Eugene Bondurant Sledge (1923-2001), an Alabama native, enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1942 and fought in the Pacific. After the war he enjoyed a long career teaching at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. With the Old Breed was published in 1981 and dramatized in the 2010 HBO miniseries The Pacific, produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Samuel Hynes (1924-2019) grew up in Minnesota and enlisted in 1943. After the war he taught English literature at Swarthmore, Northwestern, and Princeton, publishing numerous critical studies of English writers but becoming best known for his writing about war literature. Alvin Kernan (1924-2018) was raised in Wyoming and enlisted in the Navy in 1941. After the war Kernan attended Williams, Oxford, and Yale, and had a successful teaching career at Yale, 1954-73, and Princeton, 1973-88.

Elizabeth D. Samet is professor of English at West Point and the author of Willing Obedience: Citizens, Soldiers, and the Progress of Consent in America, 1776-1898 (2004), Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point (2007), and No Man's Land: Preparing for War and Peace in Post-9/11 America (2014).