Queer is the word, because the Japanese used it so much and were so good at it and because we used it so little and were so poor at it, anyway. The Americans totally ignored the whole problem of fooling the enemy observers. I never saw a sign of camouflage attempted anywhere on Leyte, or later, on Luzon.
Blackouts during air raids were the only precautions taken against attack.
So much so that I wonder about its realism, though the sources I’ve found all seem to praise its realism. Thus I was quite surprised to hear that critics complained the movie didn’t portray its subjects as evil enough!
[...]
The conclusion I have to draw here is that no remotely realistic depiction of real bad people would satisfy these critics. Most people insist on having cartoonish mental images of their exemplars of evil, images that would be contradicted by any remotely realistic depiction of the details their actual lives. I’d guess this is also a problem on the opposite end of the spectrum; any remotely realistic depiction of the details of the life of someone that people consider saintly, like Jesus Christ or Martin Luther King, would be seen by many as a disrespectful takedown.
This is probably the result of a signaling game wherein people strive to show how moral they are by thinking even more highly of standard exemplars of good and even more lowly of standard exemplars of bad, compared to ordinary people. This helps me to understand self-righteous internet mobs a bit better; once a target has been labeled evil, most mob members probably don’t want to look too close at that target’s details, for fear that such details would make him or her seem more realistic, and thus less evil. Once we get on our self-righteous high horse, we prefer to look up to our ideals in the sky, and not down at the complex details on the ground.
He adds this addendum:
This attitude of course isn’t optimal for detecting and responding to real evil in the world. But we care more about showing off just how outraged we are at evil than we care about effective response to it.
Early in the morning of this second day in the Philippines, Colonel Drake, C.O. of the 5th Cavalry, was killed. Only nine other Americans were lost in this neck of the woods, though about 300 Japs were killed by the time Tacloban was taken.
[...]
The airfield was captured the first day, but proved to be a disappointment. The Japanese had not been using it and had not improved it for use of heavy planes. A lot of work would have to be done before our aircraft could operate effectively from it.
[...]
The 24th did not do so well and suffered from poor leadership at all levels. Traditional cavalry tactics call for movement of course, and the fact that they were dismounted did not deter the troopers in their actions here. They ranged far and fast compared with any previous Pacific operation. The terrain around Tacloban was not too well suited for such movement, but the soldiers were so glad to be out of the heavy jungle and see an occasional stone-surfaced road they moved ahead as fast as they could, clearing the Jap nests out as they advanced. Gains were made in miles, where usually tropical warfare was measured in yards.
[...]
I was examining my water-soaked feet in the last light when the earth stood on end and exploded. One second all was peaceful and the next was one great concussion; we were ringed with 90mm AA guns and they had decided there was a Jap plane overhead and fired simultaneously. Four men dived into a one-man slit-trench and they all fitted.
Third day:
Half an hour after we got there two of my original detachment went up on a nearby hill to look over the Jap diggings and hunt for souvenirs. They found the souvenirs and killed two Nips at the same time. The Japs cut down on them with a light machine gun but missed. Each American soldier had a Springfield and got one apiece. There was a third Jap who got up and ran when the other two died, but a young Filipino with the boys took care of him. The soldiers were taking careful aim when the Filipino asked them not to shoot and took off after the Nip. He caught up with him within 100 yards and made one pass with his bolo. Headless Jap. The Leyte bolo, called a sundang, is a short, bladeheavy weapon, balanced for chopping and edged on one side only. The cutting edge is beveled on one side, that is, one side of the blade is perfectly flat and all the bezel or bevel on the other, like our wood chisels in cross-section. The blade is slightly curved or straight on top edge, with cutting edge deeply curved and handle at a downward angle to top of blade. They come in all sizes, but the average working size is a 12″ to 15″ blade. Handles are of orange root or carabao horn and the wooden scabbards are often highly decorated and skillfully made. This type of instrument is peculiar to the island of Leyte alone and is startlingly similar to the famed Ghurka kukri, though lighter. The Ghurka fighting knives are often very heavy.
[...]
These days became famous as the “raid an hour” period. At first we would start for cover, but the urge to look was too great and always most men were exposing themselves to see what was going on.
[...]
I found a very fine little dugout just a few feet from my makeshift shelter (a Japanese hole and therefore much deeper and better than American!) and always stayed close to it when things looked doubtful. Experience had previously taught me how to figure a plane’s direction when it peels off to dive bomb from fairly low altitudes, so I stayed outside when most of the lads were worrying about strafing.
A few mornings later I saw one of the great running fights. A navy fighter shot down four enemy two-motored bombers in about three minutes and then was shot down himself by our own antiaircraft fire. This was during one of the few mass raids. I do not know how many enemy planes started out, but when I saw them about 10 were left, with American naval planes attacking them. Only two or three reached their objective — the anchored ships offshore — and I believe only one of them lived long enough to complete its suicide dive. It destroyed either a Liberty ship or an LST, I am not sure which, off Red beach. The Japanese made no evasive action but flew in ruler-straight lines for their targets.
Our ackack was so bad it was ruining our morale and becoming a source of jokes. We never saw it bring down anything except our own ships, which trustingly flew low and slow over our own territory.
[...]
We threw up millions of rounds of .50 caliber, 20mm, 40mm and 90mm, to practically no effect that I could see. Beautiful fireworks effect at night, I should say; red, white and green. I became used to the sound of their motors — they really did have a washing-machine sound, too.
[...]
The planes all looked alike — I mean the single motored ones. I was at one spot, busy at something under a tent fly, when I heard some racket and asked one of the boys to take a look. He did and turned back saying that it was a Grumman “Hellcat.” About six seconds later the “Hellcat” came down and strafed hell out of things. Our things. From then on I did my own looking, even if I did not know the aircraft. I knew British and German ships well, and American bombers, but could not remember much about Jap or U.S. small planes.
The beach had a couple of lovely fires, the best of which concerned 3,400 drums of fuel, mostly aviation and truck gasoline. The Nips got the credit for destroying it, though the inside story was that an enthusiastic 20mm gunner on one of the ships in the bay had followed a Zero down the shore line too far and plowed a few shells into the dump. Four of the men who had come ashore with me were burned to death in this particular fire. A couple of others on the beach were tagged by .50 caliber machine gun bullets from the antiaircraft guns ranging too low, also.
A recent study finds that great white sharks clear out when killer whales arrive:
“When confronted by orcas, white sharks will immediately vacate their preferred hunting ground and will not return for up to a year, even though the orcas are only passing through,” said marine ecologist Salvador Jorgensen of Monterey Bay Aquarium.
The team collected data from two sources: the comings and goings of 165 great white sharks GPS tagged between 2006 and 2013; and 27 years of population data of orcas, sharks and seals collected by Point Blue Conservation Science at Southeast Farallon Island off the coast of San Francisco.
In addition, orcas have been observed preying on great white sharks around the world, including near the Farallon Islands. It’s still a little unclear why, but the orca-killed sharks that wash ashore (one is pictured at the top of the page) are missing their livers — their delicious, oil-rich, full-of-vitamins livers.
Late in the afternoon of the first day signal men began stringing temporary telephone wire along the beach, connecting the control points, climbing about 20 feet up the boles of coconut palms to attach them. A Japanese in a tree killed two of them before he was located and liquidated. He had been there all day, looking down our necks. I believe he was a lookout, rather than a sniper, for he had chances to shoot at all ranks of officers during the day. I think he was just waiting for nightfall to try to get away and was panicked by the sight of the telephone men climbing the trees.
There had been a number of these tree posts, but we thought we had destroyed them all. The Japs had set up housekeeping in some of the palm tops. Everything imaginable came down when we got bulldozers to bump the trees a few times. Beer bottles, clothes, food, burlap for padding and camouflage, boards for platforms, rope, letters, books, personal junk and other odds and ends were lying around on the ground afterward.
Andy Stumpf has started the tactical @$$hole Instagram account to share photos of tactically unsound equipment and behavior.
I immediately noticed a photo of a Liberian fighter that I had shared a decade ago as an example of gangsta-style assault tactics:
I had found it on James R. Rummel’s site. It looks like he has purged most of his older material. Odd. Anyway, Stumpf has some fun with the material:
The sideways AK is truly an advanced move. If you have ever fired one you will know it has a very powerful and unique brass ejection. With this sideways orientation you can definitely “make it rain.” Accessory selection on the battlefield is also key, and it should be noted that not all vests are created equal. Although this vest will surely save your life in water, it is more of a “shoot at me” flair piece on land. The welding gloves are also a classic pairing.
I began looking for that cloud of carrier planes to cover the landing. Nothing stirring, but later — a couple of hours after the first landing — one Navy dive-bomber appeared and flew up and down the beach a few times. Of course, it turned out that the Japanese navy was on its way and our warships and carriers had to go out to sea to meet it. The great break for us was that the Japs were asleep at the switch and did not get any of their planes over us in force until 24 hours or more after we were ashore.
[...]
The beach here was ideal for such operations — that was why it was chosen — and we scarcely had to wet our knees going ashore.
[...]
The naval shelling had knocked out the few pillboxes and light weapon emplacements. Quite a few dead Japanese and pieces of Jap were laying around. Did not annoy us, as they were still fresh.
[...]
I had been so worried about keeping my gang together and in control that I had not had time to be scared.
[...]
I relaxed and devoted a few minutes to locating and cutting open green coconuts for drinking purposes. There were enough knocked-down trees to make this easy, and I like coconut milk to drink, as I can get away with it. Most men get a physic effect if they take much of it. The rule was to drink the milk of green coconuts and eat the meat of ripe ones, but my constitution permitted me to make up my own rules.
I had bought a sheath knife from one of the sailors on the way up, and it was to be my constant companion for the rest of my days in the Pacific. A short-bladed affair, of poor steel (I used a file to sharpen it), it had a handle so heavy it was a fair weapon should I ever get that close. Made a wonderful throwing knife. I could throw fairly straight and always used all my strength, in order to be sure of results. I never bothered about it landing point-on — the way I threw, it was effective no matter how it connected. In fact, I preferred it to land butt first in practice, as when I sank the blade three inches or so into a tree it was a lot of work to get it out.
[...]
A couple of the men had trench-knives and two had machetes. All of us were supposed to have these but we did not get them until we later found stocks on the beach and equipped ourselves. Machetes were the most important tool we could get hold of, as with them we could cut bamboo and wood for shelters and shoring up holes. Since none of us had intrenching tools, we had begged 10 or 12 regular full-sized shovels from the armored outfit and the crew of the LSM, for digging-in purposes. Bill Mauldin could undoubtedly have done justice to the picture of some of my characters coming through the water with a rifle in one hand and a full-grown engineer’s shovel in the other. It wasn’t funny then, though, and every guy that came past eyed those tools enviously. We guarded them. Digging tools meant life, more than once.
Nothing interfered with the landing and the main body of the supporting fighting troops began to come in by landing barge from the transports. They would charge off the ramps in the best newsreel manner and find us in front of them, taking life easy on the sand. We would point the right way and tell them the line was over there, three or four minutes’ fast walk, if they wanted to walk fast, and that things were going smooth as silk, etc. My crew envied them and they envied my crew — my gang wanted to get away from the exposed beach and the troopers did not want to move inland against Jap ambushes.
[...]
I was annexed by the beach commander as a messenger, helper and conversationalist.
[...]
I ended up without even a slit trench to park in, so wound a poncho around myself and parked beside a fallen tree. Sure enough, just after dark they started in — weeooweeooweeoo-PLOCK! But the foolish Nips threw everything over the shoreline into the bay, trying to hit the ships anchored there. Duds would have caused casualties on the shore, the way we were piled up. Everything went over, but most of that night I kept waiting for them to shorten the range. Got disgusted about midnight and went to sleep anyway.
When the value of land rises, it’s generally not because of something the landowner has done. The resulting rents and other monetary gains, Adam Smith wrote in 1776, “are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own.”
This made the landowner, Smith continued in The Wealth of Nations, an excellent target for taxation.
[...]
Income taxes and Social Security contributions are withheld from paychecks before the recipients get their hands on the money. Sales taxes (and value-added taxes outside the U.S.) are remitted by merchants and other business. It’s only with property taxes that a regular person gets a bill and has to pay it.
There’s clearly something to that, although for many homeowners property taxes are bundled into mortgage payments and thus a bit less obviously visible. Still, I can think of at least two other reasons for property taxes’ unpopularity that are actually side effects of what economists like about them. To wit:
- Property tax bills can rise without property owners doing anything, and
- Rising tax bills can push property owners (homeowners in particular) to make economic decisions they might prefer to avoid.
People can adjust their spending, and often their income. But they can’t help it if, say, house prices go up 80 percent in just three years — as they did in California from 1975 to 1978. Well, actually, they could help it, by going to the polls in June 1978 and approving Proposition 13, a set of restrictions on property tax rates and assessments that have shaped the state’s economy and government ever since.
[...]
Also, taxing property is in general more problematic politically than it was back when Henry George’s ideas were in vogue in the late 1800s and early 1900s — because homeowners have gone from a minority of the U.S. population to a majority with an especially high propensity to vote.
The jungle was awesome in spots and to this day I regard the Buna district as the worst fighting terrain in the world.
[...]
New Guinea is very rough country and we were constantly warned of the diseases we could catch from various insects in the kunai grass if we did not keep our leggings on at all times and keep dosed with insect repellents, etc. We religiously obeyed all instructions, not being idiots, but a few months later I was prowling through all kinds of tropical brush with my sleeves rolled up, my pants ending halfway between knee and ankle, my feet in jungle boots cut off at the ankle and no sign of socks, leggings, insect repellent, head nets or other “necessary equipment.” I was not only wide open to any insect onslaught, but I did not give a damn, any more.
[...]
Of all the mountains I have seen, the Owen Stanley range is the most fear-inspiring. They look as though they were designed expressly as a man-trap. For some reason I felt uncomfortable every time I looked at them. I have no desire whatever to see any part of New Guinea again.
[...]
Morale was very high, compared with most of the divisions in the Pacific, and the high percentage of regular army men made it well disciplined, in the sense of the word as applied in its proper meaning. The regular is almost always a pretty quiet, cooperative character. To an inexperienced onlooker, the Cavalry might have seemed to get things bolixed up and trip over its own feet, in a lot of little things, but compared with the rest of the divisions out there it did not vibrate any more than a new electric refrigerator.
[...]
The division commander, Major General Verne D. Mudge, was liked and highly respected. He was one of the very, very few “hard” or strict, garrison officers who was a good fighting leader. Ordinarily the detested inspection-crazed, salute-silly ranker proves a total washout in battle. He cannot relax and adapt himself to the conditions where results mean more than military routine and where Louie, the private who always needed a shave, turns out to be a better man than the deep-voiced sergeant who wore his uniform so well and stood so straight back in the States.
[...]
General Mudge was liked, not only for his good strategy and the fact that he made the plans but for the reason that he usually went up the line to help carry them out. He wore his stars in sight of the Japs more than once. Perhaps from the coldblooded general-staff view it was not intelligent for a valuable leader to risk his neck, but the Cavalry was always proud that its general was no swivel-chair boss back in the rear who sent men out to fight while keeping his hide safe. My own feeling is that the General was right in sticking his neck out once in awhile, for he not only learned what the foxhole private knew but knew but his appearance up where the bullets popped when they passed raised the morale and respect of the whole division enough to write off the risk as paid in full.
[...]
I was not assigned to any specific organization within the division and soon learned why. A few days before leaving the Admiralties and embarking for the Philippines, General Mudge himself came out and gave us a speech; “us” was the 200 or 300 unassigned men. We were to act as an emergency shore or landing party, to support the line troops by unloading and forwarding supplies for a couple of days until the regular port battalions got in; then we were to go into the line as casualty replacements. The more I learned the less I liked the prospective position. I should have realized that major generals do not usually come around to welcome replacements, even on special missions. I do not think he expected to see us any more, as the immediate beach strip on Jap-held island installations was not exactly the safest place to spend the first few days and nights during an attack. When I did get on the LSM (Landing Ship, Medium) for the trip up I realized I was in a spot. The armored rowboat was loaded with tanks and tankdozers, which were Sherman tanks with seven-ton bulldozer blades on them. That meant we were going on the beach early in the program.
[...]
We had a couple of M1s and a lot of beat-up Springfields, mostly low-number jobs. A few carbines were procured the night we sailed. I traded off my new M1 I’d been issued in New Guinea for a fair Springfield with a pistol-grip stock and rebedded and tuned up the ’03 during the voyage. Also made a canvas case for it, which proved invaluable, after we landed.
[...]
One soldier of my lot had a very bad barrel on his rifle and when I got him a new carbine he practically kissed me, then begged for permission—”I been wanting to do this ever since I got in the army, Sarge, how about it, please?”—; so I let him throw the rifle overboard, piece by piece. I could see him mentally reviewing the basic brow-beatings he had received concerning the holiness of the rifle, the inspections he had gone through and the pain he had undergone caring for a gun he had not been allowed to shoot, back in the training camps. Well, now the guy was up to the last chapter in the book and it was up to him to keep his weapons working right instead of just looking pretty and clean on the outside. We could not save the old rifle so let him enjoy himself. If he is alive today he has a pleasant memory of the time, anyway.
[...]
Some had done all their drilling with 1917 Enfields and did not understand anything about M1′s or ’03′s.
[...]
Many times I used to think about the tales I had heard and the stories I had read about World War I rookies arriving in the trenches without knowing how to load their rifles and how “That could never happen again.” It did, brother, it did.
[...]
The sense of responsibility kept me pretty sober. I was learning the line non-com’s job and didn’t enjoy it. Any mistake I made was liable to kill somebody so my judgment had better be good.
[...]
We ate with the Navy, so were happy—the Navy always eats much better than the Army—since we were used to corned beef and dehydrated potatoes. The Naval vessels can carry a lot of fresh food the land forces cannot take care of, I guess. The soldiers stocked up on bread and butter and fresh potatoes and meat, for there would not be anything like that for us after we landed.
[...]
Gas masks had been discarded, but some of us had saved the canvas bags from them and used them for holding our belongings.
[...]
Each man took what he wanted, but we were advised in the Admiralties to take as little as possible, even to throw away messkits. I held to mine and advised the men to do the same, and I also had extra footwear—a pair of jungle boots I had collected. These were a calf-high green canvas and black rubber outfit designed for sneaking up on the Nip. They could not be kept on for any length of time without causing foot trouble, as feet perspired profusely in them. Hardly anyone liked them as issued, though they were popular for relief wear when cut to ankle height. I liked them for wear around water, where any shoe or boot would get wet anyway, and they were ideal for shipboard use, the non-slip soles working swell on smooth plates and ladders.
[...]
A few men had extra canteens, which was a good idea, as known healthy drinking water would be scarce until the engineers got ashore and set up water points.
[...]
Ammunition was scarce for the carbines, but plentiful for the M1′s and Springfields, except that we had hardly any clips for the ’03′s. I went ashore myself with two loaded clips and a pocketful of loose ammunition.
[...]
We had at the last been issued jungle first-aid packets, and these were one of the items which showed some intelligence on the part of the QM equipment inventors. They had the usual bandage, a few band-aids, or adhesive tape and gauze combinations, sulfa tablets and waterproof containers of atabrine, halazone tablets (for water purification), iodine and a bottle of a solution for treating athlete’s foot and rashes in general. A bottle of insect repellent was also included.
Andy Stumpf interviews Erik Prince on the Cleared Hot podcast:
From an old soldier, a master sergeant who was the best army man I ever knew, in all respects, I learned a little about hand-to-hand combat, judo bayonet and knife work, etc. He was an expert and had instructed at many army schools. We used to laugh at the old-fashioned bayonet drill some of the new organizations went in for. It was not really funny — it was the futility that amused us. We could kill the best army-trained bayonet fencer who ever lived, without extending ourselves to any effort to speak of, in practically no time. That judo bayonet system was really sudden death at close range. The sergeant knew the Japanese bayonet technique and taught us accordingly, among other things. His method of knife-fighting was different, and in my opinion, better than either the marine or Commando styles.
Tanner Greer explains China’s obsession with anime and cosplay, which they call the “second dimension”:
The size of this two-dimensional world astounds. Consumers of this culture, broadly conceived, number 270 million in China, according to a March 2017 article on Sohu (with 90 million “core users” according to newer data). [...] An impressive display of the zeal and market power of this group is the China International Cartoon and Animation Festival, held each year in Hangzhou. In 2018 the festival pulled in 1.3 million attendees. (In contrast, last year’s New York Comic Con broke an American record with only 200,000 visitors.)
[...]
What is it that draws these overwhelmingly urban, educated, middle-class Chinese youth to the second dimension? Ask this question to them, and you will hear the same word again and again: meihao — a compound of the Chinese words for beautiful and good, used to describe not just physical beauty, but a sense of idyll, wonder or perfection.
“Our 3D world cannot compare to the meihao of the second dimension,” explained Sun Wei, a college freshman who volunteers her weekends managing booths at manga meetups. “Only in the second dimension you can see a truly meihao sort of life.”
[...]
At first glance, 2D culture does not seem optimized for relaxation. It demands an unusual commitment from even its most casual participants. User participation on Bilibili is an excellent example: stream an anime episode on Bilibili and your video screen will be flooded with hundreds of moving “bullet comments” zipping across the screen. But not just anyone can leave their bullets on Bilibili — to register, users are required to first ace a 100-question test on site etiquette and 2D culture trivia. If you cannot answer questions such as “The vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku is based on the voice of which Japanese voice actor?” (A: Fujita Aya) and “In the anime series Full Metal Alchemist, the character Xiao Mei is always accompanied by what animal?” (A: a pet panda) you cannot register. Even casual engagement with the 2D world requires mastery of an esoteric array of 2D themed slang, memes and trivia.
[...]
In no other place has Japanese animation been so explosively popular: even in Japan, anime is perceived as “nerdy” (the realm of otaku) whereas in China it is mainstream, in the same way that in America sci-fi is seen as geeky but superhero movies are not.
Theoretically, we were to give them the benefit of our experience and practical knowledge. Actually, we were not allowed to mention anything not in the training manuals, most of which had been written in the 1920’s. Except for the impromptu bull-sessions, the rookies got the same old marching-pup-tent-pack-rolling schedule the army had been putting on for years. This was late in the winter of 1944, February and March. Some attempts were made to modernize the training, but the rub was that most of the officers still believed that there was “nothing like drill to make a soldier.” None of them realized that this war did not need “soldiers” — it needed fighting and working specialists.
Tyler Cowen considers some arguments for a gold standard:
Historical data indicates that industrial production volatility was not higher before 1914, when the U.S. was on the gold standard, compared to after 1947, when it mostly wasn’t. And there are similar results for the volatility of unemployment. That’s not quite an argument for the gold standard, but it should cause opponents of the gold standard to think twice. Whatever the imperfections of a gold standard might be, monetary authorities make a lot of mistakes, too.
Furthermore, in the broader historical context, including the more distant past, the gold standard doesn’t look so bad. The age of the gold standard (and sometimes silver standard, and sometimes bimetallism) in the 19th century was largely one of peace and economic growth, running from 1815 until World War I. The fiat money era that followed was a disaster, as the 1920s brought monetary chaos, competitive devaluations, and even some hyperinflations and deflations, a few of which were driven by the desire to restore the old gold par at incorrect rates. It would have been better had the world managed to keep its gold-centered monetary order of 1913.
Even the Bretton Woods arrangement, which has a good record in terms of stability and growth, involved gold convertibility of a sort, albeit with no domestic convertibility and lots of pressures to discourage actual conversion from foreigners. Once the tie of the dollar to gold broke entirely in the early 1970s, inflation and interest rates were high and again monetary chaos followed. From the vantage point of, say, 1979, some form of gold standard really did seem better.
What was not obvious then was that monetary policy was going to be so good and so stable for the next four decades, albeit with a number of mistakes. Today’s case for the gold standard is based on the view that these recent decades of good fiat money management are a historical outlier and cannot be sustained. I don’t share that opinion, but neither do I think it is crazy or a sign of extreme ignorance.
So why don’t I favor a gold standard? First, governments have a long history of interfering with gold standards, for better or worse. So it doesn’t really remove politics from monetary policy. Second, central banks should respond with extreme countercyclical pressure when a financial crisis hits, such as in 2008. That is harder to do with a gold standard, and usually it requires the suspension of gold convertibility. Third, the price of gold is now greatly influenced by demand from China and India, and it seems unwise for that to partially drive what is in essence U.S. monetary policy. Most generally, I still think central bank governance can do a better job than a gold-based system that sometimes creates excess deflationary pressures.
Nonetheless, the contemporary world is always testing my belief in central banking.
In operation it was like Mark Twain’s weather — everyone talked about it but no one did anything.
[...]
A lot of overseas men were lost—we were not civilized enough, or polite enough to second lieutenants, or something.
[...]
I am still pleased about the whole thing — the guys who told me I was nuts for not making the most of the great opportunity are not only still in the army; most of them are still overseas, where they did not want to go! In fact, one of them went over the month I came back to be discharged.
[...]
Their higher-ups were keeping up a desperate pretense that there was not really a war on, that after all, the main thing was really to cultivate the state of mind that the commissioned man is really a better man than the enlisted one; and above all, the “army way” was the reason for existence, not the war, that there is plenty of time, etc.
[...]
This went over with the ROTC kids and some of the domestic drill corporals, but did not sit too well with the sergeants back from the shops and trucks of the overseas theatres. We knew just how lousy and useless most of the officers turned out under that system were.
[...]
A loud, clear voice was 70% of the qualifications for an officer, the drill field counting that much in total grades.
[...]
The physical training course was very fine and the officer in charge was an expert. He could both do it and teach it. He was rough and he made us like it, producing more results in a shorter time than I believed possible. His exercises were scientific and beneficial not just tiring motions. Naturally they were not G.I. but his own adaptation of gymnastics adapted to mass ground performance.
[...]
A little training in firearms was given and a 200-yard qualification course was fired with some very beat-up M1 rifles at the Aberdeen range. We just went out, picked up the guns, then fired the course. My particular rifle would group about 12″ or 14″ at 200 yards, shooting prone with sling, on the A target. I managed to make expert without difficulty, but was sad about the low score — I dropped about 20 points and anyone who knows how to point a rifle should not lose over five. It was impossible to call a shot with the inaccurate rifles.
[...]
(I had concluded that while I hated the army, I didn’t mind the war so much as long as I was not being shot at).