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As we remember America´s involvement in World War II, we recognize that the ranks of our surviving veterans of that war are rapidly thinning. Yet, the successes of movies like "Saving Private Ryan" and books like Stephen E. Ambrose´s "Citizen Soldiers," James Bradley´s and Ron Powers´"Flags of Our Fathers" and Tom Brokaw´s "Greatest Generation" series suggest that even as the number of survivors of the war decreases daily, interest in and an appreciation for their contributions and sacrifices have only increased in the public´s eye. With few exceptions, much of the recent wave of interest in the Second World War has focused largely on the European Theater of Operations. Considerably fewer books have appeared regarding the war and its long-term consequences on the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who fought in the Pacific. And little at all has ever been written on one unsung branch of the Marine Corps, the Defense Battalions. One of the veterans of these units was Jack McCall, Sr., better known as "Pogiebait" from an old navy term for candy, a reference to his unquenchable sweet tooth. From Boot Camp to V-J Day and the war´s chronic effects on postwar life, "Pogiebait´s War" surveys the life and times of a young Marine artilleryman and his peers in the Marines´ "Fightin´ Ninth" Defense Battalion. Galvanized into action by President Roosevelt´s call to arms after Pearl Harbor, young Jack McCall joins the rush to volunteer for the Marines. Less than one month later, he leaves his Tennessee home to experience the rigor (and unintended humor) of life as a lowly and harassed "boot"--the "world´s most unexalted specimen of humanity"--at the Corps´s infamous Parris Island training camp. By early 1942, Pogiebait McCall and 800 other Marines are molded into a battalion at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. During their Cuban sojourn, where the Marines figure in the capture of a Nazi U-boat crew, Pogiebait McCall and his buddies lust for action. They would soon get their wish. Jack McCall and the Ninth Defense receive their baptism by fire on Guadalcanal and nearby New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, where the Allies wage a bitter and now largely forgotten campaign against Japan. The "Fightin´ Ninth" and its sister units suffer terrible losses early in the struggle for New Georgia. Harried by air raids, and plagued by malarial outbreaks and logistical snafus, Pogiebait and his pals make their mark in military history by setting yet-unbroken records for shooting down an entire enemy bomber squadron within a matter of minutes and for perfecting new means of tank and electronic warfare in a jungle environment. By 1944, Jack and the men of the Ninth play a key role in the triumphant liberation of the American territory of Guam, the first U.S. possession to be freed from Japan after a brutal occupation period. Yet, the Ninth´s campaigns are fraught with controversial incidents that almost derail the Allied plans for victory in the Pacific, including the accidental sinking of the flagship of the New Georgia invasion fleet; the horrors of friendly-fire casualties and the first medical diagnoses of "combat neurosis;" and the terrors of Japanese bombardments and banzai attacks. "Pogiebait´s War" is an unstinting and eye-opening look at the tedium, terror, anger, pride and occasional humor that marked the life of the average U.S. Marine and his buddies in the Pacific Theater. The product of three years of extensive research, it combines archival source materials with first-person interviews and is extensively illustrated, including many never-before-published photographs. "Pogiebait´s War" depicts why veterans of America´s last "good war" could justly say, like Pogiebait McCall, that they "lived a lifetime in four years."