Historian and World War II veteran William Manchester writes about the urge to revisit his own memories of service during World War II, after working and writing as a historian of the era for years:
“The dreams started after I flung my pistol into the Connecticut River. It was mine to fling: I was, I suppose, the only World War II Marine who had had to buy his own weapon.”
“For years I had been trying to write about the war, always in vain. It lay too deep; I couldn’t reach it. But I had known it must be there. A man is all the people he has been. …[L]ike most of my countrymen, I am prone to search for meaning in the unconsummated past.”
“…I couldn’t define what I sought….”
– William Manchester
From Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War, ©1979
Voices From War 