"He was a college student on his way home for a visit when news of Pearl Harbor came over the car radio. Called like 16 million others to active military duty, Dean W. Andersen spent the next 38 months of his life as a medic in the Pacific war theater. Here in his memoir of that time - a memoir of youth, of war, and of the human feelings - fear, loss, anger, hate, patriotism and solidarity - common to soldiers of every era." "Based on 93 letters Andersen wrote to his wife and parents, this book includes information that was disallowed by censors and in some cases cut out of his correspondence. 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."--Jacket.