From the Old US Army to World War II follows the Army career of Louis H. Barclay, starting with the economic and social forces that led to his enlistment as a private in the tiny U.S. Army of the 1930s through his combat service as an infantry first sergeant in the Pacific Theater. Chapters covering the broad historical context in which Barclay served alternate with chapters covering his personal history. When the war started, Barclay was already a career non-commissioned officer (NCO), making him part of a small, unheralded cohort of the wartime Army that was as important to the winning of the Second World War as the famous generals about whom hundreds of books have been written. By considering the war from the perspective of this under-explored, largely unwritten-about cohort of Old Army NCOs, From the Old Army to World War II provides readers with an uncommon, if not unique, insight into the both the bureaucratic mundanity of a U.S. Army at war as well as the traumatic physical and psychological impacts of combat on the individual infantry soldier. The book also considers an at-times-uncomfortable topic: the fact that veterans’ memories and retellings of their combat experiences do not always align with the known facts. Far from being a hagiography or yet another work promoting an overly sentimentalized narrative of the war, From the Old US Army to World War II seeks to tell a different story of the Second World War in a way that is honest about, yet respectful of, the soldiers who fought it and the stories they told of their service.