Mass for Marine pilots, Okinawa

...After the fourth or fifth day of combat came Sunday. A flat field was found next to the sea, surrounded by green jungled hills. Hundreds of dirty men knelt down. Mud was on their clothes, perhaps blood on their hands. The musty smell of the tropics and of the dead was in the breeze. Everything was rotten. Many men had seen close friends killed. All had gone through too much already. Some leaned on their rifles. Others had laid their pieces carefully beside them. Most of the mussed heads were bowed, but when they lifted, they saw what they needed to see and felt inside what they needed to feel. The only clean thing on the island was the sparkling purity of the altar cloth and chasuble. They knew that despite their experience, the part of their soul that was God's would be white. That was comfort.

Perhaps the simile is sacrilegious, but that first Mass seemed more like taking a bath than anything else. For those who had not been able to go to confession, this was our first real strong contact with the living God. Living, that was it. God was alive, had been alive, would be alive, alive, alive… More

-- From "A Marine Speaks," by an unnamed veteran of Guadalcanal, for the Advent Papers, Church of the Advent, Boston