"With the Old Breed: at Peleliu and Okinawa". First time I read it it cured me of the romantic idea of being an infantry soldier in a war.

This passage about digging foxholes on Okinawa while under fire was particularly poignant:

“Kneeling in the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but c...ontinue to dig, so I closed my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed, and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into”

Not only are they digging through previously killed and buried Japanese soldiers, they’re doing it with machine gun fire zipping by their heads, sniper fire picking off buddies, 90MM mortar fire shredding others, and 75MM gun shrapnel whizzing by, all while it’s raining 5 inches per hour. When they got the holes dug they still couldn’t afford to sleep because the Japanese tried to infiltrate every night with suicide bayonet attacks.

No wonder these guys came back and remained mostly silent on the experience. There is really no way to convey the experience to someone back home whose toughest daily task is making it through the 9 to 5 at the office. Semper fi