But if our afflictions were heavy, we could take comfort in the knowledge that the enemy's outweighed our own. So severe were his losses that none of… - Omar Bradley

The Yankee invasion had come to England well heeled with American dollars. American privates earned three times as much as their British companions. A U.S. staff sergeant's take-home pay equaled that of a British captain. Since such a substantial share of this wealth was invested in local courting, it is no wonder that Britain's provincial customs were given a fancy whirl. Indeed, it is a tribute to the civility of the British that they endured us with such good will.

In this book I have tried to achieve one purpose: to explain how war is waged on the field from the field command post. For it is there, midway between the conference table and the foxhole, that strategy is translated into battlefield tactics; there the field commander must calculated the cost of rivers, roads and hills in terms of guns, tanks, tonnage- and most importantly in terms of the lives and limbs of his soldiers. How, then, did we reach our critical decisions? Why and how did we go where we did? These are the critical questions I have been asked most often. And these are the questions that gave me justification for writing this book.

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.