Knowledge is strange," Eyvind Torfinn said. "You never can be sure ahead of time what you may need. Someone who is going to a strange place will carr… - Harry Turtledove

Outside the building, Lou smoked a last cigarette and shot the shit with one of the German gendarmes who'd be taking over the place once the Americans were gone. Rolf was a pretty good guy. He'd been a corporal during the war- but Wehrmacht, not Waffen-SS. In his dyed-black U.S. fatigues and American helmet, he looked nothing like a German soldier. So Lou tried to tell himself, anyhow. "We will miss you when you go," the gendarme said. "You are the only thing standing between us and chaos." "You guys will do fine on your own," Lou answered. You always assured a sickroom patient, even- especially- when you didn't think he'd make it.

“What’s the war news?”
“They’re killing people,” Sam said, and let it go at that.

We must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now.