Dawn Mcswain

“Mail usually was a big morale booster, but not for me that time. There was a chilly drizzling rain off and on. We were weary and my spirits weren’t the best. I sat on my helmet in the mud and read a letter from my parents. It brought news that Deacon, my beloved spaniel, had been hit by an automobile, had dragged himself home, and had died in my father’s arms. He had been my constant companion during the several years before I had left home for college. There, with the sound of heavy firing up ahead and the sufferings and deaths of thousands of men going on nearby, big tears rolled down my cheeks, because Deacon was dead.”
― Eugene B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa