The purpose of military medicine during World War II was the same as in previous wars: to conserve the strength and efficiency of the fighting forces so as to keep as many men at as many guns for as many days as possible. What transpired between 1939 and 1945 was a cataclysmic event made worse by the nature of the weapons the combatants used. The use of machine guns, submarines, airplanes, and tanks was widespread in World War I; but in World War II these weapons reached unimagined perfection as killing machines. In every theater of war, small arms, land-and sea-based artillery, torpedoes, and armor-piercing and antipersonnel bombs took a terrible toll in human life. In America's first major encounter at Pearl Harbor, the survivors of the Japanese attack could describe what modern warfare really meant. Strafing aircraft, exploding ordnance, and burning ships caused...