As Sledge undergoes Marine training, Leckie and the others fight through the tropics of New Britain, specifically Gloucester.
Tropes
- Battle in the Rain: One encounter between Leckie's unit and the Japanese forces takes place in the midst of a heavy rainstorm, complete with little visibility and crackling lightning.
- Coup de Grâce: The Marines finish off stragglers after a battle by skewering them with their bayonets. One Marine goes outside the norm, though, and chokes a man to death with his bare hands. It seems to be a mix of anger and fatigue driving him, though.
- Dirty Old Man: The hospital chief looks old enough to have grandkids, but mentions that he copes by drinking and chasing nurses.
- Driven to Suicide: Leckie has to turn in his razors and belt when he's admitted to the hospital so that no one in there can try this. He notes that he isn't going to, but still has to follow procedure.
- Extreme Mêlée Revenge: Downplayed. A soldier elects to choke a man for his Coup de Grâce rather than just stabbing him. It seems like a mix of fatigue and rage have driven him to this.
- Jungle Warfare: As with Guadalcanal, the fighting takes place in the dense, uncharted jungles of Cape Gloucester in the South Pacific.
- Mercy Kill: The Marines kill a few Japanese soldiers they find who are too wounded to be taken as POW's. It's shown that they either have their guts hanging out, or have been lying there for hours too wounded to move.
- Potty Failure: Leckie starts experiencing this; it gets diagnosed as enuresis, and he's advised to stay dry to stave it off. When he can't get better, he's sent off to the hospital in Banika.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: The mental hospital chief is very sympathetic to the PTSD-afflicted soldiers and doesn't put pressure on them to try to get back out there. He's clearly experienced enough to know what doesn't work.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Leckie meets a number of them at the Banika mental hospital. "Captain Midnight" is a former pilot who can only repeat various pilot terminology and stays up through the night. Since PTSD had not been formally identified at the time, the hospital chief labels a lot of these detainees as exhausted and tired of the war, which is accurate in its way.
