Read The Ghost Mountain Boys: Their Epic March and the Terrifying Battle for New Guinea--The Forgotten War of the South Pacific for Free Online

War I tactics based on big guns preparing the way for infantry.
    The maneuvers were considered a great success, though they would have no practical application for the 32nd Division once it arrived in New Guinea, where jeeps, tanks, and trucks were neutralized by a terrain that reduced war to its most primitive. It was not that the opportunities for mimicking New Guinea’s conditions did not exist. “The swamps of Louisiana were so available,” Major Herbert C. Smith, then the 128th Infantry Regiment’s supply officer, wrote with the clarity of hindsight, “…but we did not train in them…. Had we only known.”

    During the Depression, fathers earned money any way they could, and Alfred Medendorp was no exception. He had gone to chiropractic school, but after getting his diploma discovered that he did not enjoy practicing. Then he took a sales job with a biological supply company, peddling test tubes and beakers to universities and high schools around the country. Afterward, he opened up his own business and caught and killed stray cats, embalmed them, and sold them to researchers at the University of Chicago. After joining the National Guard in 1931 for the extra money it offered, he had another commitment—and with federalization nine years later, the army became his first responsibility.
    In winter 1941, Captain Alfred Medendorp had just arrived home from Camp Livingston on leave to Grand Rapids, Michigan. He had not seen his wife and three sons in nearly a year. On Sunday morning, December 7, he and his boys were traipsing around the hills near the house with bows and arrows, creeping through fields and ducking in and out of woodlots, shooting trees and launching arrows high into the air.
    Alfred Jr. crept along with his dad, picking his way over dry leaves and sticks. There was no snow but the ground was frozen. The leaves crumbled like wax paper under their feet.
    Dot Medendorp was in the kitchen, tidying up. On the radio The Glenn Miller Band was playing “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anybody Else But Me,” when a newsman’s urgent voice interrupted. Dot rushed to the radio to turn up the volume. The Japanese, the newsman reported, had just bombed Pearl Harbor.
    Dot hurried to the back door and called out, “Al, Come quick! Something’s happened.”
    Alfred Medendorp rushed toward the house, followed by his sons. Dot was standing at the back door, holding it half-open.
    “Japan just bombed,” she said, choking on the words.
    Medendorp brushed past his wife and sat down at the kitchen table. The voice on the radio repeated: “The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor.” Medendorp tried to absorb the impact of the news. Then he looked up to see Al Junior standing at the door, holding his little bow.
    Later that day Medendorp received a telegram ordering him back to Camp Livingston; the following day he left, but not before Dot took a family photograph. In the photo, Medendorp is standing behind his three sons. The low dun-colored hills that they had wandered the previous morning form the photo’s backdrop. His arms encircle the boys. He is in full dress uniform and smiles slightly. The boys, too, are dressed up—hats, Sunday coats. Al Junior wears stockings and tucks his hands into the pockets of his checkered black and red peacoat.

    When Corporal Carl Stenberg heard about Pearl Harbor, he and a bunch of buddies had just come back from Alexandria, Louisiana. It was a weekend ritual for Stenberg. While other soldiers went to Alexandria for the women, the recently married Stenberg made the trip to go to the theater.
    When Stenberg and his friends returned on Sunday afternoon, the camp was buzzing with activity.
    Trucks waited, their engines idling, and men rushed from building to building. Even before hearing the news, Stenberg knew that something big was up. It was in the mess hall that he learned what had happened.
    “The Nips just bombed Pearl Harbor!” exclaimed a cook.
    The following day,