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Tennessee, where he met the second greatest influence on his life, Coach Robert Neyland, West Point graduate and onetime aide to then-Commandant Douglas MacArthur. Shofner saw a recipe for success, not just in footbal , but for life, encoded in Neyland’s famous “Footbal Maxims.” “There aren’t many like Neyland in this world.
    He was a winner,” he explained, “and he taught me mind over matter.”
    He took Neyland’s teachings and a footbal nickname—“Shifty”—
    with him when he reported to Marine basic school in Philadelphia in August 1937. For Shofner and the Corps, it was love at first salute. With his syrupy Southern voice, powerful parade ground timbre, and chameleon personality—he could be caustical y abrasive or irresistibly glib—he possessed a natural command presence. His uncanny ability to motivate was his greatest strength. Whether his modus operandi was fear or encouragement, cajolery or coercion, Shofner knew how to get the job done. And the job now facing him looked to be the most chal enging task of his life.
    The whirr of the bombers’ radial engines receded into the distance and Shofner emerged, brushing off dirt, to survey the damage. One of the bombs had struck the supposedly bombproof Middleside Barracks, a hit that wounded some Marines in the gal ey. Nurses darted through the film of smoke and dust. As best as he could hear through the shouts and wailing of wounded, they needed a doctor. Shofner ordered a dentist, the closest thing to a medic within his reach, to assist with the injured.
    “Suddenly,” Shofner would say, “I had the feeling this would be a long war.”
    If ever there was a perfect place for a desperate last stand, it was the Bataan Peninsula. Twenty-five miles in length, and spanning at its widest twenty miles from the South China Sea to the upper reaches of Manila Bay, Bataan was a spine of ancient volcanic rock dominated by two colossal peaks—Mount Natib and Mount Bataan. A southern extension of the Zambales Mountains, the thumb-shaped isthmus was carpeted by virgin jungle and studded with giant coconut palms, mahogany, narra, camagong, and mayapis trees festooned with creeping vines. A menagerie of monkeys, lawin, mynah birds, and wild carabao, lizards, pythons, and boars lived in the undergrowth. On the saw-toothed west coast, rocky promontories and forbidding cliff wal s painted with the fiery orange and red blooms of talisay trees and hanging pandanus fronted the South China Sea. Most of the inhabitants of Bataan lived on the eastern coastal plain, in the clusters of bamboo, thatched nipa, and clapboard houses lining the paved al -weather East Road, which hugged the shores of Manila Bay.
    It was into these hostile environs that nearly 80,000 American and Filipino troops retreated during the final, humiliating days of 1941 and the first, uncertain hours of 1942. They came from al corners of Luzon, from Lingayen, from the Agno River, from the foothil s of Mount Banahao, from Manila. They dribbled down the tributaries of rural roads and footpaths, eventual y merging into the swol en cataracts of men, animals, and machines flooding National Highways 3, 5, 7, and, final y, 110. Sluggishly, they crossed the Pampanga River on the Calumpit Bridge, filtered through San Fernando and struggled into Bataan through the bottleneck of Layac Junction. The stink of burning rubber, infected flesh, and gunpowder, mixed with fragrant frangipani, wafted through the humid air. Fat black flies buzzed over corpses, animal carcasses, and empty ration tins, the detritus of an army under constant attack. The sounds of screeching brakes, backfiring engines, clanging metal canteens, and leather and rubber soles crushing pavement mingled with the unintel igible bits of English, Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan and Ilocano conversations, arguments, and orders. For days, the narrow roads to Bataan were clotted with trucks, staff cars, jeeps, ambulances, tanks, carts and civilian buses. Fol