The bombs upon Pearl Harbor.... He had enlisted the following day. On his return from the induction center mother had said.... Her figure, her movements, her voice loomed enormous in his memory.... But now the pictures of the Pacific War flicked across the screen.... They were picked from campaigns in which he, Lee had participated. They were also picked from documentaries which the government had never dared to let the public see ... close-ups of a torpedoed troop carrier, capsizing, coming down upon the struggling survivors in the shark-infested sea. It had been his own ship, the _Monticello_, but he had never known that an automatic camera had operated in the nose of the plane which had circled the scene.... Port Darwin--Guadacanal--Iwo Jima: close-ups of flame throwing tanks advancing up a ridge. He had commanded one of them.... Antlike human figures of fleeing Japs and the flames leaping at them.... So vivid was the memory that the smell returned to his nostrils, the sickening stench of burning human flesh. It tortured him. His voice was husky with revulsion as he said: "What's the good of all this; take it away." "Oh, no," one of the medics answered. "We couldn't think of that. We've got to see this to the end. What are your physical sensations now, Dr. Lee?" "It's fingers now--soft fingers. They are tapping me from all sides like--like a vibration massage. It's strange though--they're tapping from the inside--little pneumatic hammers at a furious pace. They seem to work upon my diaphragm for a drum. But it doesn't pain." "Good, very good; that was a fine description, Lee. That burning city was Manilla wasn't it, when MacArthur returned? You were in that second Philippine campaign too weren't you, Lee? That was when you won the Congressional Medal of Honor." Yes, it was Manila all right, and there was Mindanao where the Japs had put up that suicide defence of the caves. Lee's battalion had been in the attack; steeply uphill with no cover, it had been murder.... And seeing his best men mowed down, he had turned berserk. He had used a bulldozer for a battering ram, had driven it single handed directly into the fire-spitting mouth of the objective, raising its blade like a battle-axe. An avalanche of rocks and dirt had come down from the top of the cave under the artillery barrage and he had rammed the stuff down into the throat of the fiery dragon, again and again. He never rightly knew he did it. It had all ended in a blackout from loss of blood. It had been in a hospital that they pinned that medal on him which he felt was undeserved....