"All morning they watched for the plane which they thought would be looking for them. They cursed war in general and PTs in particular. At about ten o'clock the hulk heaved a moist sigh and turned turtle"
About this Quote
Dread lands hardest in the mundane. Hersey starts with the mechanics of survival - watch for the plane, keep hope on a schedule, ration anger into neat targets ("war in general and PTs in particular") - and then snaps that fragile routine with a line that feels both comic and merciless: "the hulk heaved a moist sigh and turned turtle". He personifies the wreck like a dying animal, not to sentimentalize it but to underline how arbitrary the body of war is. It breathes, it shifts, it betrays you.
The intent is quietly ruthless. By giving the men a morning of waiting, Hersey stages the most common wartime emotion: not heroism, but suspended time, the sense that rescue is a rumor you rehearse to stay human. The sailors' curses read like gallows taxonomy - they need categories (war vs. PT boats) because blaming something specific feels like control. Hersey lets them have that illusion for a paragraph, then removes it with physics.
"Moist sigh" is doing heavy lifting. It's sensory, faintly grotesque, almost funny in its delicacy, and that tonal slipperiness is the point. In Hersey's war writing, catastrophe isn't operatic; it is wet, procedural, and sudden. "Turned turtle" is sailor slang that lands with childlike simplicity, making the moment more chilling. The subtext is that language itself shrinks in the face of drowning. Context matters: Hersey, a reporter-novelist of WWII, specialized in stripping combat of its mythology. Here, the enemy isn't even visible. It's the sea, the machine, the indifferent hinge of chance - war as a system that kills without needing anyone's hatred.
The intent is quietly ruthless. By giving the men a morning of waiting, Hersey stages the most common wartime emotion: not heroism, but suspended time, the sense that rescue is a rumor you rehearse to stay human. The sailors' curses read like gallows taxonomy - they need categories (war vs. PT boats) because blaming something specific feels like control. Hersey lets them have that illusion for a paragraph, then removes it with physics.
"Moist sigh" is doing heavy lifting. It's sensory, faintly grotesque, almost funny in its delicacy, and that tonal slipperiness is the point. In Hersey's war writing, catastrophe isn't operatic; it is wet, procedural, and sudden. "Turned turtle" is sailor slang that lands with childlike simplicity, making the moment more chilling. The subtext is that language itself shrinks in the face of drowning. Context matters: Hersey, a reporter-novelist of WWII, specialized in stripping combat of its mythology. Here, the enemy isn't even visible. It's the sea, the machine, the indifferent hinge of chance - war as a system that kills without needing anyone's hatred.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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