{"id":7599,"date":"2021-04-20T20:15:02","date_gmt":"2021-04-21T01:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7599"},"modified":"2023-12-09T19:11:08","modified_gmt":"2023-12-10T01:11:08","slug":"mfdj-04-20-2021-acclimated-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=7599","title":{"rendered":"MFDJ 04\/20\/2021: Acclimated Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Acclimated\u00a0 Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/h3>\n

Soldiers arriving on the Pacific Islands for the first time in the 1940s had to adjust to the ubiquity of trophies and souvenirs, and, initially at least, new recruits were shocked by the behavior of some of their\u00a0cohorts. Dean Ladd – recently landed on the hot, forested and sandy coastline of Guadalcanal island in the South West Pacific, about to fight in one of the fiercest battles of the campaign, and only one month away from his twenty-third birthday – watched in astonishment as ‘a kid from the 1st Marine Division ambled by swinging a length of rope weighted with the bleached skull of a Japanese soldier’. The marine’s clothes were in tatters and he was emaciated, as were all combat troops serving in Guadalcanal, but when he saw the fresh rookies starting at him, he simply grinned and twirled the skull over his head. Had the war driven him mad? ‘Well, yes – and no,’ Ladd concluded. ‘Mostly no. Later, but soon, we would understand that the kid was doing just fine, in the circumstances.’<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nJapanese Head on Guadalcanal<\/em><\/p>\n

A week later, while he was eating, eager for hot food, even though he was surrounded by the stinking remains of hundreds of putrefying Japanese corpses, and with machine gun and mortar fire and shell explosions in the distance. Ladd’s eyes fell on the booted foot of a Japanese soldier sticking out of the ground nearby. The body was barely covered with earth. He ignored it and continued to eat. And he ignored the news that Japanese dead were floating in the Matanikau River, just upstream from where he had filled his canteen. He drank the water anyway. ‘Like that kid twirling the skull, I was acclimating to conditions on Guadalcanal. I had been on the island seven days.’<\/p>\n

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\nJapanese corpses on Guadalcanal<\/em><\/p>\n

Culled from:\u00a0Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Arcane Excerpts<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s an excerpt from\u00a0Inter-Marriage or the Reason Beauty, Health and Intellect Result from Certain Unions and Deformity, Disease and Insanity from Others<\/em>\u00a0by Alexander Walker, 1839 discussing the sad effects of “Unnatural Indulgence”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“Surprising artfulness and obstinacy are employed by young people in maintaining secrecy respecting crimes of this description. But a youth may be suspected, when, at the period of puberty, he seeks to remain in solitary places generally alone, more rarely with a particular comrade.<\/p>\n

“This vice soon renders him careless of his parents and the persons who have the care of him, as well as indifferent to the sports of his equals; he falls into a distaste for everything except the opportunity of indulgence; all his thoughts are directed to the parts at this period subject to irritation; sensibility, imagination and passion are inflamed; and the secretion of the reproductive liquid augmenting, withdraws a very precious portion from the blood.<\/p>\n

“The muscles of the youth consequently become soft; he is idle; his body becomes bent; his gait is sluggish; and he is scarcely able to support himself.\u2014The digestion becomes enfeebled; the breadth, fetid; the intestines, inactive; the excrements, hardened in the rectum and producing additional irritation of the seminal conduits in its vicinity. The circulation, being no longer free, the youth sighs often; the complexion is livid; and the skin, on the forehead especially, is studded with pimples.\u2014The corners of the mouth are lengthened; the nose becomes sharp; the sunken eyes, deprived of brilliance and enclosed in blue circles, are cast down; no look remains of gaiety; the very aspect is criminal. General sensibility becomes excessive, producing tears without cause; perception is weakened, and memory almost destroyed; distraction or absence of mind renders the judgment unfit for any operation; the imagination gives birth only to fantasies and fears without grounds; the slightest allusion to the dominating passion produces motion of the muscles of the face, the flush of shame, or a state of despair; the desires become capricious, and envy rankles in the mind, or there ensues a total disgust. The wretched being finishes by shunning the face of men, and dreading the observation of women; his character is entirely corrupted, or his mind is totally stupified. Involuntary loss of the reproductive liquid at last takes place during the daily motions; and there ensues a total exhaustion, bringing on heaviness of the head, singing in the ears, and frequent faintings, or a sensation as if ants were running from the head down the back, together with pains, convulsive tremblings and partial paralysis.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Acclimated\u00a0 Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Soldiers arriving on the Pacific Islands for the first time in the 1940s had to adjust to the ubiquity of trophies and souvenirs, and, initially at least, new recruits were shocked by the behavior of some of their\u00a0cohorts. Dean Ladd – recently landed on the hot, forested and sandy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10162,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions\/10162"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}