He was a chemistry student in college on his way home for a visit when news of Pearl Harbor came over the car radio. Like 16 million others from his generation, Dean W. Andersen was called to active military duty and spent the next 38 months of his life as a medic in the Pacific war theater. This memoir shows that the human feelings of fear, loss, anger, hate, patriotism and solidarity were the same then as they have been for every war since. The experiences of the "greatest generation" can comfort and advise young people today who may well be faced with challenges as great as those met so long ago.

Based on 93 letters written home to his wife and parents during his time away at war, this book includes information that was disallowed by censors and in some cases, cut out of his correspondence. Though the history of the European theater in World War II is well documented, considerably less information is available about the war in the Pacific. The author recalls the many aspects of his experience--from landing on beaches in the South Pacific amid exotic birds and animals and interacting with the people of New Guinea, to evacuating wounded soldiers through steaming jungles and snake-infested swamps and over high mountains, to facing machine gun fire and watching snipers kill the last man in a column of marchers. The book includes many interesting photographs that have never been published, including images of the Japanese surrender.