Perhaps America just hasn't suffered enough, huh? Like the millions in France of 1918, of Russia of 1935, or the millions in Germany of 1945, in China of 1968, Cambodia and Vietnam of 1976, of Iran/Iraq of 1984, of the Balkins of 1994, of Africa of today.
Maybe 3,000 murdered by a pissant butcher just ain't gonna do it for America this time... Maybe veterans of 1942 have a better vision of America to reveal to us, huh?
In the early months of the year [1942], when the battle was fought, rain poured down almost steadily. The water was contaminated. MacAurthur's men ate roots, leaves, papayas, monkey meat, wild chicken, and wild pigs. They sang, to the tune of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic":
<center>Dugout Doug MacAurthur lies ashakin' on the Rock
Safe from all the bombers and from any sudden shock...</center>
And one soldier wrote:
<center>We're the battling bastards of Bataan:
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles, no nephews, no nieces,
No rifles, no planes, or artillery pieces,
And nobody gives a damn.</center>
Yet they fought on, with a devotion which would puzzle the generation of the 1980's. More surprising, in many instances it would have baffled the men they themselves were before Pearl Harbor.
Among MacArthur's ardent infantry men were cooks, mechanics, pilots whose planes had been shot down, seamen whose ships had been sunk, and some civilian volunteers. One civilian was a saddle-shoed American youth, a typical Joe College of that era who had been in the Phillippines researching an anthropology paper. A few months earlier he had been an isolationist whose only musical interest was Swing. He had used an accordion to render tunes like "Deep Purple" and "Moonlight Cocktail." Captured and sentenced to be shot, he made a last request. He wanted to die holding his accordion. This was granted, and he went to the wall playing "God Bless America." It was that kind of time.*
* Excerpt from Goodbye Darkness (1980) by William Manchester
