“What would you do with those people in the cave, would it shorten the war by a week, a day, an hour?” He pleads with a Japanese officer. “How many people have to die before we are satisfied?”

For the show’s host and writer, Rod Serling, World War II was a trauma he often fantasized about.

Serling, who was born 100 years ago this December, served in the 11th Airborne Division in the Philippines and received the Bronze Star for bravery and the Purple Heart for being wounded. He left the war with permanent physical and emotional wounds and, like fellow veterans like Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, a desire to find words for what had happened. He wrote war-related scripts for “Playhouse 90” and other early television drama series and at least two other “Twilight Zone” stories, one in which an Army lieutenant can predict who is next by looking at the faces of his soldiers. Will die.

Serling’s “First Squad, First Platoon”, a fictional story about the war that he worked on and set aside while attending Antioch College, is now published for the first time. It appears in this week’s new edition of The Strand Magazine, revealing excerpts written by Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, John Steinbeck and many others. “First Squad, First Platoon” is divided into five vignettes, each dedicated to a fallen comrade.

Strand managing editor Andrew Gulley writes, “Serling wrote this story in his early twenties, yet it has a maturity far beyond his years.” “This is a powerful, unflinching look at war in all its brutality – an unforgettable study of ordinary people in an exceptionally hellish situation.”

Nicholas Parisi, author of the 2018 biography “Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and Imagination”, helped edit the story. Daughters Jodi Serling and Anne Serling each contributed a brief introduction. Jody Serling wrote that the war “opened up dark horizons of terror” to her father and left him with “painful memories” that influenced his writing and kept him awake at night, “sweating and screaming incoherently.” “Happened.” Anne Serling told the Associated Press that “First Squad, First Platoon” reminded her of her innocence when she joined the Army.

She said, “My reaction was particularly painful because when I read the story, I was writing a memoir about my father and reading letters he wrote from training camp before being shipped off to the Pacific. ” “He was only 18 when he enlisted and in the letters he wrote to his parents he sounded like a kid in summer camp. He was asking for gum, candy, underwear. Like all the children we send into the horrors of war – he didn’t know what was waiting on the other side.

Amy Boyle Johnson, author of the 2015 book “Unknown Serling”, came across the story while looking through Serling’s papers at the University of Wisconsin. Serling, who died in 1975, had not yet started a family when he wrote “First Squad, First Platoon.” But he was already thinking about the next generation, including a dedication to his unborn children, remembering them with “the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt piece of flesh” and “the hopeless emptiness of fatigue”. Was requested. Much of the war is in the form of “uniforms and flags, honor and patriotism”.

Parasi says that “First Squad, First Platoon” was an early indication of Serling’s ironic touch. One soldier is shot as he admires a wooden statue of Jesus, and another – a true story – is killed by a food relief package.

In the opening segment of “First Squad”, Cpl. Melvin Levy is introduced as the squad’s resident comedian, whose usual barrage of jokes was tempered by the ongoing starvation that threatened to kill them all. But as Levi fell asleep weakly in the mud, dreaming of pastrami and other delicacies at home, he was startled by the sound of motors – the airplanes were clearly marked as American. Levi screams with joy as over 100 heavy boxes of K-rations fall from height, unaware that one of them will fall directly on him.

Serling writes, “Heavy crates were sinking into the earth near their holes. People started screaming in terror.” “Levi stood where he was, waving his arms and yelling. Sergeant Atherson tried to pull him from behind and throw him into a hole. But Levi was not paying attention to everything around him except the food that was falling down.

“‘Boys, it’s raining a lot. . . it’s raining a lot,’ her shrill voice echoed in the air.”

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.