One strange feeling, which I remember clearly, was a powerful link with the slain, particularly those that had fallen within the past hour or two. There was so much death around that life seemed almost indecent. Some men's uniforms were soaked with gobs of blood. The ground was sodden with it. I killed, too.

They fought on with a devotion which would puzzle the generation of the 1980s. More surprising, in many instances it would have baffled the men they themselves were before Pearl Harbor. Among MacArthur's ardent infantrymen were cooks, mechanics, pilots whose planes had been shot down, seamen whose ships had been sunk, and some civilian volunteers.

I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.

The colors of the underwater rock [are] as pale and delicate as those in the wardrobe of an 18th-century marchioness.

Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.