[Re the Piat anti-tank weapon] Like many British inventions, it looked improbable, unwieldy, and unsafe - and… — George MacDonald Fraser

Not that lance-jack [lance-corporal] is any great eminence; it is an appointment, not a rank, and is the worst dogs-body's job in the Army, as Hitler and I could tell you.

No doubt newspaper reports and broadcasts had encouraged us, civilian and military, to regard him [the Japanese] as an evil, misshapen, buck-toothed barbarian who looked and behaved like something sub-Stone Age; the experiences of Allied prisoners of war demonstrated that the reports had not lied and reinforced the view that the only good Jap was a dead one.

No one underestimated Jap: he might be a subhuman creature who tortured and starved prisoners of war to death, raped women captives, and used civilians for bayonet practice, but there was no braver soldier in the whole history of war, and if he fought to a finish...