Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

by James D. Hornfischer

A SAILOR IN THE JUNEAU, Joseph Hartney, would recall the darkness that night as “a blackness so thick, so heavy, so velvety, you felt you could take the night in your hands and wring it like a rag.”

In the midst of his 1898 victory at the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, the U.S. admiral Jack Philip said: “Don’t cheer, men. Those poor devils are dying.” Such a situation called for the right combination of satisfaction and solemnity.