The Wordsmith's Forge

I observed during my youth the fact that most of the Americans who were in World War 2 thought of the war as "the most fun we've ever had". They got taken from their American home towns (many of them had never been further than 50 miles from where they were born; sent to someplace where the scenery was unfamiliar, and they didn't know the language. They tasted foods they'd never heard of, and they got to flirt with "exotic" women. Very few of them went into combat - my father never did. The Korean war wasn't an adventure, and neither was Vietnam, and my generation learned that "war is hell".