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We knew the fate of all of us hung on that sea battle. In that moment I realized how much we must depend on ships even in our land operation. And in that moment I think most of us who were there watching the gunfire suddenly knew the awful feeling of being pitifully small, knew for a moment that we were only tiny particles caught up in the gigantic whirlpool of war. The terror and power and magnificence of man-made thunder and lightning made that point real. One had the feeling of being at the mercy of great accumulated forces far more powerful than anything human. We were only pawns in a
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We hold a tiny strip of this island, a toehold, a piece about seven miles wide and four miles deep, centering around the airport. The Japs can move about the remainder of the island, which is ninety miles long and thirty miles deep, almost at will.
It is startling to think how one’s standards of values change under the continued impetus of living conditions such as ours on Guadalcanal. Things like bread and privies, considered the barest necessities at home, become luxuries. One thinks of warm water, the smooth water-closet seat of civilization, and a bed with sheets as things that exist only in a world of dreams.
River. This afternoon trucks came to dump a pile of gray canvas sacks at Col. Hunt’s CP. It was mail—the first to reach the troops since we landed on Guadalcanal! Each man seemed as happy as if you had given him a hundred-dollar bill at the mere thought of getting mail. And that evening was an orgy of reading. Most
And we knew then that it would take some time with these men, as it had with us, to get rid of that loud surface toughness and develop the cool, quiet fortitude that comes with battle experience.
how, for instance, they often ask to be killed when they are captured, but seem relieved when we do not oblige. Then they feel they have complied with their part of the death-before-dishonor formula, and make no further attempt to deprive themselves of life.
