We were unable to understand their attitudes until we ourselves returned home and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect or their coffee wasn’t hot enough or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.

As I looked at the stains on the coral, I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how “gallant” it is for a man to “shed his blood for his country,” and “to give his life’s blood as a sacrifice,” and so on. The words seemed ridiculous. Only the flies benefited.

I concluded that it was impossible for me to be killed, because God loved me. Then I told myself that God loved us all and that many would die or be ruined physically or mentally or both by the next morning and in the days following.

Courage meant overcoming fear and doing one’s duty in the presence of danger, not being unafraid.

Lying in a foxhole sweating out an enemy artillery or mortar barrage or waiting to dash across open ground under machine-gun or artillery fire defied any concept of time.

Something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was the childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that Man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places, who do not have to endure war’s savagery, will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.

In writing I am fulfilling an obligation I have long felt to my comrades in the 1st Marine Division, all of whom suffered so much for our country. None came out unscathed. Many gave their lives, many their health, and some their sanity. All who survived will long remember the horror they would rather forget. But they suffered and they did their duty so a sheltered homeland can enjoy the peace that was purchased at such high cost. We owe those Marines a profound debt of gratitude.

Would the war dehumanize me so that I, too, could “field trip” enemy dead with such nonchalance?

A man’s ability to depend on his comrades and immediate leadership is absolutely necessary.

As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As Wilfred Owen’s poem “Insensibility” puts it so well, those who feel most of others suffer most in war.