"For novel readers who care about war and warriors who cared about novels, a great memory is the picture, seen in tens of millions of imaginations, and finally in a film, of Pvt. Robert E. Lee Prewitt playing taps at Schofield Barracks, 25 miles from Honolulu, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, in James Jones's great novel, From Here to Eternity. It was published 55 years ago and sold three million copies, and it is on my mind today because I'm thinking about the taps we will all hear this Monday, Memorial Day, at ceremonies and in cemeteries throughout the country. When I hear it I'm going to think of what my father always said when he heard taps. "Play it, Prewitt," he'd say. Because that character was like men he'd known in the American army of World War II."
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Peggy Noonan in "From 'Eternity' to Here" in The Wall Street Journal (25 May 2006)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Jones
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James Jones
James Ramon Jones (6 November 1921 – 9 May 1977) was an American author, who became famous after the publication of his first novel, From Here to Eternity.
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