The Pacific Complete Series Now

He’d left a boy who collected butterfly specimens. He returned a mortarman from Peleliu and Okinawa—places where the rain fell through the smell of rotting flesh, where coral cut your hands to ribbons, and where the screams at night weren't always the enemy's.

Eugene Sledge returned to Mobile, Alabama, on a gray Tuesday. No one waited at the station. His father had written, “Take your time coming home,” which Eugene understood as: We are afraid of what has walked back inside you. The Pacific Complete Series

“Can’t sleep, son?”