Sublime

As a result, Crusade in Europe remains one of the clearest and least opinionated books to come out of World War II. If Ike had an ax to grind, he avoided doing so in his book. Like Grant’s Memoirs, it is also free of the petty bitterness that characterized the books of Montgomery and Lord Alanbrooke, and the diaries of George Patton, which were pub

Lawrence not only helped lead the Arab Revolt but he also reflected on this group of irregular soldiers and their guerrilla campaign.166 Whereas other campaigns, such as those fought by the Irish or Boers, are remembered through a variety of memoirs, government reports, and histories both official and scholarly, Lawrence’s own writings were—and in

the limelight shifted onto the common soldier and his experiences.

At West Point he had been noted as a gamecock, anxious to use his spurs.

During the war, the United States possessed an astonishing thirty thousand installations on two thousand overseas base sites. The men marked their presence with a ubiquitous graffiti tag: a cartoon face peering over a wall, accompanied by the words KILROY WAS HERE.

“A ticket to sure fire danger and excitement in the most explosive form is furnished every man who volunteers for the Seabee demolition units,” said a military publication in October 1943. When it is over “he is an expert in destruction, qualified to blow up everything from a milk bottle to a man.” So qualified, each graduate was assigned to a six-