Excerpt from They Marched Into Sunlight by David Maraniss, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The brutal reality of man killing man, he confided in a letter to Jackie, now dominated his conscious and subconscious thoughts. "I've had a lot of time to engage in deep thinking and it's really sickening how the world is so full of conflict and what's more how we're so much a part of it. At times I feel so guilty and know I could do more to make it a better place. I'll do what I can, and pray that God will lead me. I've already started to dream of killing and am already tired of the smell of death. Life is so short at times but too long at others. We're all a 'bunch of nuts' I guess. I'm just out on a limb by myself today and have no one to talk to who has the patience to understand me or will let me try to understand them. I'll endure what I must and remember that I must be a good 1) soldier, 2) gentleman, 3) lover and 4) Christian. The most important, of course, is #4 and the others as apropos."

Thoughts of killing also raced through the mind of Private Troyer. He wondered if he could take a human life. Peter Miller had the same question. Like the others, he had grown up playing army and watching John Wayne movies. Was that version different from the real thing? Bill McGath wondered too but felt a moral obligation. In his eleventh-grade speech class at Mifflin High in suburban Columbus, he had chosen the pro side in a war debate, and he believed still what he had said then -- that the United States had to "protect its allies, fight communism, and let free policy reign." Terry Warner, off a livestock farm in western Ohio, had "no feelings about the war one way or the other" but knew enough to be scared. Alaskan Mike Taylor was already sick of the military. "This Army is something else," he had written home to his parents after his records had been mixed up with two other Michael Taylors. "They are always screwing up something."

Whether it was mass dyslexia, hope for some spiritual blessing for the year ahead, or most likely just soldierly sarcasm, some troops aboard soon reversed the name of their ship and started calling it not the John Pope but the Pope John. Not that they treated the vessel with more reverence after that. Somewhere along the Tropic of Cancer in the vast Pacific stretch past Midway Islands, one soldier felt so trapped that he jumped overboard, a suicidal escape attempt that was thwarted when the ship turned around and picked him up. He was the second would-be escapee from the USNS Pope that year. During the January voyage a soldier in the Ninth Infantry Division had gone overboard to his apparent death.

They reached Okinawa at nine on the Saturday morning of July 22, the first land in two weeks. The troops were allowed off ship but ordered to return by 1800 hours. Mike Troyer and his pals marched up the hill to the enlisted men's club, where they drank scotch for twenty-five cents a glass and played slot machines. Landon was forced to stay on board because an officer decided his hair was too long. In his diary he recorded the harbor scene: no gunboats; two cargo ships, one coming, one going ("war keeps them pretty busy"); bright white sand; turquoise water spotted with jellyfish; the wreckage of a four-motor airplane from World War II hulking on the beach; a storm approaching from the south.

Vietnam was a few days distant and closing fast in Landon's mind. "The daily reports of action in the war seem so common now," he wrote on his lonely watch, reciting news from the Pope Pourri, "200 enemy dead in a sweep...15 American dead and 50 casualties etc. etc. It is as if we will never see the end. If N Viet Nam is bluffing, it backs up its bluff. Politics in S Viet Nam hardly help. Until there can be 2 sides to this war, and not 50,000 shades of commitment, this war cannot and will not be won. The populace is obviously confused and divided. These people must decide and decide soon or the U.S. will tire to the point of despair in tiptoeing through the morass of politics while ducking improvised weapons of Viet Cong and barrages of Russian-made artillery fire. Maybe."

Copyright © 2003 by David Maraniss