"On April 4, 1997, the day before my pilgrimage, I visited Castle Aghinolfi from the German side of the lines. The invisible hand squeezed my soul. We were worse off than I had realized fifty-two years earlier. The Germans had more of an advantage and tougher defenses than we knew. Not only were they hitting us with mortar rounds from the castle, but there was a German mortar battery behind us that we had missed in our charge up those hills. The ravine was deeper than I remembered; the distance to the castle greater. We never had a chance. And yet we did it."