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

Exiting the cafeteria, on the way to training this morning, as I gazed west toward the mountains, couldn’t help but notice the depressingly grey and beautiful Pikes Peak in the distance, and just how poignantly this beautifully-depressing spectacle reverberates that “not entirely-uneventful” date 85 years ago exactly. At this very time, the Blitz storm had been long-gathered and its furies were now to be erupted on a single day.

How accurately should that the two faiths belonging to the polar opposites collide so timely and sharply on this day - Holland, Luxemburg, Belgium were swiftly raced over by the rejected Austrian housepainter, across the channel, the unpopular, unwanted, grumpy, distrusted Churchill was reluctantly called upon and tasked to face this series of 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.”

Anyhow, emotions stirred.

“‘Business as usual.’”

I’m sure there are dozens if not a hundred good qualities one can praise The Bulldog, but above all I think one common quality that truly resonates among him, Patton, 彭德怀 is that despite of their positions they are eminently human. Good convictions may even be more important, but… I have begun to understand why it has always made me feel somehow that the phrase “this man is after all human” (“这个人还是讲点人情味的”) spoken from my grandpa, for some reason always sounded like the highest and noblest form of praise to one’s character out of everything else he might show affirmation to someone, I didn’t hear this often but every time he commented one with this quality, it always felt like the noblest form of praise. I think it carries an even heavier weight in a storm, where the price to show “human qualities” let alone to act, is most definitely not cheap.