cannot-find-the-twisty-knob:

One of my favorite things about reading the books written by the men of Easy is the awe that Shifty inspires in the other men, but especially the city boys like Guarnere. They all make Shifty sound like some sort of sniper superhero whose eyesight rivals that of Legolas. “Shifty, what do you see with your mountain man eyes?” “I see a tree about a mile out in that forest that wasn’t there yesterday.” Okay, Shifty, okay.

alexpenkala:

“A tough looking northerner squinted at how I said “Morning,” but shook my hand anyway and said his name was Jim Alley from Washington State. Why, that was clear across America. He introduced me to a friend he had already made, Robert Van Klinken, who lived near the Canadien border in that same region. Van Klinken worked on trucks as a mechanic.”

“Wayne Sisk hiked over and shook my hand. We were to call him Skinny. Burton Christenson pushed his way out of a tent and came to where we were standing. He went by the nickname Pat and was from California, built wiry like a boxer. He showed us some pencil sketches he had drawn in a book kept with him”

“Warren Muck smile broadly and told us he hailed from a town named Tonawanda, wherever that was. He asked us to call him Skip and said he had once swum clear across the swift flowing Niagra River. Gordy Carson ambled up and began talking baseball.”

“Two tough looking fellas from Joliet, Illinois, Hack Hanson and Frank Perconte, smoked cigarettes and said little. They were older guys, early twenties. Joe Liebgott was tidying up his gear. He was another older man, twenty-five, maybe twenty-six, and tough as a railroad spike. He offered to cut our hair for cheap, seeing as how he worked as a barber back home in San Fransisco.”

“ Don Hoobler, Bill Howell, and Bob Rader were three hometown buddies from Manchester. Walter Gordon was a fine-featured burly fella who’d been to college already. He was chewing tobacco and had three cigars stuck in his shirt pocket. A southerner from Jackson, Mississippi, he’d pulled strings and enlisted up north in Philadelphia.”

-Shifty Powers, Shifty’s War by Marcus Brotherton