Word: one
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...onetime technical sergeant in the 1st Marine Division, "is sometimes very different from the fought war." In The Old Breed, his division's remembrance book, Author McMillan lets his facts about fighting fall where they may, gives the full treatment to the asides. In the process he achieves one of the most readable of the 100-odd unit histories of World War II already published...
...asked whether the hard-pressed leathernecks could hold the first beachhead in the Pacific war, Navy Secretary Knox said: "I don't want to make any predictions, but every man out there, ashore or afloat, will give a good account of himself." When this word came to Guadalcanal one sergeant mused: "Ya know, they're kicking up a stink about us back in the States." Said a private first class: "That's nice...
...Army came and so did the best thing that ever happened to the division: a long rest in Australia, where people get false teeth early. Australian girls couldn't believe the marines' molars were their own. "Finally, this babe with me reached over," said one marine, "and took hold of my teeth and tried to yank 'em and I let her. She was sure surprised when nothing gave." Before the division left Melbourne most of the men "were in some stage of a serious love affair with an Australian girl...
Rocks for Charles Boyer. From Australia, General MacArthur sent the1st Division to Cape Gloucester, which was so miserable one sergeant swore: "In the next war I ain't even gonna plant a victory garden." The Japs weren't too numerous, but Hill 660 was steep and slippery and it rained all the time. "The wells of fountain pens clogged; pencils came apart at the seams in less than a week, blades of pocket knives rusted together," McMillan remembers. Shellfire caused giant, rotten trees to tremble and fall; 25 men died as victims of such odd accidents of jungle...
...appearance on the screen brought cries of "Back it up!" Then the operator would oblige by rewinding it and showing the female again. When any heroine displayed signs of falling in love the audience implored: "Don't run off with that bum! Wait till I get home!" One night, men of Headquarters Battalion got so mad at Charles Boyer they threw coral rocks at the screen...