“By this time we had reached the trench system. On both sides of us men were going along the trenches with their Tommy guns. A tank assaulted one of the trenches and behind it was a young radio operator calmly chewing a stalk of wheat, waiting to flash the words that the bastion had been taken. Shouts of “come on out of there you Nazi 'so-and-so's'" and "keep your hands up you 'such-and-such'" announced the arrival of the First Troop. Then they began to pop up like prairie dogs.”
Broadcast from Normandy (1944)
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Bill Downs24
American journalist 1914–1978Related quotes
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Source: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.16 On being in the trenches in France in 1915.
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Salon interview (1997)
Context: The automatic reaction of practically any young person is, at once, against authority. That, I think, began in the First World War because of the trenches, and the incompetence of the people on all fronts. I think that a terrible bitterness and anger began there, which led to communism. And now it feeds terrorism. Anyway, that's my thesis. It's very oversimplified, as you can see.
Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany
The Great War: A Combat History of the First World War (2013) by Peter Hart, p. 242
Undated
“To the trenches! (A las trincheras! in Spanish)”
Rafael Hernández Colón (1936–2019) Puerto Rican politician
On election night, November 4, 1980, in a call to his supporters to protest the election results after a controversial loss to his opponent, Carlos Romero Barceló by 3,503 votes. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,922256-1,00.html