With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
by E. B. Sledge
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Book Summary Information
Author: E. B. SledgeIntroduction: Paul Fussell
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1990-10-25
ISBN: 0195067142
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Oxford University Press
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Book Reviews of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Book Review: Riveting, Haunting
Summary: 5 Stars
The best actual battlefield account I've ever read. Arrogantly called the best account `by an enlisted man' on the back cover reviews Sledge's account transcends any attempt to classify it, in my opinion. Haunting, the reader will probably have night and day mares like those who fought in the battles Sledge describes so graphically.
I was traveling around the Eastern Sierras last fall and used a Laundromat in Big Pine, CA. I noticed a USMC flag in the corner and engaged an unlikely short, spare old man around the place if he were a `Gyrene'. He was. I asked him about his war experiences and he told me he had been a 1st Marine Division Scout on Peleliu and Okinawa, had been wounded and spent 2 YEARS IN THE HOSPITAL UPON HIS RETURN. I immediately recognized him as being one of America's Greatest Generation and I thanked him for serving - I said it to him several times as it did not seem to be registering. Bob did assert Sledge wasn't actually one of the `Old Breed' as he had not served in the Cape Gloucester battle but I pointed out his title was `With the Old Breed' and that calmed Bob down.
I bought and read the Sledge book a few weeks ago and drifted by the Laundromat and looked up Bob. I gave him the book. It brought tears to his eyes to see it and I showed him the list of the very few who had survived in Sledge's company. Bob said he was sure he knew several of them and said he might get a hold of Sledge himself through the 1st Marine Division Association. Bob went to his place and got out his hard bound copy of `The Old Breed' from which Sledge's work is named. Bob said he would get a new pair of reading glasses. I will drift by in a few weeks and he hasn't I'll offer to read Sledge to him.
an excerpt from my continuing adventure journal
5/29/2007 9:34 Memorial Day - Or an exercise in applied ontology....
I'm at `the office' now, my friend Chris's garage in Big Pine with my computer set up on her workbench, sitting on an old box, surrounded by dogs and cats who I have to guard against walking on my keyboard looking for pets while I'm typing. Not wanting to go in the house to use the potty I grab the mountain bike off the wall and cycle down to the Mobil station. While there I thought I'd cycle by Bob's and thank him for serving in WW 2. He was out on the sidewalk in his electric chair with the US and Marine Corps flags on the back sticking up over his oxygen bottle. I asked him what he was doing and he said, "Oh, just watching the world go by" as heavy southbound Memorial Day traffic passed. I said to Bob, "Happy Memorial Day, Bob. Thank you for serving in World War 2." Tears welled up in his eyes and he just said thank you. I asked Bob if he had gotten any reading glasses yet so he could read the book I gave him but he said no. He was due to get a ride down to the VA hospital in Long Beach in a while where they would make some up for him. He told me of another Marine buddy of his who had died recently who was 83. I said to Bob, "Well, we're all getting older you know."
update - Veteran's Day 11/12/2007 I stopped by to see Bob yesterday after camping in the desert nearby. I flagged him down on his electric chair with the oxygen bottle on back flanked by the US and Marine Corp flags which flutter patriotically in the breeze when Bob is on the roll. I had my new girlfriend from LA with me and we thanked Bob for serving and making our current freedom and prosperity possible. When asked about `The War' - the Ken Burns series - Bob liked it but pointed out two errors - the two lines of Marines walking toward each other was from Tarawa not Okinawa and one other shot had also been mis-captioned.
Carolyn asked Bob if he and his compatriots got together for reunions - Bob replied "there's no one left." Like most of the `Old Breed' Marines Bob is tough. After moving to California in his 60s or so Bob pretty much lived in the backcountry of the Sierras - both by choice and necessity. He got a Pacemaker some time ago and went backpacking again and the pack straps wrecked the Pacemaker so Bob had to make an emergency trip to Long Beach to get another one.
Now 83 Bob said he will be spending 3 months sometime this winter '07-`08 at the Long Beach VA to have his rotator cuff worked on. His last name is Cox and he's originally from Coney Island if anyone is in the LA area and wants to check the VA and stop by and see him when he's `in attendance'. Bob is one of the survivors of the last war America won before our military was high jacked by the incompetent desk jockeys in Washington who failed to prevail in Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq. Bob reminded us that of the 253 men in his company that assaulted the ridge at Peleliu only 16 returned.
Summary of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
In his own book, Wartime, Paul Fussell called With the Old Breed "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." John Keegan referred to it in The Second World War as "one of the most arresting documents in war literature." And Studs Terkel was so fascinated with the story he interviewed its author for his book, "The Good War." What has made E.B. Sledge's memoir of his experience fighting in the South Pacific during World War II so devastatingly powerful is its sheer honest simplicity and compassion.Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, With the Old Breed presents a stirring, personal account of the vitality and bravery of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923 and raised on riding, hunting, fishing, and a respect for history and legendary heroes such as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene Bondurant Sledge (later called "Sledgehammer" by his Marine Corps buddies) joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. In those years, he passed, often painfully, from innocence to experience.
Sledge enlisted out of patriotism, idealism, and youthful courage, but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he simply and directly recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and cruelty, the stench of death, and, above all, constant fear. Sledge still has nightmares about "the bloody, muddy month of May on Okinawa." But, as he also tellingly reveals, the bonds of friendship formed then will never be severed.
Sledge's honesty and compassion for the other marines, even complete strangers, sets him apart as a memoirist of war. Read as sobering history or as high adventure, With the Old Breed is a moving chronicle of action and courage.
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