“This war here is a dirty business,” he wrote his Swedish girlfriend, Inga Arvad, in 1943. It was difficult to persuade his men that they were dying for a great cause when they were fighting on “some islands belonging to the Lever Company, a British concern making soap…. I suppose if we were stockholders we would perhaps be doing better.” Unlike the Japanese, who were willing to sacrifice themselves for their emperor, the typical American soldier felt a divided loyalty—“He wants to kill but he is also trying to prevent himself from being killed.” The lesson that Jack drew was that politicians
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