I finished 'Taken Captive' and now as I put it down the mailman delivered me 'I'm staying with my boys which is the John Basilone story. It's supposedly one the books Speilberg used to base 'The Pacific' on.
I'm early into it and already I'm beginning to wonder if Basilone's legacy was saved by him getting killed on Iwo Jima.
He did an enlistment in the Army before he joined the Corps and between the two he seemed like he was floating with no real purpose. He also seemed to be less than enamored with his army hitch which made sense because between wars the army had no real money and conditions for GIs sucked.
That's where he picked up the moniker 'Manila John'. Actually it was kind of a boxer's handle that stuck with him. He loathed being in an outfit that had standing orders to head for the hills if the Japanese attacked which was pretty much the pre Pearl Harbor case in the Philippines.
The Army in the 20s and 30s was a last ditch home for a lot of people during the depression. It was a place of 3 hots and a cot coupled with a bad time and a lot of 'make work' to keep the troops busy instead of training them because they had no money to train them. It was a crummy existence.
Anyway more later because the people installing my new and improved garage door just showed up.
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