Anything was better than the blood and carnage, the grime and filth, the impossible demands made on the body — anything, that is, except letting down… - Stephen E. Ambrose

On the third, when Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch, commanding the U. S. Seventh Army, issued the orders for the withdrawal from Strasbourg, the French military governor of the city said he would not undertake such action without direct orders from De Gaulle.

When you talk about combat leadership under fire on the beach at Normandy,” Ellery concluded, “I don’t see how the credit can go to anyone other than the company-grade officers and senior NCOs who led the way. It is good to be reminded that there are such men, that there always have been and always will be. We sometimes forget, I think, that you can manufacture weapons, and you can purchase ammunition, but you can’t buy valor and you can’t pull heroes off an assembly line.”18 • •

Paul Fussell has described the two stages of rationalization a combat soldier goes through — it can’t happen to me, then it can happen to me, unless I’m more careful — followed by a stage of “accurate perception: it is going to happen to me, and only my not being there [on the front lines] is going to prevent it.