The surprise that was Hitler's December Offensive made many people think that the Allies were losing their edge and relying more on air power than infantry; Allies rather than our own divisions. The Battle of the Bulge shook all Americans out of their complacency.
More on the Battle of the Bulge can be read here... "Japan's one purpose now is to fight back and stall for more time - not to attack. That period in her war is over, and she came out on top...All signs now point to a growing major Allied offensive, and for the first time the enemy will be faced with the problem of holding territory which he can't afford to lose."
1943 was truly the year that proved to have been the turning point in the war, click here to read about it...
When Joe Martin received a shrapnel wound to the head it affected that region of his brain that processes language. He spent a good deal of time in military hospitals trying to regain his lost ability to communicate, as he articulated clearly in the attached article:
"He then held up a pencil in front of me and asked, 'Joe, what is this?'"
"I heard myself reply, 'A paddle'". "Japan has put into the arena a pure fascist man. It is making war against us with a well-nourished, athletic, relentless fighting animal who seems to be controlled to an extent we find difficult to understand by his government and by the officers who exert his government's authority... The Jap went into the war with an air corps skimmed from the top of his population... Our best pilots, too, were taken off the top of our population. They were college boys of high intelligence and perfect physique. The Japs had good pilots, but now they are dead. Many of our best pilots died killing them." A British staff officer who was an eyewitness to the Allied breakout from the Normandy hedgerows compiled all the assorted questions that friends and family had written to him in their respective letters and answered them in a public format published in TRICOLOR MAGAZINE:
"What do you feel when you see people dead?"
"Just an urgent desire to get by quickly and a feeling of revulsion which is greater or less according to the length of time the body has been dead... There is no difference in appearance between decomposing men and decomposing animals and the same stench comes from both." Following his tour of the war fronts, U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (1902 – 1985) put pen to paper in an attempt to express his admiration for the brave and selfless acts that Americans were performing all over the globe:
If asked to say what impressed me on my recent trip to the war theater, my answer would be: the heroic qualities displayed by our American boys. My most lasting impressions were gained in the field and in the hospitals around the globe. It is there that one sees the kind of boy America produces."
Additional praise for the American fighting man can be read here...
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