tell you there was nothing more to say. Conversation stopped, and the magic carpet ride took off. I’ve never felt anything more powerful in my life.

Lucy began cutting her sausage into rounds. “I can’t believe Christmas is almost upon us,” she mentioned. “It’ll be a hard Christmas for many,” James said. “A dark Christmas for all.” “That’s why it’s good to remember that we have the Light,” Lucy said softly. James smiled at her. “Right you are, Lucy. Right you are.

When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it.

Are there, as science fiction and Gnostic speculation imply, different species of time in the same world, 'good time' and enveloping folds of inhuman time, in which men fall into the slow hands of the living damnation?

He had good, open features and a confident air; his blue eyes were wide and watchful, but something about them seemed to hint that in different days and different times they could twinkle and sparkle with fun and mischief. His clothing was tattered and threadbare, but there was an energy to him that did not admit of pity. Somehow, despite his ragged condition, he still looked like a man who had carried a weapon and commanded other men in the not-too-distant past.

Then one woman looked directly at her husband. "Is our place gone?" "I'm afraid so, girl," he said. "There isn't much left up there. But we're alive. We're all lucky to be alive. We'd have been dead if we'd stayed up above." "Oh, what a mercy we didn't!" she exclaimed. "How lucky we are!" Incredible though it sounds, within a few moments, a whole lot of people were congratulating each other on their extraordinary good fortune in only having lost all their worldy posessions.

The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the World's generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on Earth.

The collective sign of relief heaved on V-J Day ought to have inspired Hollywood to release a flood of "happily ever after" films. But some victors didn't feel too good about their spoils. They'd seen too much by then. Too much warfare, too much poverty, too much greed, all in the service of rapacious progress. A bundle of unfinished business lingered from the Depression — nagging questions about ingrained venality, mean human nature, and the way unchecked urban growth threw society dangerously out of whack. Writers and directors responded by delivering gritty, bitter dramas that slapped our romantic illusions in the face and put the boot to the throat of the smug bourgeoisie. Still, plenty of us took it — and liked it.

For many people, that war [WWII] is called the “good war” because it was fought against a regime guilty of unspeakable atrocities. But the Allies did not enter the war to save Jews from extermination. The United States entered the war after it was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and, as a nation, we certainly did not do as much as we should have to save the Jewish population of Europe. The basic question is still with us: Is it right, justifiable, to intervene in a nation’s internal activities when those activities include genocide, ethnic cleansing, or some other demonstrable harm to a subset of its people?

Nations tend to see the other side's war atrocities as systemic and indicative of their culture and their own atrocities as justified or the acts of stressed combatants. In my travels, I sense a smoldering resentment towards WWII Japanese behavior among some Americans. Ironically, these feelings are strongest among the younger American generation that did not fight in WWII. In my experience, the Pacific vets on both sides have made their peace. And in terms of judgments, I will leave it to those who were there. As Ray Gallagher, who flew on both atomic missions against Hiroshima and Nagasaki argues, "When you're not at war you're a good second guesser. You had to live those years and walk that mile.

A religiously minded kid will often be good at lying awake all night because you need an imagination if you're going to believe.

That was what made friendship special, nearly sacred, and worth nurturing - understanding the other and accompanying them through good times and bad

What do you recommend, James?" asked Jozef, perusing the scanty menu with a metropolitan air. "So many choices!" Dorota giggled. "Ah, it's recommending the fish I am," James answered gravely. "So good, you aren't needing even a drop of lemon to aid it." Both girls tittered. Truth to be told, none of them had seen so much as a lemon peel in the last two months.

Patrick O'Brian is an incredible Naval Author. During WWII he drove ambulance during the Blitz. As a Paramedic myself, it is good to know an "ambulance driver" can become an exceptional naval author.

Why do I go on? Why I am doing this when I am 92 years and two months old? I could, after all, be sitting on a sofa in slippers with my feet up. So why do I do this? You think the man sitting opposite you is Manolis but you are wrong. I am not him. And I am not him because I have not forgotten that every time someone was about to be executed [during WWII], they said: 'Don't forget me. When you say good morning, think of me. When you raise a glass, say my name.' And that is what I am doing talking to you, or doing any of this. The man you see before you is all those people. And all this is about not forgetting them.

Who knew that after WWII, some 2,000 Chinese seamen in Liverpool who had helped in the war effort were deported ‘home’ without warning? This violation was so swift and hidden that for decades their British wives and families thought that they had simply been left.

You said imagination is good," protested Iggy, tumbling off the mattress in alarm. "You said it can take us places we've never been before!" "Well, the only place you're going now is your own bunk, and you've certainly been there before," Jozef retorted. "Now march!

I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they’ve had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be - and not only you, but virtually the entire family - if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past - I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it’s the one that most appeals to their imaginations - and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes are also put on the list of innocent victims. That their names are also chiselled into the war memorials.

I am quite gifted at waiting,” von Rumpel says in French. “It is my one great skill. I was never much good at athletics or mathematics, but even as a boy, I possessed unnatural patience. I would wait with my mother while she got her hair styled. I would sit in the chair and wait for hours, no magazine, no toys, not even swinging my legs back and forth. All the mothers were very impressed.

I was amongst them – the first female pilot who had got admission to the Sturmoviks…Since my childhood I’d been lucky enough to meet good people. Wherever I studied, wherever I worked I would meet loyal friends, kind-hearted tutors. I was trained at the factory school by the old craftsman Goubanov, I was assisted by the engineer Aliev, who was the shift boss, in my transfer to the most important sector of operations – the tunnel. I was trained by the superb instructor Miroevskiy in the aeroclub, the secretary of the Ulyanovsk District Comsomol Committee gave me a hand at a very hard moment of my life, then there was Maria Borek from Leningrad, the Secretary of the Smolensk District Comsomol Committee, the Commissar of the Smolensk aeroclub…Was it really possible to count all those who had warmed my soul with their sympathy and human kindness and helped me to realize my dream!

Or, obversely, he might kill a man himself. It would be a question of throwing up his rifle, pressing the trigger, and a particular envelope of lusts and anxieties and perhaps some goodness would be quite dead. All as easy as stepping on an insect, perhaps easier…Everything was completely out of whack, none of the joints fitted. The men had been singing in the motor pool, and there had been something nice about it, something childish and brave. And they were here on this road, a point moving along in a line in the vast neutral spaces of the jungle. And somewhere else a battle might be going on. The artillery, the small-arms fire they had been hearing constantly, might be nothing, something scattered along the front, or it might be all concentrated now in the minuscule inferno of combat. None of it matched. The night had broken them into all the isolated units that actually they were.

At the far end of the taxiway, B-17s began to roll out of their hardstands and onto the perimeter track. Karl nudged the throttles up to 1500 RPM to exercise the turbos. One by one, he eased back the prop control levers and watched for an RPM drop to make sure the propeller governors were working. Everything checked good; Hellstorm gave him no release from the dilemma splitting his heart in two. Good hydraulic pressure, good suction, good voltages. Good Lord.

Standing there watching them, it occurred to me that when Hitler watched Joe and the boys fight their way back from the rear of the field to sweep ahead of Italy and Germany seventy-five years ago, he saw, but did not recognize heralds of his doom. He could not have known that one day hundreds of thousands of boys just like them, boys who shared their essential natures--decent and unassuming, not privileged or favored by anything in particular, just loyal, committed, and perseverant--would return to Germany dressed in olive drab, hunting him down. "They are almost all gone now--the legions of young men who saved the world in the years just before I was born. But that afternoon, standing on the balcony of Haus West, I was swept with gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.

Of course we rearmed,” Göring, seated once more next to the psychiatrist on his cot, said. “We rearmed Germany until we bristled. I am only sorry we did not rearm more. Of course, I considered treaties as so much toilet paper. Of course, I wanted to make Germany great. If it could be done peacefully, well and good. If not, that’s just as good. My plans against Britain were bigger than they ascribe to me even now. When they told me I was playing with war by building up the Luftwaffe, I replied I certainly was not running a finishing school.

My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up, my father lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist, my mother marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A smart guy, he took every course the Navy offered, aced them all, becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the service. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes. My mother watched and learned, getting good at the ways of this new world. She dressed beautifully. Our quarters were always handsomely fitted out. She and Dad were gracious, well-spoken. They were far from rich, but there were books and there was music and sometimes conversations about the world. We even listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays. Still, when I finished high school, their attitudes and the times said that there was little point in further educating a girl. I would take a clerical job until I could find the right junior officer to marry and pursue his career, as helpmeet. If I picked well and worked hard, I might someday be an admiral's wife.

I had never been any good at reading out loud at school. I would forever stutter over my consonants—I dreaded k’s in particular. Long words terrified me. What if I pronounced them wrong and everyone laughed at me? But now, sitting up there on the magic unicorn, I began to read, and all my dread and all my terror simply vanished. I heard my voice speaking out strong and loud. It was as if I was up in the mountains alone and singing a song at the top of my voice, for the sheer joy of the sound of it. The words danced like music on the air, and I could feel everyone listening. And I knew they were listening not to me at all, but to the story of The Little Match Girl, because they were just as lost in it as I was.

The idea of the camp was to use it as a staging area for soldiers on their way to liberate France. It was much better than putting them in Boston in case the Germans attacked. Allied soldiers from several countries left from Camp Myles Standish to go to England and then on to France. They would only stay for a week or two. One group would go out, and another group would come in. At that camp we were doing everything, all the maintenance. There was a small hospital with nurses and doctors, and we were busy. I worked in the PX. We sold coca-cola, and Narragansett beer was delivered once a month. Cigarettes were five dollars a carton. There was plenty of food. We were glad when they gave us American uniforms; that meant we were something. We had work, and we were doing something good. When Italy got out of the war, and we signed to cooperate, that felt pretty good.

This view, that being Nazi and resolutely anti-Soviet/anti-Communist go hand-in-hand, thus making a Nazi a potentially good partner for the United States, was then, and in some instances, continues to be, the prevailing view of US foreign policy leaders, particularly in the CIA. I remind readers here of Operation Paperclip, a plan instituted just after WWII pursuant to which

There’s no need to say anything to Mr. Turing. I was the one who wasn’t watching where I was going” “You were the one?” Mavis said indignantly. “Turing never pays the slightest attention to where he’s going. He simply plows through pedestrians” Elspeth nodded. “Someone needs to tell him he must be more careful! He could have injured you!” And I could have injured him, Mike thought. Or killed him. If Turing had lost control of his bicycle and crashed into a lamppost instead of the curb, or into a brick wall… Mavis said, “I’ve a good mind to tell Cap—” “No. There’s no need to tell anybody. I’m Fine. No Harm done. Thank you for picking me up and dusting me off.” He picked up his bag, which Mavis had carried in… “Watch out for Turing on your way there,” Joan cut in. “And for Dilly,” Elspeth said. “He’s even worse about not watching where he’s going, and he has a car! Whenever he comes to a crossing, he speeds up.” “Dilly?” Mike said hoarsely. “Captain Knox,” Mavis said. “We work for him. He has some sort of mathematical theory that by going faster he’ll it fewer people, because of being in the crossing a shorter time.”... “I refuse to accept lifts from him anymore,” Elspeth was saying. “He forgets he’s driving and takes both hands off the—are you alright? You’re pale as a ghost.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!

Every day not knowing what his future looked like induced a frantic need. He’d never been patient. Wasn’t good at sitting on the sidelines. Give him a battle plan, and he’d execute it. Any day now, God.

Literature has sometimes flourished under despotic regimes, but, as has often been pointed out, the despotisms of the past were not totalitarian. Their repressive apparatus was always inefficient, their ruling classes were usually either corrupt or apathetic or half-liberal in outlook, and the prevailing religious doctrines usually worked against perfectionism and the notion of human infallibility. Even so it is broadly true that prose literature has reached its highest levels in periods of democracy and free speculation. What is new in totalitarianism is that its doctrines are not only unchallengeable but also unstable. They have to be accepted on pain of damnation, but on the other hand, they are always liable to be altered on a moment’s notice. Consider, for example, the various attitudes, completely incompatible with one another, which an English Communist or ‘fellow-traveler’ has had to adopt toward the war between Britain and Germany. For years before September, 1939, he was expected to be in a continuous stew about ‘the horrors of Nazism’ and to twist everything he wrote into a denunciation of Hitler: after September, 1939, for twenty months, he had to believe that Germany was more sinned against than sinning, and the word ‘Nazi’, at least as far as print went, had to drop right out of his vocabulary. Immediately after hearing the 8 o’clock news bulletin on the morning of June 22, 1941, he had to start believing once again that Nazism was the most hideous evil the world had ever seen. Now, it is easy for the politician to make such changes: for a writer the case is somewhat different. If he is to switch his allegiance at exactly the right moment, he must either tell lies about his subjective feelings, or else suppress them altogether. In either case he has destroyed his dynamo. Not only will ideas refuse to come to him, but the very words he uses will seem to stiffen under his touch. Political writing in our time consists almost entirely of prefabricated phrases bolted together like the pieces of a child’s Meccano set. It is the unavoidable result of self-censorship. To write in plain, vigorous language one has to think fearlessly, and if one thinks fearlessly one cannot be politically orthodox. Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia…to be corrupted by totalitarianism one does not have to live in a totalitarian country. The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy…good writing stops.

You heard his storm-troopers shout their "Juda verrecke!" You heard him denounce us Jews, threaten us, revile us.' 'Yes, I did. But will you believe me, Herr Klaar, that I and thousands like me, didn't take all that seriously? After what I saw today I know that I was wrong. But believe me, I thought all that anti-Jewish propaganda was just rabble-rousing, something for that drunken SA mob. I ignored it and thought it unimportant. I felt certain all that would be forgotten once Hitler came to power, that ...' 'And the Nuremberg laws?' Father interrupted her. She thought a little while before replying. 'Yes,' she said, 'you're right to ask me that question. What shall I say? Of course, I know about them., but I also know now that I pushed that knowledge away from me. It won't be as bad as it sounds, I thought, and that injustice, I persuaded myself, had to be put on the scales and weighed against Hitler's achievements. Nearly six million unemployed were found jobs. Germany was strong and respected again, the same of Versailles was wiped out. Yes, I looked for the good things and was intentionally blind to the bad. I am sorry, Stella, I wanted so much to believe.

Brasse saw Karol’s back on the table. It was held down by weights at the edges and seemed in good condition. His knees began to tremble. He tried to say something, but his voice caught in his throat. He could only speak after several attempts. “Who did this?” His friend didn’t reply. He lowered his eyes in silence. The photographer, in shock, thought about what it must have been like to have to skin a man. He leaned over and vomited on the ground. Morawa held him up and pulled him away, out of the crematorium. “Was it Entress who told you to cut the tattoo off this man?” Brasse pressed. “Yes. He came in person.” “What did he say to you?” Morawa looked him straight in the eyes. “He told me to treat the skin carefully and preserve it well, because it’s going to be used as the binding for a book. He said that. And he repeated it. Do you understand? A man died because a mad doctor wants to bind a book.

need the other great powers. Russian trade would keep Germany from launching an attack on his homeland and aid in the rebuilding of the Soviet state. When the two nations signed the secret pact, Stalin gained an even greater boost to his ego when Hitler effectively gave away much of eastern Europe to Russia in the form of “spheres of influence” along with the ten-year nonaggression pact. Moreover, Germany would now move against the British and the French, leaving Russia considerable time before becoming Hitler’s next target. Besides, no mere paperhanger could outwit Stalin! Well, it did sound good at the time … and those who might have objected would have wisely saved their nation the trouble of the interrogation, trial, and firing squad by blowing out their own brains. If anything, years of pogroms and purges had proved that Soviet premier Stalin did not tolerate pessimism. With the new buffer states, security, and the promised trade bonus, as far as the Russian leader could see, Hitler had effectively bought off Joseph Stalin at just the right price. Time was now on Stalin’s side … or so he thought. While feelings of suspicion and paranoia had served him well over the years, Stalin demonstrated confidence in the deal and his ability to handle prospective German aggression, failing miserably to

Though good men may pass without the world’s recognition, they can live on in the hearts of young people who know the truth.

Appeasement was a policy put in place by Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister to try to avert war. His theory was that trying to prevent Germany from getting what it wanted would cause more harm than good in the long run. Therefore Britain’s official foreign policy would be that they would fulfill Germany’s wishes, “provided they appeared legitimate and were not enforced with violence,” described in German newspaper Der Spiegel. Chamberlain was aware that the British Empire’s resources were limited and that they really didn’t have the power to stop Hitler. So cooperating with them seemed like a better option.

Titus Crow is an occult investigator, a psychic sleuth, an agent for Good in the detection and destruction of Evil. During WWII, as a young man, he worked for the War Department; his work in London was concerned with cracking Nazi codes and advising on Hitler’s predilection for the occult: those dark forces which Der Führer attempted to enlist in his campaign for world domination. Following the end of the war, and from then on right through a very active life which encompassed many “hobbies,” he fought Satan wherever he found him and with whichever tools of his trade were available to him at the time. Crow became, in fact, a world-acknowledged master in such subjects as magic, specifically the so-called “Black Books” of various necromancers and wizards, and their doubtful arts; in archaeology, paleontology, cryptography, antiques and antiquities in general; in obscure or avant-garde works of art—with particular reference to such as Aubrey Beardsley, Chandler Davies, Hieronymous Bosch, Richard Upton Pickman, etc.—in the dimly forgotten or neglected mythologies of Earth’s prime, and in anthropology in general, to mention but a handful.

Weihsien—the test—whether a man’s happiness depends on what he has or what he is; on outer circumstances or inner heart; on life’s experiences—good or bad—or on what he makes out of the materials those experiences provide. Hugh Hubbard on Eric Liddell

And mind you, Hermine, even though such abusive articles cannot annoy me any longer, they often sadden me all the same. Two-thirds of my countrymen read this kind of newspaper, read things written in this tone every morning and every night, are every day worked up and admonished and incited, and robbed of their peace of mind and better feelings by them, and the end and aim of it all is to have the war over again, the next war that draws nearer and nearer, and it will be a good deal more horrible than the last. All that is perfectly clear and simple. Any one could comprehend it and reach the same conclusion after a moment's reflection. But nobody wants to. Nobody wants to avoid the next war, nobody wants to spare himself and his children the next holocaust if this be the cost. To reflect for one moment, to examine himself for a while and ask what share he has in the world's confusion and wickedness-look you, nobody wants to do that. And so there's no stopping it, and the next war is being pushed on with enthusiasm by thousands upon thousands day by day. It has paralysed me since I knew it, and brought me to despair. I have no country and no ideals left. All that comes to nothing but decorations for the gentlemen by whom the next slaughter is ushered in. There is no sense in thinking or saying or writing anything of human import, to bother one's head with thoughts of goodness for two or three men who do that, there are thousands of papers, periodicals, speeches, meetings in public and in private, that make the opposite their daily endeavor and succeed in it too.

who, with binoculars to his eyes, was watching the encounter. One of the bombers, hit by a six-inch shell, disappeared in a puff of smoke. Yet the others held on, pressing home their attacks. Bill saw a black egg spilling from the leading 109’s belly. ‘I think they’ll miss,’ Fiji’s Captain retorted calmly. ‘It’s a beautiful attack to watch.’ Warspite was under full port rudder when the bomb struck. There was a flash from her starboard 4-inch and 6-inch batteries, and then a gush of steam and white smoke enveloped the battleship. ‘My God,’ Bill heard the Officer of the Watch exclaim. ‘She’s badly hit.’ A silence gripped the impotent watchers on Fiji’s bridge. Bill held his breath as the old lady swung out of line: her bows emerged slowly from the smoke and steam as a swarm of Stukas waited, poised above her, for the kill. Then they peeled off for the final act. Across the water Bill heard the cheering of men’s voices: Warspite’s guns had not ceased firing for an instant. Still they blazed away, red tongues spitting from their barrels. Warspite shook herself, picked up her skirts and, apparently undamaged, resumed her station. ‘Good for her,’ Captain William-Powlett said. ‘But her starboard batteries are knocked out — and so are her boiler room intakes, I reckon, judging by the steam and the white smoke.’ Rear-Admiral King’s Squadron was now coming up fast over the horizon, Naiad’s signal lanterns working overtime as, being the Senior Officer of the forces present, King took over the command from Rear-Admiral Rawlings. ‘It’s an impressive sight,’ Bill murmured to himself. ‘Shall I ever see anything like this again?’ Men sighed with relief as the forces reunited. Naiad and Perth, Carlisle and Calcutta wheeled into station ahead of the battleships, Kandahar and Kingston fitting into the starboard wing of the destroyer screen. The fleet could now concentrate its anti-aircraft fire in these narrows. Bill watched Greyhound. She seemed to be engaging two caiques: the destroyer’s guns flashed, then suddenly one of the caiques blew up. She was probably full of Germans and ammunition. A flight of JU 87Bs, on its way

European perfumery started in earnest around the turn of the twentieth century, and developed apace with the discovery of aroma chemicals: coumarin, vanillin, cyclamen aldehyde, the great nitro musks. The Great War left industry and cities largely intact and killed countless males. Many factors then conspired to make the period 1918-1939 the golden age of mass perfumery: working women vying for the remaining men, cheap aroma chemicals, cheap labor to harvest the naturals, flourishing visual arts and music, the obsolescence of prewar bourgeois dignity, replaced by irreverence and optimism. The WWII destroyed the great engine of European chemistry (Germany). The tail end of German chemistry on the Rhine lay in the neutral Switzerland and was untouched, which is wy today two of the biggest perfumery houses in the world (Firmenich and Givaudan) are Swiss. Postwar France stank. In 1951, six years after the Liberation, only one household in fifteen had an internal bathroom. The Paris Metro at rush hour was famous for its unwashed stench. Given cost constraints, French perfumes in those years ('50) had an air de famille, a perfumey feel based on then-cheap drydown materials like sandalwood oil and salicylate esters. Being able to smell someone's fragrance was a sign of intimacy. When a perfume left a trail (called sillage) it was remarked upon, usually unfavourably. It is a strange coincidence, or perhaps a hint of the existence of God, that skin melanin is a polymer spontaneously formed from phenols, and that the perfumery materials that defined American perfumery were also in good part phenols.

Leslie Howard.’ ‘Howard – yes, I remember him in The Scarlet Pimpernel. He was very good.

THIS BOOK IS WONDERFUL - RAY BRADBURY FIVE OUT OF FIVE STARS! "Wonderful story. War Eagles is a really good adventure story." amazon reader "WW2 with a dash of fantasy! I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed." amazon reader

What people are saying about WAR EAGLES ​5 out of 5 stars! WW2 with a dash of fantasy! I really enjoyed stepping back in time as the race for air travel was developing. One could truly feel the passion these pilots and engineers had for these magnificent machines. The twist of stepping back into a land of Vikings and dinosaurs was very well executed. Well done to both the author and the narrator. ​ Reminiscent of Golden Age Sci Fi This audio book reminded me of some of the 40's and 50's era tales, but what it happens to be is an alternative timeline World War II era fun adventure story. Think of a weird mash-up of a screw-up Captain America wanna-be mixed with the Land of the Lost mixed with Avatar where Hitler is the real villain and you might come close. At any rate, it's load of good fun and non stop action. But don't get distracted for a minute or you'll miss something! There are american pilots, Polish spies, Vikings, giant prehistoric eagles and, of course, Nazis! What more could you ask for to while away an afternoon? Our hero even gets the (Viking) girl! Put your feet up an get lost in what might have been.... 4 out of 5 stars! it's Amelia Earnhart meets WWII This is not an accurate historical fiction book, but rather an action-packed book set an historical time. I normally listen to my books at a higher speed, however the amount of drama and action in this book I had to slow it down. I like the storyline and the narrator however, the sound effects throughout the book did kind of throw me since I'm not used to that and most audible books. still I would recommend this is a good read.​ 5 out of 5 stars! I Would Like to See this on the Silver Screen Back in the late 1930s, the director of King Kong started planning War Eagles as his next block buster film. Then World War II intervened and the project languished for decades. It helps to know this background to fully appreciate this novel. It’s a big cinematic adventure waiting to find the screen. The heroes are larger than life, but more importantly, the images are bigger and more vivid than the mighty King Kong who reinvented the silver screen. And what are those images you may ask? Nazis developing super-science weapons for a sneak attack on America, Viking warriors riding gargantuan eagles in a time-forgotten land of dinosaurs, and of course, those same Vikings fighting Nazis over the skyline of New York City. This book is a heck of a lot of fun. It starts a little bit slow but once the Vikings enter the story it chugs along at a heroic pace. There is a ton of action and colorful confrontations. Narrator William L. Hahn pulls out all the stops adding theatrical sound effects to his wide repertoire of voices which adds a completely appropriate cinematic feel to the entire story. If you’re looking for some genuinely heroic fantasy, you should try War Eagles. Wonderful story War Eagles is a really good adventure story. ​5 out of 5 stars!

and a good Marine. He keeps

The brutality of language conceals the banality of thought and, with certain major exceptions, is indistinguishable from a kind of conformism. Cities, once the initial euphoria of discovery had worn off, were beginning to provoke in her a kind of unease. in New York, there was nothing, deep down, that appealed to her in the mixture of puritanism and megalomania that typified this people without a civilization. What helps you live, in times of helplessness or horror? The necessity of earning or kneading, the bread that you eat, sleeping, loving, putting on clean clothes, rereading an old book, the smell of ripe cranberries and the memory of the Parthenon. All that was good during times of delight is exquisite in times of distress. The atomic bomb does not bring us anything new, for nothing is more ancient than death. It is atrocious that these cosmic forces, barely mastered, should immediately be used for murder, but the first man who took it into his head to roll a boulder for the purpose of crushing his enemy used gravity to kill someone. She was very courteous, but inflexible regarding her decisions. When she had finished with her classes, she wanted above all to devote herself to her personal work and her reading. She did not mix with her colleagues and held herself aloof from university life. No one really got to know her. Yourcenar was a singular an exotic personage. She dressed in an eccentric but very attractive way, always cloaked in capes, in shawls, wrapped up in her dresses. You saw very little of her skin or her body. She made you think of a monk. She liked browns, purple, black, she had a great sense of what colors went well together. There was something mysterious about her that made her exciting. She read very quickly and intensely, as do those who have refused to submit to the passivity and laziness of the image, for whom the only real means of communication is the written word. During the last catastrophe, WWII, the US enjoyed certain immunities: we were neither cold nor hungry; these are great gifts. On the other hand, certain pleasures of Mediterranean life, so familiar we are hardly aware of them - leisure time, strolling about, friendly conversation - do not exist. Hadrian. This Roman emperor of the second century, was a great individualist, who, for that very reason, was a great legist and a great reformer; a great sensualist and also a citizen, a lover obsessed by his memories, variously bound to several beings, but at the same time and up until the end, one of the most controlled minds that have been. Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone. We know Yourcenar's strengths: a perfect style that is supple and mobile, in the service of an immense learnedness and a disabused, decorative philosophy. We also know her weakness: the absence of dramatic pitch, of a fictional progression, the absence of effects. Writers of books to which the work ( Memoirs of Hadrian ) or the author can be likened: Walter Pater, Ernest Renan. Composition: harmonious. Style: perfect. Literary value: certain. Degree of interest of the work: moderate. Public: a cultivated elite. Cannot be placed in everyone's hands. Commercial value: weak. People who, like her, have a prodigious capacity for intellectual work are always exasperated by those who can't keep us with them. Despite her acquired nationality, she would never be totally autonomous in the US because she feared being part of a community in which she risked losing her mastery of what was so essential to her work; the French language. Their modus vivendi could only be shaped around travel, accepted by Frick, required by Yourcenar.

In the summer of 2002, I embarked on a mission that had been a goal of mine for many years. That mission was to write about a group of American servicemen who fought for our country. I was naturally drawn to WWII as a subject. I had read numerous accounts of how America led the effort to defeat the twin evils of Hitler’s Germany and Tojo’s Japan. A visit to a local bookstore, however, opened my eyes to two realities: 1) many books have been written about the heroes of WWII; 2) few books have been written about the heroes of the Vietnam War. The reasons for this discrepancy were obvious to me. Conventional wisdom tells us that the men and women of WWII were heroes who won our last great war. The deeds of our heroes should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom is correct. Yet, that same “wisdom” has two faces. The men of WWII were treated as heroes. The men of the Vietnam War were not. Instead of receiving ticker tape parades, many were greeted with shouts of “baby killer” and “war monger”. Thrown tomatoes, rocks, profanities and,in some cases, being spat on by fellow Americans was a common occurrence. That “wisdom” tells us that the men and women who fought in Vietnam were not heroes. They fought an immoral war, a war which they did not “win”. Not only were they immoral, they were losers as well. The conventional wisdom about the men and women who fought in Vietnam could not be more wrong. The heroes of Vietnam fought for the same reasons as every other American in every other war: for freedom, for country, for family and for the buddy holding the line next to him. That visit to the bookstore opened my eyes. My mission was crystal clear: I was to write a book about the heroes of the Vietnam War. That book was to tell a true account of combat, an account that had been ignored by historians up to that point. I wanted to tell a story that might be lost to posterity forever but for my efforts. The book was to set the record of “conventional wisdom” straight for good: that the men and women of Vietnam were and are heroes who won the war they were told to fight. That, as heroes, their deeds should be recorded for posterity. Conventional wisdom should get it right. Lions of Medina is a true account of Marine courage at its best. Courage in the face of overwhelming odds. Courage that defined the generation of men and women who fought in Vietnam. This book is a tribute to those who fought the Vietnam War, a reminder that freedom is never free, and a testament to the valor of the American soul. Doyle D. Glass May, 2007 Acknowledgments Lions of Medina would not have been possible without the contributions of many dedicated individuals.

I didn't even feel quite comfortable about having a modestly good time. This guilt was a holdover from the bleak cold days of the Depression when the long gray lines quickly scratched through the hardly realized moments of color ... the long winter dream played out against an always nightmarish backdrop of black and white. Ironic indeed that it took another nightmare, the red and gold blast of war, to make us rub our eyes and become accustomed once again to a brilliant spectacle. The unfamiliar color dulled our senses to the horror. We were enjoying ourselves for the first time in a decade. This was the carnival time of life, and we intended to celebrate, and celebrate we did, although a bit uneasily and self-consciously.

For me, and other ‘first timers’ [debut authors] I’ve spoken to, the primary concern is whether the story is good enough. With your first book there is no objective bench-mark you can judge it by. I felt very protective of the first draft; are people going to laugh when they read it or just shake their head? It sounds strange but the book was part of me. (Jon Gliddon interview on sevencircumstances.com)

Everyone calls you ‘Pasture.’ Do you raise cows or sheep? They call me ‘Pastor’ because I’m like a shepherd for people, and I lead them to safe pasture in God’s good earth.

The town embodied the reality that people could always find a way out, and the impact of one good deed was infinitely more powerful than that of evil.

The Nazis and their friends had been defeated, but in view of the scale of their crimes this was obviously not enough. If post-war governments' legitimacy rested merely on their military victory over Fascism, how were they better than the wartime Fascist regimes themselves? It was important to define the latter's activities as crimes and punish them accordingly. There was good legal and political reasoning behind this. But the desire for retribution also addressed a deeper need. For most Europeans WWII was experienced not as a war of movement and battle but as a daily degradation, in the course of which men and women were betrayed and humiliated, forced into daily acts of petty crime and self-abasement, in which everyone lost something and many lost everything.

Never give in. Never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” ~ Sir Winston Churchill Prime Minister of Great Britain during WWII

Of course, winning wars is not as easy as the myths would have us believe; besides that, we seem to be in an age of asymmetrical warfare where conventional victory and surrender do not apply. It’s hard to imagine how something as vague as the “war on terror” can be won in any way that resembles winning WWII. When the nation-states of Germany and Japan surrendered, America celebrated V-E and V-J Day. But it’s hard to imagine a V-T Day. And even if you are able to arrange a “good old-fashioned war” between two nation-states wearing uniforms and all, in an age where both sides are likely to have nuclear arsenals, it’s hard to imagine anyone “winning.” If we are committed to generating social unity through the civic religion of war sacrifice, we may very well be on the road to global annihilation.

There's one good thing about being in the bomb disposal unit: No superior officer is ever looking over your shoulder.