Sublime

CORKSCREW had been his plan from the beginning. Despite the doubts of his senior commanders, all of whom were more experienced than he, Eisenhower had insisted upon taking the island, and had successfully done so.

this speedy turnaround proved too slow for most of the sick, the Hector losing its captain, its master and its master’s mate not to mention ‘common men’.

While the army the United States eventually dispatched to Europe was large, it was nothing like as powerful as would have been necessary had the Western Allies been obliged to fulfil the principal role in defeating Germany. As a corollary of this, once Russia’s survival and fighting power became plain in 1943, the American chiefs of staff felt able

A minimum of 5 million people in Southeast Asia died in the course of the war, many of them in the Dutch East Indies, either at Japanese hands or as a result of starvation imposed by Tokyo’s diversion of food and crops to feed its own people.

Day had huge symbolic significance and commands the fascination of posterity, the fighting that followed was much bloodier: for instance, while D Company of the British Ox & Bucks Regiment triumphantly seized “Pegasus bridge” across the Caen Canal early on 6 June for the loss of only two killed and fourteen wounded, next day it suffered sixty c

His bitterness was justified: he and almost 150,000 of his compatriots had fought gallantly with the Allied forces, suffering heavy casualties in Italy and northwest Europe. “We, the Poles in uniform integrated into the British armed forces, became an ugly sore on the English conscience,” wrote Pilot Officer B. Lvov.

As one military historian put it, “The failures and errors of judgment of high command had been redeemed by the men on the sand.”5 Said another, “This success was principally due to the unquenchable spirit and drive of the 1st Division. Without ‘The Big Red One’ the battle would have been lost.”6

The Battle of the Bulge cost the Germans between 80,000 and 100,000 men, plus the bulk of Hitler’s armored reserve. The Wehrmacht might continue to fight a defensive war in the west, but it was no longer capable of offensive action.