Just think! If we survive them, these will be the good old days! - Bill Downs

Driving to the studio today, I passed a big football field. I had to look twice before I realized that the stands were jammed with people...thousands of them. I looked out on the playing field, and there wasn’t a soul. And then I realized that this crowd were war prisoners. I went into the field, and there was a quiet, docile atmosphere about the place…the sort of atmosphere you get in an American football crowd between halves. Germans of every description sat quietly, chatting to their neighbors and doing nothing in particular. Bored British sentries stood around looking like ushers equipped with Tommy guns. It was that quiet.

Among other things, we are supposed to spot the toes of clay splaying out from under the pearl-gray spats, or the cloven hoof encased in the jackboot, before anyone else. Cynicism also is the touchstone of a reporter's alchemy through which he hopes to discover that nonexistent load called "objectivity." For as a set of philosophers, the only true objective reporter is the dead one.

A single, isolated battle that ranks in magnificence and courage with Guam, Tarawa, Omaha Beach. A story that should be told to the blowing of bugles and the beating of drums for the men whose bravery made the capture of this crossing over the Waal possible.