"Always there was that word. Always there was that four-letter ugly sound that men in uniform have expanded into the single substance of the linguistic world. It was a handle, a hyphen, a hyperbole; verb, noun, modifier; yes, even conjunction. It described food, fatigue, metaphysics. It stood for everything and meant nothing; an insulting word, it was never used to insult; crudely descriptive of the sexual act, it was never used to describe it; base, it meant the best; ugly, it modified beauty; it was the name and the nomenclature of the voice of emptiness, but one heard it from the chaplains and captains, from Pfc.'s and Ph.D.'s until, finally, one could only surmise that if a visitor unacquainted with English were to overhear our conversations he would, in the way of the Higher Criticisms, demonstrate by measurement and numerical incidence that this little word must assuredly be the thing for which we were fighting."
This paragraph reflects the book in its entirety. A lot of bombs and fighting, a lot of bombastic words.
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