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1 Alone, among other men who are also alone. Sleep a little on deck as others keep watch. Wake up. Shake off the groggies. Clean the guns. Reflect. Check the torpedoes. Weary. Wander the deck. No talk of family. Our futures-too tenuous. Survive in the moment. Time floating by in seconds and minutes. Too cold at night. Too hot in the day. Wet. Sunburned. Debilitating hunger. Tokyo Rose lurking in the mangroves. All of this punctuated by intense moments of what happens in war. Historians describe big battles, relate statistics, and overview events that changed the world. But it’s also compelling to visualize how real men experienced real life day by day. It was 1944, and Bill was eighteen. He thought life had prepared him for twenty months in the Pacific on PT Boat 244, but had it? This book records his war memoirs, always inquiring, was there a ghostly presence that beckoned him, brutalized him, haunted him? He probes the questions many veterans ponder: Why did I enlist? The beckoning. Who were the people that most affected me? What did I experience? The brutalizing. What were the lingering consequences? The haunting. When bombs fell upon Japanese cities, the war ended, but not for Bill. For him, it continued for decades of being haunted by night sweats, horrific dreams, confusion. How, after seven decades, he found relief from PTSD is a message that he urgently shares.
