sentence: "How slow everybody learns in a war. Nobody knows anything about a war until it begins. Just two years before, the Polish air force had been blown to hell on the ground. The French caught it the following spring. In spite of that, the same things happened to our planes at Pearl Harbor. And yet two days later, in spite of all of it, the Japs catch our air corps on Luzon with its pants down. Only that wasn't the end. Months later, on my way out through Australia, I pass a big American field, and there they are, bombers and fighters parked in orderly rows, wing tip to wing tip. 'Hell,' they told me, 'The Japs are hundreds of miles away.' Except that's where they're always supposed to be when they catch you with your pants down, and I thought to myself, Jesus Christ, won't these guys ever learn?"