CHM

“If we're to have a true picture of the masculinity of the war years, then as now, we cannot sweep the more unpleasant aspects of it out of sight in favour of idealised heroes. To deny men their raucous sexuality, however much it might have offended polite society then and a very different moral spectrum now, is to omit a huge part of themselves. Perhaps just like the boy who cannot resist picking up a twig to pretend it is a gun, they are a part of the uncomfortable truth of what it can be to be a man.”
― Luke Turner, Men At War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945

“The trite comments about the waste of life and so on and the greedy delving into the tactics of engagement are the veneer that we use to justify the macabre entertainment value of such an extreme act of violence, part of the eternal desire for realism in voyeuristically consumed combat that, for the majority of Western men, is lacking in our daily lives.”
― Luke Turner, Men At War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945

“Fred destroyed Donald too, but not by snuffing him out like Freddy; instead, he short-circuited Donald's ability to develop and experience the entire spectrum of human emotion. By limiting Donald's access to his own feelings and rendering many of them unacceptable, Fred perverted his son's perception of the world and damaged his ability to live in it. His capacity to be his own person, rather than an extension of his father's ambitions, became severely limited.”
― Mary L. Trump, Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man

“Join the military, disappear into the wider whole; the pool of comradeship, discipline and military efficiency that is the physical representation of the nation at war.”
― Luke Turner, Men At War: Loving, Lusting, Fighting, Remembering 1939-1945