The third novel in Jones’s classic World War II trilogy: a moving story of four World War II infantrymen coping with the difficulties of recovering at an army hospital and learning to readjust to the home frontAt the end of a long journey across the Pacific, a ship catches sight of California. On board are hundreds of injured soldiers, survivors of the American infantry’s battle to wrest the South Seas from the Japanese Empire. As the men on deck cheer their imminent return to their families, wives, and favorite girls, four stay below, unable to join in the celebration. These men are broken by war and haunted by what they learned there of the savagery of mankind. As they convalesce in a hospital in Memphis, the pain of that knowledge will torment them far worse than any wound.
