Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War by William Manchester

Author:William Manchester
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Military, Biography, History
ISBN: 9780316545013
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 1980-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Of course I was pissed off. Zepp had been inexcusably insubordinate. I had ordered him to avoid high ground and especially to stay away from Easy Company. Forgiveness is very hard when someone you love gets killed doing what he has been expressly told not to do. Everybody in the line companies knew Zepp had been at Harvard. They all resented his sleepy, amused, almost insolent eyes, and the way he looked at you when he had scored a point: as though you had just said something disgusting, or had what was then called B.O. But Easy Company's Topkick was among those who had been suckered by Zepp's swagger stick, binoculars, hand-made boondockers, and fancy pistol. Back at New River the Top had been flimflammed into saluting him, and when he found out Lefty was only a Pfc, he was furious. That wasn't my problem, and at the time it didn't seem to be much of a problem for Zepp. But in combat dislikes can be mortal. Easy Company wasn't going to look out for Zepp's ass. And in his distinctive outfit he was sniper bait anyhow. Our officers wore no insignia of rank. They knew enemy marksmen would be looking for our leaders. If a Pfc could dupe a First Soldier, he could certainly gull the Japs and draw fire. I made this point a hundred times with Zepp, but he either promised to leave the Abercrombie and Fitch gear behind when he went on the line, and then forgot to do it, or he gave me a tortuous legal argument about an enlisted man's right to private property. It was what you would expect from a Harvard man.

Later I wondered whether Easy Company knew that Lefty was a Jew. I don't think so. He didn't look Jewish, or what we thought looked Jewish. His black hair was thick and curly, but he had kept his boot-camp crew cut; it just looked like a tight cap. His eyes were slanted, his lips were thin, and his cheekbones were high, almost oriental. He was also wiry and well muscled. The race question had been raised point-blank in the section — by Bubba — and Lefty had flatly denied being Jewish. He said he was Armenian. He told Izzy Levy the truth but swore him to secrecy. Izzy didn't relay it to me until over thirty years later, when we ran into each other in Chicago. I was surprised. I had thought deception beneath Zepp. Except for his adolescent voice he emanated an invulnerable aura of self-confidence. His movements were always economical and precise; I was sure he would be an impressive physician. And his mind was first-rate. Neither Barney nor I ever beat him in chess, not once. He had joined the Marines on impulse after seeing John Payne, Randolph Scott, and Maureen O'Hara in To the Shores of Tripoli, a gung-ho movie that conned a lot of guys into boot camp. He wrote his father every day, and every

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.