THE LAST OF THE OLD BREED

Past 90 and occasionally 100 when interviewed, Marines tell stories from long ago and far away that haven’t lost their fascination.

Historian and journalist Davis writes that fighting in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 was the defining experience in the lives of many veterans. Recounted innumerable times, their accounts have been refined, perhaps departing somewhat from reality. Soldiers traditionally considered the enemy subhuman, but the Japanese refusal to surrender placed them in an incomprehensibly alien category in American eyes. This was not an ancient Samurai tradition (which merely stressed absolute loyalty), but a 20th-century addition by leaders certain that soldiers who fought to the death would overcome an enemy who relied on superior numbers and firepower. In reality, the famous banzai charges worked against undisciplined troops, but not the Marines. Davis begins each of his 20 chapters with a chronological account of events, then lets the elderly men (and three women) have their say. The veterans stick to personal experiences—recollections of incidents that soldiers never forget. “My first week in boot camp, I cried every night in my bunk,” recalls Robert Beale, age 97. “I thought, Why did I join such a maniacal group of sonsabitches?” Burt Withee, 95, summed up his experience this way: “It comes down to circumstance and luck. A lot of people discount luck, but as a lot of guys used to say, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good.’” There was awful behavior on both sides, the deaths of friends, their own injuries. Some Marines collected gold teeth and other body parts; many of Davis’ subjects express disapproval, but not all. PTSD didn’t become an official concern until the Vietnam War; World War II scholars mention it in passing, but it was all too common among these veterans.

Vivid memories of bygone battles.