Geoffrey Wawro > Quotes

“Prussians were singularly well prepared in other areas as well. They invented the “dog tag” in 1870: an oval disc worn by every soldier bearing his name, regiment, and place of residence.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War

“Edmund Burke: “When things go wrong we are always tempted to ask not how we got into this difficulty, but how we are to get out of it . . . to consult our invention and to reject our experience.” Yet, Burke concluded, such thinking is “diametrically opposed to every rule of reason, and every good principle of good sense.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, Quicksand: America's Pursuit of Power in the Middle East

“major in the 1st Division added. That major always took a large number of shirkers for granted, relying throughout on that “certain number of men who can be depended upon, as a general thing, to begin and end all military operations.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, Sons of Freedom: The Forgotten American Soldiers Who Defeated Germany in World War I

“To knit army and nation together, they issued each soldier with twelve stamped postcards so that he could write to his loved ones throughout the campaign.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War

“In the days after Sedan, Prussian envoys met with the French and demanded a large cash indemnity as well as the cession of Alsace and Lorraine.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War

“French soldiers literally drank the entire day, beginning with wine (un pauvre larme – “a little teardrop”), progressing to spirits (le café le pousse-café), climaxing with a gut-searing brandy (le tord-boyaux – “the gut-wringer”), and ending with la consolation, a sweet liqueur that the French soldier sipped as he lay in his bunk contemplating the next day’s exertions. Far from imbuing the army with an ésprit”
― Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War

“Hôtel de Ville, where French republics were traditionally proclaimed from the balcony.”
― Geoffrey Wawro, The Franco-Prussian War