Campaign in Silence

Uncounted weeks in action had made Pfc. Devon Hunsaker a ragged, unshaven, mud-caked infantryman.Slogging wearily back from the lines north of Davao last week, dreaming of his home in Utah, he saw a vaguely familiar face in the column of replacements moving forward. "What's your outfit, buddy?" he asked. "Thirty-first Infantry," said the newcomer, and moved on. A quarter of a mile later, Private Hunsaker slapped his thigh and exclaimed: "I knew I had seen that guy before. He's my brother."

This is what the inglorious process of "mopping up" can do to the foot soldiers who wield the mop. It is a process dirty, bloody and exhausting, not easily distinguishable from any other kind of warfare. In the Philippines, it still meant mud and C-rations, belly-tightening fear and dog-tired homesickness, shooting Japs and getting shot at--and getting killed.

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