Grapes of Wrath
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on
~ Battle Hymn of The Republic, Julia Ward Howe, 1861
All
arguments ceased, completely, when five transports of Marines met us
one morning. It was a solemn moment when they hove into sight. We
knew what the ships were, and that our lives and fortunes depended
upon those Leathernecks. At such moments a bond is established that
no subsequent hardship can ever break. From that moment on, the
Marines in those ships were our friends. We would see none of them
until we hit the beaches they had won for us, and some of them would
never speak to us, lying upon the shores . . . Those Marines were
our friends....
*
The
intensity, the inevitability, the grindingness of Alligator were too
great for any one man to comprehend. It changed lives in every
country in the world. It exacted a cost from every family in Japan and America. Babies were born and unborn because of Alligator, and
because of Alligator a snub-nosed little girl in Columbia, South
Carolina, who never in a hundred years would otherwise have found
herself a husband, was proposed to by a Marine corporal she had met
only once. He was on the first wave that hit the beach, and the night
before, when he thought of the next day, he cast up in his mind all
the good things he had known in his life. There was Mom and Pop, and
an old Ford, and Saturday nights in a little Georgia town, and being
a Marine, and being a corporal, and there wasn't a hell of a lot
more. But there was that little girl in Columbia, South Carolina. She
was plain, but she was nice. She was the kind of girl that sort of
looked up to a fellow. So this Marine borrowed a piece of paper and
wrote to that girl: “ Dear Florella, mabe you dont no who i am i am
that marine Joe Blight brot over to see you. You was very sweet to me
that night Florella and i want to tell you that if I . . .
But he
didn't. Some don't. To Florella, though, who would never be married
in a hundred years anyway, that letter, plus the one that the
chaplain sent with it, . . well, it was almost as good as being married.
*
They
will live a long time, these men of the South Pacific. They
had an American quality. They, like their victories, will
be remembered as long as our generation lives. After
that, like the men of the Confederacy, they will become
strangers. Longer and longer shadows will obscure
them, until their Guadalcanal sounds distant on
the ear like Shiloh and Valley Forge.
~
James Michener, Tales of the South Pacific, 1947
Comments
Post a Comment