We were on the island to learn about prehistoric Aleuts and the ecological past. But between us and Aleut occupation of the place, World War II happened. We hiked across maritime tundra landscapes scattered with symmetrical cereal-bowl bomb craters. We mapped what felt like an endless series of Japanese entrenchment features and the young men on the crew talked about gun emplacements, turkey shoots, and the Pacific Theater of War. They were terribly excited and they stood in the old emplacements waving their arms around, arguing over probable tactics, logistics, and use of terrain in defense of bays. I sighed over my graph paper and measuring tapes because I wasn’t there to learn more about World War II. Nonetheless, I was there, the WWII sites were there, and finally it occurred to me that I was thinking about the soldiers who built and maintained these trenches as people – not as machines of war and history. Young men scrambled in these irritatingly numerous trenches in the same howling wind and rain I was experiencing. Except, …