Books: Gob's War

PACIFIC WAR DIARY, 1942-1945 by James J. Fahey. 404 pages. Houghfon Mifflin. $6.50.

It must have been an officer who said that war is 5% sheer fright and 95% boredom. An enlisted man knows better. To the ordinary gob of the U.S. Navy, World War II was 90% boredom, 9% infuriating trivia, and only about 1% was composed of that combination of terror and exhilaration in which battles are decided. Surprisingly little of this has come through previous accounts of what life—and death—was like for the anonymous masses of men jammed into the seagoing...