He wasn't twenty years old.... He hadn't begun to live. Shrieking and moaning, he gave up his life on a stretcher. Back in America the standard of living continued to rise. Back in America the race tracks were booming, the night clubs were making their greatest profits in history, Miami Beach was so crowded you couldn't get a room anywhere. Few people seemed to care. Hell, this was a boom, this was prosperity, this was the way to fight a war. We read of black-market restaurants, of a manufacturer's plea for gradual reconversion to peacetime goods, beginning immediately, and we wondered if the people would ever know what it cost the solders in terror, bloodshed, and hideous, agonizing deaths to win the war.


David Webster, Pvt. Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne - From Normandy to Hitler's Eagle's Nest, by Stephen E. Ambrose p.233