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Soldiers don't deal in labels. But they do have ideals which mean too much to be worn on the sleeve. Call it what you will: sportsmanship, fair play for the underdog, or most Americans' rebellion against the idea that a human being is just a walking belly. . . .
MAYNARD L. GINSBURG
Woonsocket, R.I.
130,000,000 Military Experts
Sirs:
It seems to me that a letter I have received from a U.S. Army officer in Burma has an interest for the American people. If you agree with me, perhaps you will care to print these excerpts:
". . . I guess I have been lucky. I have had part of my pack shot off my back; I have had a mortar shell, which would have blown my head off had it exploded, fall harmlessly a foot from my foxhole; I have had a bullet zip through my clothing without so much as a scratch. . . . I have walked, waded, climbed and slid through 500 miles of "impenetrable" jungle; I have been bitten by every known, and some that are unknown, type of insect, but especially by leeches, wood-ticks, red ants and mosquitoes. I have quenched my thirst with a colloidal suspension of mud for days on end; I have spent 22 hours of every day in the same foxhole for 14 days—I won't try to describe the odor of putrefying flesh and excrement; I have had dysentery for days on end, seemingly hundreds of times. And yet, though I have lost 20-30 pounds and, in common with the rest of the men, feel like a convalescent taking his first step after a long siege, I manage to stay on the right side of that tenuous line which separates the healthy from the sick. . . .
"Tell your civilian friends that we don't really begrudge them their luxuries. . . . What does gripe the hell out of us is that America seems suddenly to have developed 130,000,000 military experts. The Senators and press correspondents are the most vociferous and hence the most obnoxious. . . .
"If you think things are moving too slowly in Italy, that we are wasting precious moments in the South Pacific, or moving tediously in Burma, I invite you to sit with me in a foxhole under mortar and artillery fire and let's see how ready you are to jump out of the hole to launch an attack. Or lie with me in elephant grass with bursts of light machine-gun bullets shredding the stems six inches above your head and tell me that time is urgent, that we must be getting on with our advance. . . ."
ELEANOR SPRUANCE
Danville, Pa.
Minesweepers' Favorites
Sirs:
Your six photos in TIME'S Pacific Pony (June 5) have sparked the fuse of an intra-ship civil war.
Today, 29 days out of San Francisco, we dropped the hook. Not long ago this spot was Jap-held. And yet an hour ago we boated ashore, picked up our bulging sack of precious mail, pulled out your Pony—the first of its kind to be seen by any of my crew of 92 fresh-caught enlisted men and officers—and the fireworks began.
The relative, though undeniable, beauty of the six Santiago society belles was argued pro & con, hither & yon until the entire crew—officers and men alike—were lobbying for their candidate. Pressure group opposed pressure group until, to avert a blowup, I was forced to hold a secret ballot. The result: