William Styron

There is a story by William Styron in the recent edition of The New Yorker; a bit surprising this since Styron died in 2006 - does it take three years or more for the magazine to print what they have accepted?
The story is called "Rat Beach" and is more of a reminiscence than a piece of fiction; it's told in the first person and you feel that person is Styron. The action takes place on an island which the troops call Rat Beach, close to the Japanese mainland just before they are going to invade the country in a last attempt to defeat them. It gives a detailed picture of the life of a young lieutenant in the American marines and of the man's deep fear of the imminent assault.
The assault, of course, never took place; Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki and the war was over. But the story doesn't get as far as that, it stays with the possible assault about to take place.
I wonder if Styron was giving an argument for the dropping of the bombs: at one stage a popular colonel tells his officers that the fighting will be fierce, that the Japs are not yet finished, that they will fight to the last man.... that "they'll have guns zeroed in to blow us apart. But we will have to go in and take that beachead even if it means that many of us won't be coming back." In short, that for victory the cost to American lives would be enormous.
This is, of course, a good reason for dropping the first bomb - unless one is of the opinion that the dropping of any atomic weapon on civilian communities is an act of barbarianism which is humanitarianly inexcusable - but it's no reason for dropping the second, surely.
But the story is not about the bomb, it's about fear, a deeply felt fear that consumes the young man to such an extent that he wonders if he will be able to act at all never mind couageously.
Tryon wrote later: "When I was a young platoon leader, there was this incredible sense of fate. The myth at that age is you're going to live for ever. Well, I never believed that and my friends didn't. I thought I was going to die."
The only book I read by William Styron was "The Long March", another army story of gruelling endeavour. That was published before his best seller "Sophie's Choice" which I think I will now read (and/or see the film with Meryl Streep, who won an Oscar I believe).