A World at War

The grunts and groans could be heard hundreds of yards away. In the chilly April morning, a dozen men, wearing several layers of sweaters and speaking in English, were training hard in hand-to-hand combat.

The sun had not been in the sky long enough to make its warming presence felt. But the aches and pains, bruises and sprains were felt by the commandos in training. As they struggled to get through the grueling training program, they voiced the complaints of all young men whose freedom had been involuntarily exchanged for sixteen hours a day of running, climbing, and calisthenics. Theirs was the universal brotherhood of sweating, swearing raw recruits crawling in mud.

The incongruity of the setting was not lost on the men in the unit. In those rare moments when they could pause and enjoy a brief respite, they marveled at their idyllic surroundings among the green fields and stately pine forests of what had formerly been a private estate and now served as a training facility.

Young men like them on five continents were undergoing a similar ordeal. From Japan to Germany, America to Russia, the scene was the same: conscripts and volunteers being indoctrinated in the lethal art of war, preparing to kill—or be killed. It was April 1942, and the world was at war.

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...For the remainder of the first chapter, please click HERE.