When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro. - Hunter S. Thompson

23 November 2005

Bill in Exile: Terrence at Red One

Scott over at Bill In Exile (ordinarily NSFW, but not these links, unless you consider stomach-wrenching descriptions of combat casualties NSFW) takes a little time off from his tales of hot man-on-man action at the gym to describe quite *another* kind of man-on-man action that is quite a *different* kind of "hot," in this trio of posts recounting a fellow Marine's experiences at the Battle of Tarawa in 1943:
Much more than a "so there I was, no shit..." war story, this is an epic story of manhood and bravery above and beyond the call.
When we got to the beach it was like walking from Hell into an even worse Hell. I’m telling you Scott the water washing up on shore was purple with blood and there were bodies and body parts of Marines everywhere. The guys from Kilo Company and India Company that had hit the beach first were all mixed together and hiding behind this seawall made out of coconut logs and reinforced concrete and the Japs were just plastering the beach with artillery and machine gun fire. Everyone was huddled behind the wall and I was right next to Sergeant Keller who had just had his wound treated and I was huddling with Jimmy Quinn and trying to keep us both from getting killed.

There were times in the first fifteen or twenty minutes on that beach that Jimmy and I just held onto each other for dear life and when we took some artillery hits really close we were both screaming at the tops of our lungs. They taught you to do that to keep from bursting your ear drums from the concussion but also because you were scared shitless and couldn’t do much else other than scream.
Go read them all. And then ask yourselves the rhetorical question that Scott asks at the end of part 3.

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