Firearms

In the period now beginning, Ben drank more heavily than ever. He became a common nuisance to both his friends and his enemies; particularly perhaps, to his friends. Even his most indulgent

"Ben Thompson...was variously printer, Confederate soldier, professional gambler, peace officer, and a gunslinger second to none that Texas has ever produced."

"On the day on which Lieutenant General R. L. Eichelberger...officially pronounced the end of organized enemy resistance on Mindanao, we buried Colonel Thomas E. Clifford."

For months to come the men of the Twenty-Fourth Infantry Division were locked in the hardest, bitterest, most exhausting battle of their ten island campaigns.

"The Division struck Mindanao like a thunderbolt. It struck with a hundred ships, with thousands of men, scores of field guns, hundreds of trucks."

"To every one of us still alive Corregidor is not a spot of glory, but the echo of a nightmare in hell."

The Jap cannoneers did not have to test the range. There was neither bracketing nor registration. Their shells sped straight to the target....There was no room for evasion or maneuver.

The seven hundred Japanese who were on Mindoro were utterly surprised when the invasion struck them....They abandoned the towns and took to banditry in the mountainous interior.