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Ben Downing

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Ben Downing is currently reading

Saving My Enemy: How Two WWII Soldiers Fought Against Each Other and Later Forged a Friendship That Saved Their Lives

by Bob Welch (Goodreads Author)

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Ben Downing is currently reading

MacArthur's War: Book Four: The World in Flames series

by Jack Strain (Goodreads Author)

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— Feb 16, 2026 08:10PM

Feb 14, 2026 04:42PM

Ben’s Notes & Highlights

Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield

13 highlights

“You have never tasted freedom, friend,” Dienekes spoke, “or you would know it is purchased not with gold, but steel.”

Voices of the Pacific, Expanded Edition

by Adam Makos

1 highlight

“Reservists and citizen-soldiers stand ready, in every free nation, to stand to the colors and die in holocaust, the big war. Reservists and citizen-soldiers remain utterly reluctant to stand and die in anything less. . . . The man who will go where his colors go, without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in jungle and mountain range, without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship, without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America. He is the stuff of which legions are made.”
― Max Boot, The Savage Wars Of Peace: Small Wars And The Rise Of American Power

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