It’s time to throw my sweaty, salty and stinky clothes in the bonfire. Time to sort, open and respond to mail and care packages. Time for cold beer. After four months at the front of the book PR war, as well as an equally exhausting and exhilarating expedition to the hallowed Pacific battlefields of Guadalcanal and Tarawa (which I’ll be blogging about in the coming weeks), I’ve rotated back to home to my personal Pavuvu – my Arizona staging area, if you will – for some R&R before my next campaign. And that finally gives me some time to finally catch up on this blog.

Speaking of mail, out of all the e-mails that have collected in my in-boxes, one in particular has remained undeleted for nearly two months now – the one that announced the particularly sad news of the passing of Mrs. Edith Shain, the famed “kissing nurse” in Alfred Eisenstaedt’s renowned V-J Day photograph. Shain, 91, died of cancer in Los Angeles in late June. Shain’s passing hit me hard. Yet I didn’t know the woman personally. Nor I had never met her or interviewed her. And Shain was not a military nurse, nor did she ever come close to the front lines, but her celebratory lip-lock with an unknown Navy sailor (several swabbies have since claimed to be the sailor in the photo) was captured in the permanence of a black-and-white photograph, published in LIFE, splashed across America and was thus seared into our national consciousness as a symbol, a veritable icon, of another era. Edith Shain, the kissing nurse, was, in some ways, the symbol of America’s World War II victory.

After considerable reflection, it finally hit me that I had been saving that e-mail almost as a subsconscious attempt to preserve that era – much like the individual who steadfastly refuses to let go of his memories of an incredible vacation by not unpacking his suitcase upon returning home – that icon, in perpetuity. I’ve always enjoyed that strange sense of comfort, not just from the perspective of a historian, but as an American, in knowing that they – WWII vets, members of the Greatest Generation – were still here. Still with us. It’s an era that as its participants slowly leave us one by one, is soon to be lost forever. And sooner than we think.

The numbers fluctuate according to the source, but I’ve read that anywhere from 1,100 to 2,000 U.S. World War II veterans die each day. Although there was an estimated two million of these men and women still left as of 2009, there’s a certain inevitability, a finality, that accompanies that estimated mortality rate. I’ve often wondered where I’ll be when I get the e-mail – or whatever method of interpersonal communication is in vogue in, say, 20 years – telling me that the last-known living American World War II veteran has passed away. For historians, especially those who study and specialize World War II, that depressing day is truly coming. It’s not some myth or theory, like peak oil. It’s reality. Our human wells – in essence one of our greatest national resources – are going to run dry in my lifetime.

It’s been a slow, losing battle for decades now. The passing of major figures, icons of the war, has long been frontpage – and now of the internet and bottom-screen scrolling variety – news. As a historically-minded youngster, I remember reading about the passing of Rudolf Hess, the last of Hitler’s Nazi lieutenants, in 1987, as well as the death of Emperor Hirohito, in 1989, and thinking how amazing it was that these men, although once bitter, hated enemies, had been alive while I was alive. I was in high school when I read of the passing of General Matthew Ridgway, the legendary commander of the 82nd Airborne Division during World War II and the eventual commander of all UN forces during the Korean War, in 1993. Incidentally, Ridgway died in Fox Chapel, a Pittsburgh suburb barely a 20-minute drive from my hometown. I often regret that I had not known he was that close; I probably would have written him a letter just for the odd chance to have his autograph, maybe correspond with him. I also recall the noted passing of the last surviving Iwo Jima flag-raiser, John “Doc” Bradley, who died in 1994. And Joe Rosenthal, the man who captured the shot of the Marines raising the flag on Mt. Suribachi, perhaps the most famous photo image of the war, died just four years ago in 2006.

In circa 2003, I remember watching a scrolling news brief on the passing of the man who was believed to be the last surviving U.S. general officer from World War II. In the last calendar year, other major notable World War II participants have left us: Miep Gies, the last surviving connection to Anne Frank’s secret annex; Fritz Darges, the last surviving member of Hitler’s inner circle; Jack Harrison, the last surviving participant in the “Great Escape” from Stalag Luft III.

In my own life, many of the World War II heroes who I “grew up with,” men from my hometown area who unwittingly served as my earliest interviews, are nearly all gone. I have an 8×10, black and white photo in my office of all the guys from my area – the towns of Export, Delmont, Murrysville and elsewhere in western Pennsylvania – waiting for the New Alexandria post office to open on the morning of Monday, December 8, 1941 so they could enlist – and I don’t think a single one of them is still alive.

And the last holdouts are undoubtedly entering their final days. For example, I have heard that Dick Winters, of “Band of Brothers” fame, is not in the best of health.

But this doesn’t mean that the cause – remembering their sacrifices and carrying on their stories, their spirit, their victory, and, most importantly, their vision for America – is lost. There is a movement afoot to establish a National World War II Day of Remembrance on the second Sunday in August. According to the non-profit Keep the Spirit of ’45 Alive (www.spiritof45.org), the annual remembrance day would appropriately fall around the week of V-J Day. Right now, the idea is in the House of Representatives, under the title “House Concurrent Resolution 226.” So, contact your Congressperson and let them know that they should lend their support to this worthy endeavor.

But in the meantime, you don’t have to join any Internet initiatives or write your elected officials to make a difference. The most important personal preservation effort you can commence is to just say hello to the next individual wearing a WWII veteran ballcap or stepping out of a car with a WWII vet license plate that you encounter. Talk to them. Listen to them. Learn from them. And, perhaps importantly, thank these last living icons – while you still can.

I believe that it’s still May 11 somewhere in these United States – Alaska and Hawaii, probably – so perhaps this post is still pertinent for a few more hours.  Or minutes. Maybe seconds.  In any case, I need to hurry.  I emphasize the date because this particular post pertains to specific dates and their importance in the study of World War II history.   

Dates have long been the foundation of our study of American history.  It all starts in grade school, really, with that rhyme about Columbus sailing the ocean blue in 1492.  Pretty soon, the textbooks get thicker and the content, depending on your level of personal interest, gets either increasingly more exciting or else unbelievably boring.  But the dates and important events that correspond with them keep coming: 1776; 1812; 1861; 1929; 1941; 1963; 1969; 2001. 

Some events are so important that whether you lived through the events or not, the full dates are indelibly marked in our minds: October 29, 1929; November 22, 1963; July 20, 1969. 

And yet there are some dates that weigh so heavily on our collective national consciousness that they are passed on from generation to generation without any need for such cluttering detail.  July 4.  December 7.  9/11. 

When it comes to World War II, most people have a vague, general idea when it comes to the dates that correspond with the most important, or noteworthy, events of the conflict.  If you polled a handful of World War II buffs (regardless of their educational background) on the street, I’d be willing to bet that the four dates that most would cite are December 7, 1941, June 6, 1944, May 8, 1945 and September 2, 1945.  Those dates, respectively, correspond with the events that most Americans are most familiar with when it comes to World War II.  The first is the attack on Pearl Harbor that forced America’s entry into the war, the second the D-Day landings at Normandy, the third the surrender of Nazi Germany or V-E Day, and lastly, the date on which the Japanese surrender document was signed on the battleship Missouri, thus ending the Pacific war. 

But how many people know the significance of WWII dates such as September 27, 1940? December 11, 1941? April 9, 1942? November 8, 1942? September 8, 1943? January 22, 1944? July 16, 1945?

I’d be willing to bet that even the most die-hard World War II buff, and perhaps many historians, scholars and well-known writers as well, would be hard-pressed to provide the correct answers for each of those dates.   

And that almost no one would know the significance of the wartime dates of April 4, 1943 and January 28, 1944.  I’ll admit that as recently as 2003, I certainly did not know.  But when I first began researching Escape From Davao, I instantly became fixated on the date that the escape from the Davao Penal Colony took place – 4/4/43.  That date, in my opinion, was doubly important: not only was it the day that the only large-scale group of American prisoners of war escaped from the Japanese in the Pacific Theater, it was also the day that the story of the Bataan Death March, as well as the countless additional atrocities committed against the surrendered defenders of the Philippines, in a matter of speaking, got out.  Along with their gear, the escaped POWs carried that message with them. 

January 28, 1944, of course, was the date that the American public finally learned of the Death March and the atrocities.  But America did not learn the whole story on that date.  Or in the weeks that followed.  Or years, for that matter.  There is no date that corresponds with the telling of the full, uncensored story. 

Well, until today.  Upon the official publication of Escape From Davao today, May 11, 2010 is the continuation, and most likely the final installment, of this incredible saga, the day that the story of the legendary POW escape from the Davao Penal Colony – a seminal World War II event deserving of date-recognition – is reintroduced to the American people. 

Only today, unlike another extremely obscure wartime date, that of January 30, 1944 – the date that the Dyess story first started appearing in the pages of the Chicago Daily Tribune – there are no radio bulletins, no newsreels, no corner newsboys with ink-stained hands waving freshly-printed newspapers like the one pictured above and enticing people to “read all about it.” 

So on this day, 5/11/10, I’m asking you, much like the U.S. Government asked Americans to “Remember December 7^th” in wartime propaganda campaigns, to remember April 4, 1943.  And January 28, 1944.   Some very special individuals went through a hellluva lot on the former date to make the latter possible.  Remembering is the least we can do.

Of all the memorable scenes thus far in HBO’s first-rate historical drama “The Pacific,” one in particular stands out in my mind.  But it’s not one of the many breathtaking, special effects-laden battle sequences.  In this scene, there are no whizzing bullets, crashing shells or fantastic explosions.  CGI? None.  There are no head-shaking acts of heroism, either.  Nor is there any blood, gore, sex or profanity.  It’s just two men in a dimly-lit tent and some gritty, gripping dialogue – quite possibly the most authentic, likely-to-happen scene in the entire epic miniseries. 

It’s the scene, and ironically a likely fabricated one at that, where the paths of Marines Robert Leckie and Eugene Sledge intersect in Leckie’s bunk on Pavuvu just prior to the invasion of Peleliu.  Sledge had come to browse Leckie’s library and the two Marines strike up a brief conversation on existential topics that every individual, regardless of rank, religious affiliation or intellectual background, who fought in the P.T.O. no doubt contemplated – belief in God and free will.  Sledge selects a bible, revealing his faith to viewers; there’s little need for elucidation on the rookie Marine’s part.  And then there’s Lucky. 

“Me,” he asserts, “I believe in ammunition.”

It’s the kind of pure, forthright response that only a veteran can utter.  Now I’ve never been in combat, and no one has ever fired a shot at me in anger – although I can’t be certain that the thought hadn’t crossed the mind of my editor or agent at one time or another – but having survived my first literary campaign, I can in some way empathize with Leckie – a helluva writer in his own right.  So in this, my first blog entry, let me tell you what I, as a writer and historian, believe in. 

I believe in the power of a story.  I believe that a good story can be more than entertaining.  More than educational.  I believe that a good story can be transcendent. 

I believe in telling the truth, and thus, accuracy.  I believe in the absolute necessity of fact-checking and extensive, exhaustive research.  But I also believe that no writer is perfect – so please know that any errors in my work, factual or otherwise, were not premeditated.  In fact, far from it.  I believe that a good, true story needs no embellishment, no editorial airbrushing or alteration save for fact-based interpretation and some solid, honest editing.  

Furthermore, I believe that accuracy and boring writing are not necessary bedfellows.  Hopefully, Escape From Davao will serve as proof of that statement. 

I believe that the men of the 200^th Coast Artillery Regiment, of the 21^st Pursuit Squadron, of the 1^st Marine Defense Battalion, of the 37^th Infantry Division, of the 2^nd Marine Division, of the USS Franklin, of the Alamo Scouts, as well as thousands of other soldiers, sailors, pilots and Marines who served in the Pacific, are as deserving of praise and this country’s attention and adulation as those of Easy Company and the Eighth Air Force, as Ike and Patton, as their more celebrated comrades-in-arms from the E.T.O.  I believe that the Pacific war has long been underresearched and underappreciated.  And beginning with Escape From Davao and moving forward with future projects, from books to magazine pieces, I hope to help rectify that situation as well as carry on the work of dedicated writers such as Leckie, Sledge, Richard Tregaskis, William Manchester, Clark Lee, Bill Sloan, Richard Frank, James Bradley and the handful of others who have been fighting and writing to keep America from forgetting about the “other” war in the Pacific. 

I also believe in leading from the front.  Almost anyone, really, can write a World War II book.  But few can write a good World War II book.  I’m not one of those rear-echelon writers who rarely leaves the air-conditioned, suburban safety of the States, spends most of his time in the National Archives or else some other repository of historical documents, and simply regurgitates previously published accounts, yellowed newspaper clippings or after-action reports. 

I believe that researching history and writing a good story requires more than just an investment of time and money – you have to invest part of yourself into the work.  I believe in totally immersing one’s self into the story.  Not including yourself in the narrative like Hunter S. Thompson did in his work – which is, of course, an impossibility – but rather my own variation of the good doctor’s practices which one could call “gonzo history.”  Such a practice requires you to physically, mentally and spiritually familiarize yourself with not only the characters you are writing about, but the sites, too, absorbing the sights, smells and sounds of those particular locales.  Therefore, I try to walk the same earth, sail the same seas, and fly the same skies as the individuals that I’m writing about.  In the Pacific, this belief has taken me everywhere from Bataan, Cabanatuan and Corregidor to the Coral Sea, Guam, Hiroshima, Iwo Jima, Manila, Midway, Pearl Harbor, Okinawa, Rabaul, Saipan, Truk and Wake Island.  In Europe, from Paris, the Ardennes and Reims to Bastogne, from the Siegfried Line to Dachau. 

Once there, I note the temperature, the location of the sun, the phases of the moon.  I observe the types of clouds in the sky.  The tides, the directional flow and speed of currents.  I make inquiries about the flora and fauna.  Creation of a sensory catalog is key; take deep breaths, close your eyes and enlist your imagination.  You’ve found your way there – the only thing separating you from that particular event at that site is time.  I strongly believe that a writer can really enter into communion with his subject by stomping around old battlefields.  And especially in the Pacific because, more often than not, these hallowed historic sites remain littered with the rusting detritus of war. 

I also believe in not just going there, but in going there.  As in getting in character, much like a serious method actor.  While a historian can never truly know all of the circumstances surrounding a certain historical situation, nor realistically expect to put himself precisely in a character’s shoes, one can at least attempt to contemplate that character, and thus attempt to see what he saw, fear what he feared, believe what he believed.  Some may consider it a stretch, but I believe it is a worthy endeavor, a gesture undertaken out of genuine respect for your subject.  This belief has led me to feel the oppressive heat and humidity of New Guinea and to sweat like I’ve never sweated before; to know the ringing and concussed throb that settles into one’s ears after firing a Model M1911A1 .45 caliber Colt automatic; to experience the unparalleled rush of adrenaline that accompanies jumping out of a plane at 13,000 feet; to suffer the constant rumbling of one’s stomach that accompanies eating nothing but a few ounces of salmon and rice for several days.  One of the more bizarre things I’ve done, my intention was to simulate the debilitating, demoralizing diet of the defenders of Corregidor. 

Yet one can only go so far.  There are some things historians can never know or understand, some conditions that one cannot recreate: combat fatigue; artillery bombardments; the humiliation of surrender; the mud; the rain; the corpses; the camaraderie; the despair; the omnipresent stench of death.  As Sledge wrote in With the Old Breed, “nor do authors normally write about such vileness; unless they have seen it with their own eyes, it is too preposterous.” In these cases, a historian must take the veteran’s word for it. 

Finally, I believe that we’re living in a fascinating time period, an absolutely amazing era for the study of the most important conflict in human history.  Travel to remote battlefields and other important historic sites, once viewed as inherently difficult, is now possible.  With the advent of so much new technology, never has interpersonal communication or the exchange of information been more easily facilitated.  Countless documents, files, maps, photos and other research materials are archived online.  A veteran is no more than a phone call and, increasingly, an e-mail or Facebook post away.  And, perhaps most importantly, they are still here – living, breathing primary sources. 

Therefore, while I believe that World War II history is something that can be appreciated and enjoyed by all, I believe that the subject is much too important to be left solely to the self-professed “professionals,” staid, static academics, moonlighting journalists, dabbling writers with dayjobs, armchair historians, amateur researchers or any combination thereof.  I believe that there’s a real need for a new kind of writing historian, a millennial hybrid of Stephen Ambrose and Indiana Jones – a swashbuckling scholar of sorts.  And that’s where I, and this blog, come in. 

In this space in the coming months, there will be profiles of interesting personalities, plus reports from veterans’ reunions and gatherings, as well as updates on interviews, research trips and my book tour.  We’ll go places, both literally and figuratively, where few have gone.  There will be trips back in time, expeditions in the present and plans for the future.  We’ll shoot a Winchester M-1 carbine, take a flight in a B-17 bomber, dive on sunken wrecks in the waters around Guadalcanal and plenty of other adventures. 

I hope you’ll come along for the ride.