A few days later, from a wall along the river, Martha Gellhorn watched the...

A few days later, from a wall along the river, Martha Gellhorn watched the Soviet troops move on. 'The army came in like a flood; it had no special form, there were no orders given. It came and rolled over the stone quays and out onto the roads like water rising, like ants, like locusts. What was moving along there was not so much an army, but a whole world.' Many of the soldiers were wearing medals from the Battle of Stalingrad, and the entire group had fought its way at least 4,000 kilometres to the west in the last few years, most of it on foot. The trucks were kept rolling with impromptu repairs, the countless female soldiers looked like professional boxers, the sway-backed horses were driven along as though by Ben Hur himself, there seemed to be neither order nor plan, but according to Gellhorn it was impossible 'to describe the sense of power radiating from this chaos of soldiers and broken-down equipment'. And she thought how sorry the Germans must be that they had ever started a war with the Russians.

www.QuoteSweet.com