Excerpt From: “The War” – PBS Production by Ken Burns

More than 16 million Americans served in the armed forces during the war. Fewer than a million ever saw serious combat. The infantry represented just 14 percent of the troops overseas. But wherever they fought – in North Africa or the South Pacific or Western Europe — the infantry bore the brunt of the fighting on the ground — and seven out of ten suffered casualties.
Those in the infantry — in the Army and Marines — endured hardships and horrors for which no training could ever have prepared them. The infantry was the workhorse of the military, not only faced with battling the enemy but also often asked to do physical labor at the front lines transporting the food, clothing, weapons and medicine needed to win the war. They experienced the war as no one else did.
As in many other units, the men in the infantry griped about the food, the conditions and their superiors.
In the mountains of Italy, the men learned to sleep while marching – it was “a kind of coma,” one remembered – and when they got a chance to lie down, they preferred to sleep on rocks rather than bare ground because rocks were relatively dry. For everyone, keeping dry was of the utmost importance.
Beyond the physical discomforts, the men in the infantry had to battle impossible odds.