“And then there was the saddest lesson, to be learned again and again in the coming weeks as they fought across Sicily, and in the coming months as they fought their way back toward a world at peace: that war is corrupting, that it corrodes the soul and tarnishes the spirit, that even the excellent and superior can be defiled, and that no heart would remain unstained.”
— Rick Atkinson in The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944