Shortly after the Tunisian campaign ended, the flying men were given a three-day holiday, the first of its kind since they arrived in North Africa.  Some of them went to the nearest cities by jeep or truck for a little fling.  Others took planes and went to big cities farther back.  Many went to beaches to swim and laze.  And a great many went to Tunisia—to see with their own eyes the havoc they had so carefully and perilously wrought all winter.

They found it an odd thing to be there on the ground looking at a place they’d never seen except from miles above and with the sky around them riddled with flak and swarming with fighters.  They visited Bizerte, which they had wrecked, and Ferryville and Tunis, whose docks they had demolished in their numberless raids.  They were pleased at what they saw.  They found that in their precise works of destruction they had done a good job.