He was a grumpy-looking bastard at the best of times, but right now he looked like a bulldog licking the piss off a thistle.
“But this was life in those days. Today we are a totally different society. We put out bunches of flowers, have little vigils, hold hands and have counsellors to tell us all what to do. It was totally different then. The world events were so monumental that you had no time to think about the people who had fallen by the wayside. If we had had today’s attitudes, we would never have won the war.”
― Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45
― Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45
“Monsters. Almost cartoonishly evil-looking, like in the campy space movies of old. Only these looked far more sinister, more deadly, and more … well, just obviously evil than anything he’d ever seen. Mottled green and black skin, dripping with mucus in some places and hairy in others. And ugly. Faces that bore a striking resemblance to what he imagined the offspring of a crocodile with a human baby-like face who’d had sex with a tortoise would look like, except the offspring had contracted leprosy, been badly burned, and beaten with a spiked club, and whose now open wounds had developed gangrene and only semi-”
― Liberty
― Liberty
“Major (later General) Curtis LeMay recalled the shock of fog when he flew in to a British airfield for the first time from the US. ‘Can you see the runway lights?’ the control tower asked the pilot of his aircraft, to which the pilot replied: ‘Shit, I can’t even see my copilot!”
― Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45
― Tail-End Charlies: The Last Battles of the Bomber War 1944-45
“He was the large protruding nail on which destiny snagged her coat.”
― The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History
― The Churchill Factor: How One Man Made History
“Nerves got the better of the most experienced pilots during Rhubarbs. On one occasion, two of Robertson’s fellow 111 Squadron pilots flew over the Channel up into cloud then came down and slipped over the coast. They spotted a train and shot it up before heading back home. They were surprised on return to be called into the Station Commander’s office. What had they been shooting at? A train. Did they damage it? Yes, quite a bit. Did they realise the train they’d shot up was heading to Margate?16”
― Spitfire: A Very British Love Story
― Spitfire: A Very British Love Story
Steve’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Steve’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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Biography, Fantasy, Fiction, History, Mystery, Non-fiction, Politics, Science fiction, Thriller, and War
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