[Homer_J_Simpson]

Thank you. It is contributions from readers like you that enable us to maintain our high academic standards here at WWII + 70.

[Happy Rain]

I bought a book back in the late 1960s called, “The GI War” and it was a simple compilation of personal experiences of WWII combat veterans. My late father, a Navy Gunner's Mate, barely survived the Pacific War and it astonished me at a very young age at what a man could actually endure and still keep his sanity.

In the book were plenty of “little things” anecdotes (some pretty harrowing) that the combat grunt on the ground experienced that did more than any to bring their boring/terrifying/comic experiences to the reader.

Like the time when a Jap mortar shell made a marine dive blindly into a foxhole only to land in a pile of human poop...everyone knew that you never crapped in a foxhole and if you were pinned down by enemy fire and had to go THAT damn bad you sure as Hell never crapped in the bottom where divers could land in it!
“Musta been a sailor!” is what the disgusted marine said.