Now, Boatner told Young, who the hell was more interested in those young men—besides the parents—than their immediate officers, the officers who knew these kids, who lived and ate with them? Some staff officer, some corps or army commander, or the theater commander in Tokyo? “It’s simply goddam ridiculous and absurd for a combat man to be put in a position where his own subordinates that he’s known—youngsters that he’s eaten with—get killed or wounded, and someone thousands of miles back puts the bite on him, as though he were callous about it!”
