“Sitting shocked on the grass nearby, he stared at his hands ‘with unbelieving terror… The skin hung from them like long icicles. The fingers were curled and pointed, like the claws of a great wild bird–distorted, pointed at the ends like talons, ghostly thin. What would I do now? What use would be these paralyzed talons to me for the rest of my life?'”
– Max Hastings, “Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945”