Naked In The Light...

 

Then it was cooler, and out across the water the sunset was usually beautiful. Men would be smoking their last cigarettes before dark or texting thoughts or attempting to secure their tents with a piece of driftwood.  The sounds of the battle were muted at night and the distant crackling of small-arms fire, the remote echoes of the artillery seemed detached from them. It was a confusing period, and most of them were pleased when they were assigned to them.

But Tyler Sid was not. He had been hoping against his better judgement that recon would be given the eight replacements they needed, and to his disgust they had been assigned only four.  (Mailer Naked and the Dead)...

The generals did not understand the battle.  They were far from the conflict lost in their abstraction of what warfare was.