“One must go back to All Quiet on the Western Front to find another novel as charged as this one!” —  Philadelphia Inquirer NATIONAL BESTSELLER The magnificent and panoramic novel of World War II Marines in the Pacific by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Once An Eagle and A Green Desire They were our husbands, our fathers, our lovers, our sons. They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story. The Big War is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Anton Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield. “Zest, humor, compassion, emotional truth.” - Boston Herald “One must go back to All Quiet on the Western Front to find another novel as charged as this one!” - Philadelphia Inquirer “Magnificent. . . more terrifying, more convincing battle scenes have not been described.” - Cleveland Press They were our husbands, our fathers, our lovers, our sons. They were Americans and Marines. And this is their story: The Big War , Anton Myrer's panoramic novel of Marines in the Pacific in World War II. This is the story of Alan Newcombe, the Boston society Harvard man; Danny Kantaylis, the natural-born leader; Jay O'Neill, the barroom scrapper. Myrer does not glorify war; he does not flinch from describing what the actual experience of warfare was like for a desperate group of Marines trapped in some of the worst fighting conditions of the war. We learn about their lives at home and their fates on the battlefield. While attending Harvard University, Anton Myrer (1922-1996) enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps immediately after the Pearl Harbor attacks. He served for three years during World War II until he was wounded in the Pacific. He is also the author of the novels The Big War , The Last Convertible , and A Green Desire . The Big War By Myrer, Anton Perennial Copyright © 2004 Anton Myrer All right reserved. ISBN: 0060934735 Chapter One The rain came in squalls, in slanting silver sheets and bounced on the helmets and ponchos in a million little bursts of light, ran glistening down the folds of the camouflaged fabric and merged with the streams flowing along the two ruts of road. Off to the right at the edge of a field the fuselage of a plane, an old mock-up stump of a body without wings or tail, used in training some long-departed paratroopers, lay like a rotting prefabricated cigar. Beyond it through the pines the rain fell in a cold white streaming on the gray plate of the river; and to Alan Newcombe, dizzy with sleeplessness and exhaustion after three days and nights of field problems in the Carolina swamps, it was as though everything were finally melting away -- they were all, pine woods, fuselage, the whole platoon -- floating away, dissolving into the curtain of cold, endless rain. The idea had in fact a certain pleasing, if morbid, inevitability about it. It completed the farce -- a fitting sequel to the three days of patternless, confused digging and running and crawling: to walk solemnly out into the gray, fetid water, knee-deep, waist-deep, chest-deep, rifles held at high port -- so of course as to keep them dry -- finally, implacably, transformed into three columns of helmets bobbing like turtles or, overturned, floating like so many listing coracles, filling with water. Crescendo and curtain. Bye bye, second platoon, bobbing helmets gurgling, foundering: bye bye. Slow dissolve... "God damn it, Al--" He had stepped on a heel in front of him again. He muttered, "Sorry, Jay," to O'Neill's exasperated backward glance. Why couldn't he keep from stepping on O'Neill's heels? Some fatal attraction, no doubt: some strange trajectory curving back to Mother's oxfords moving ahead of you on the swept dirt paths of the Public Gardens. Ah, they have left you far behind now: have left you lost and wandering -- They had stopped. That was odd: after three days and nights of interminable, purposeless movement there was no reason they should have stopped now. Was there? Yes, there were their huts -- the black tar-paper and cardboard huts -- which being only cardboard should not be dry inside but were dry...and occasionally even warm enough. But they, the huts' occupants, stood out here in the rain: as was fitting. Like rows of sodden, wingless fowl. Beside him O'Neill snuffled twice; turning his bony face toward Newcombe he said in a low, conversational tone: "The good word. The good, warm, dry word for today." "Straight from Olympos," Newcombe answered him. "All right", Lieutenant D'Alessandro said. Tall and well-built, with handsome, delicate features, he advanced a step or two, pushed his helmet to the back of his head and confronted the platoo