Waltonloads08 said:
And you can't really capture it in a movie, but days or weeks of shelling...
How do you NOT lose your mind?
Yeah for sure. On my first trip to Tarawa I waded into Red Beach 1 which is the beach where my dad made the wade. I walked out about 400 yards (he would have had a longer wade than that). I just wanted to walk the same ground he walked, although without getting shot at!
Although the heat was the same as it was (more or less) on the first day of the battle (I was there on the 72nd anniversary of it), I of course had much more technical and comfortable clothing than he would have had, and I wasn't carrying a BAR and ammo, helmet, etc., and though I could walk into the same place, nothing in the world could recreate the smell and sound, the absolute fury of all the shelling, constant machine gun fire, etc. I just don't see how anyone made it ashore and don't see how anyone kept their sanity facing all that.
I was having skin cancer surgery some time ago and took a book to read; the doc noticed the title and he and I got to talking about the war, and he mentioned his dad served somewhere (I forget where now) and his dad was under almost continual shelling for a long time. He said it messed up his dad and he survived the war but was never the same for the rest of his life.