“In the twilight, as we walked to our dinners, German planes would come like swallows out of Sicily, far away, and jettison their bombs before reaching the center of our magnificent anti-aircraft display, like a beehive drawn in lines of orange tracer. … Then, in the dark after the third armagnac, we would steal away to a place of enchantment called the Sphinx, where girls would act charades that graying members of the American Legion still dream of in Terre Haute. It was a schizoid existence: in Tunisia, with your belly pressed to ground, the Hotel Aletti seemed a mirage, but when you were in Algiers, you wondered whether you had lived on the Foamy Fields or imagined them.”
— AJ Liebling, “Confusion is Normal in Combat,” Mollie & Other War Pieces
Collateral Damage 