“I felt as if I were walking with destiny…”

Exiting the cafeteria on my way to training this, gazing west toward the mountains and couldn't help but notice the depressingly gray and beautiful Pikes Peak in the distance. The sight poignantly reverberated with that “not-entirely-uneventful” day exactly 85 years ago. At this very hour, the Blitz storm had long been gathering, its furies now erupting in a single, cataclysmic day.

How fitting that the fates of two polar opposites should collide so sharply on this day: Holland, Luxembourg, and Belgium swiftly overrun by the rejected Corporal Schicklgruber; across the Channel, the unpopular, unwanted, grumpy, distrusted, and grotesque Churchill is reluctantly called upon to face the onslaught.

Isolated, alone.

“God alone knows how great it is. I hope it is not too late. I am very much afraid that it is. We can only do our best.”

“… I thought I knew a good deal about it all, I was sure I should not fail.”

I'm sure there are dozens—if not hundreds—of qualities one could praise in the Bulldog, but above all, one common trait truly resonates among him, Patton, and Peng Dehuai: despite their exalted positions, they remained eminently human. Strong convictions may be even more vital, but... I've begun to understand why the phrase "this man is after all human" ("这个人还是讲点人情味的"), uttered by my grandpa, always struck me as the highest and noblest form of praise for someone's character—surpassing any other affirmation he might offer. I didn't hear it often, but whenever he bestowed it, it carried an unparalleled weight. I think it holds even greater significance in a storm, where the cost of showing human qualities—let alone acting on them—is most assuredly not cheap.