Minutes in World War II took a toll comparable to that of months in Iraq.

It was reported [after Paul Tibbets died] that he claimed never to have lost a night’s sleep after the mission, and some saw this as a show of indifference. It was the opposite. He slept well, he told me, because “we stopped the killing.” He was at peace, he said, because “I know how many people got to live full lives because of what we did.”