World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa

Re:World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa by jonmrodriguez on Thursday May 29, 2014 @04:04AM (#7815228)

I'm guessing that the reason this was downvoted was that I communicated poorly. Here is a better wording of what I was trying to say:

In the Navy you sink a ship from far away. It's more abstract; you don't see the enemy up close.

In the Army you fight battles face to face with the enemy, and it must be correspondingly more horrible.

So I would guess that Navy people (like my grandpa) had a generally more positive memory of the war than Army people.

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Re:World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa by arethuza on Thursday May 29, 2014 @05:03AM (#7815384)

I don't know - naval warfare in WW2 could be pretty grim.

I can recommend Nicholas Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" on his wartime naval experiences - I happened to buy this without knowing much about the book in Heathrow before a flight over the North Atlantic to the US. One of the relatively small number of books that has moved me to tears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat

He also wrote the novel "The Cruel Sea" which was made into one of the best naval war movies of WW2.

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Re:World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa by luckyno13 on Thursday May 29, 2014 @11:17AM (#7816624)

It could be because pretty much all branches have ground deploy-able forces so it isn't necessarily true that they aren't exposed to the horrors of war on a person to person level.

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