We'll start with Chapter 3, The Army, pp 56 - 97, because this is the two-year period that resulted in The Naked And The Dead.
While in college, Harvard, Norman Mailer and Bea become serious but do not get married.
Following college graduation in 1943, Norman and Bea "vacation" in Provincetown.
Norman works on a novel, waiting for his draft notice, hoping he can get a deferral while working on his novel.
January 7, 1944, they get (secretly) married, p. 58, but I get the feeling that his heart wasn't really "in it." p. 58.
She graduated from Boston University.
March 18, 1944, married again, full Jewish service. Mailer despised the ritual. Barbara not Jewish.
Reported for army duty, Camp Upton. IQ test, 145. Then to Fort Bragg, NC, arriving in early April.
Barbara joins the WAVES; Norfolk, VA; officer training, commissioned an ensign.
Mailer in the US Army, enlisted by his choice.
His platoon sergeant: Donald Mann, a southerner, later a physical model for Sergeant Croft in Naked.
Most of his friends in basic training were New York Jews.
Served 25 months; kept quiet, observed.
Phrase: "lee of a truck" -- can't meaning of this on the internet -- is this cargo back of a deuce and a half? The flatbed of a truck: the lee? p. 61.
Joyce James reference, p. 61.
William James' rerference, p. 62.
On leave, up the coast by train to Brooklyn (his family's home) and Norfolk (Barbara's WAVES location), p. 62.
Then Fort Ord, CA.
Wow, wow, wow, I've been to all these places. Can visualize them in my mind.
When traveling and reading about traveling as I do when reading Norman Mailer, my memories return to Linda Fisher.
Environmentalist; reference, p. 63.
Oswald Spengler's The Decline of the West, p. 63.
West Coast embarkation center, Camp Stoneman, shipped out on the USS Sea Barb. Camp Stoneman was located in Pittsburg City, California, just south of Fairfield / Vacaville, CA.
As much as I would have loved exploring England with Pat, I would have loved exploring California with Linda even more.
Headed for the Leyte Gulf. Planning for invastion of Luzon under way. Battle of the Bulge was being fought. Luzon: the ain island of hte Philippine archipelago; capital of Manila located there.
Started populating the novel with characters, but only one, Sergeant Mann, was used. In fact, the unit, yet unknown to him, would be from where he drew his characters: the 112th Cavalry Regiment, a National Guard unit out of Fort Bliss, Texas. The 112th and 124th Cavalry were brigaded into the 56th Cavalry Brigade in 1940.
First island: Leyte Island, December 29, 1944, p. 65.
Invasion of Luzon began January 9, 1945 -- 112th arrived at Langayen Gulf, Luzon, on the USS Monrovia (APA 31) [APA: attack transport] See wiki. APA: amphibious but could spend long periods at sea, and cross oceans.
The mythic eight-day patrol undertaken by a 112th platoon across the upper Angat River in Leyte .. p 70.
Tolstoy, War and Peace, "... every army moves on waves of ignorance and misinformation."
Norman Mailer remembered having read that when writing The Naked and the Dead.
Then, epitomized in the Coen Bros Burn After Reading.
If one gets into a discussion of the wisdom of ending the war with two atomic bombs, ask if anyone knows how many divisions landed on Normandy and then how many divisions were planned to invade Japan. See p. 71.
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