With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
by E. B. Sledge
List Price:
Our Price: $6.98
You Save: $9.02 (56%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $2.70 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: E. B. SledgeEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-01
ISBN: 0891419063
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Presidio Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9780891419068
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Book Review: Hiroshima and Nagasaki to avoid murdering US military personnel
Summary: 5 Stars
With the Old Breed - At Peleliu and Okinawa, by E. B. Sledge, 2nd Edition ed. Novato, California: Presidio Press, 1981.
Started Section: May 14, 2006
Finished Section: May 15, 2006
With the Old Breed - At Peleliu and Okinawa by E. B. Sledge is a very important book at many different levels. It is like the Bible, there are lessons and messages throughout that speak to the past, the present, and to the future. It can be used to explain or support almost any argument that deals with human conflict and why men fight, have fought, and will probably continue to fight.
First, it is amazing that the book ever written. Most combat veterans from the major wars in the 20th Century, especially at the level of those on the front line, have refrained from telling about what combat was really like to those who did not share the experience. Civil War veterans were more likely to write and share their experiences than those of WWI and WWII.
Historians and the public are most used to get their information on how life was like on the front line from novels which were based on real or imagined experience. These novels really did not deal with the minute by minute, hour by hour, day to day life and death on the front lines. Sledge deals with the reality of going to the john during combat:
Added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere. It was all but impossible to practice simple, elemental field sanitation on most areas of Peleliu because of the rocky surface. Field sanitation during ... combat was the responsibility of each man. In short, under normal conditions, he covered his own waste with a scoop of soil. At night when he didn't dare venture out of his foxhole, he simply used an empty grenade canister or ration can, threw it outside of his hole, and scooped dirt over it next day if he wasn't under heavy enemy fire.
This book is the bottom up view of war. This memoir deals with group and individual survival, not grand strategy and the interaction of many players. Sledge is vaguely aware of things that are happening while he was on active duty but the prime mission of Sledge and front line fighters for eternity is to come back alive with as many of your friends as possible. The corollary of this is that you have to either destroy your adversaries or achieve what is preferable, their surrender as quickly as possible.
War in the Pacific was almost entirely new to the American fighting man and American public. Americans had no real experience in fighting on this scale before against non Europeans. The closest thing that they had experienced and it was not well known was in fighting Philippine insurgents who wanted their independence at the end of the Spanish American War. The American Indian was different of course but the memory of fighting them was fading and the fighting had not been on the scale of World War II in the Pacific. Many historians and people use Sledge to show how prevalent racism was in our fighting the Japs, a word that will remain with all of those who participated or experienced this war from afar. The Japanese are those people with whom we now share common goals and aspirations because our cultures are much closer now than they were during World War II.
This author does not see the alleged racism in our fighting the Japanese/Japs in World War II. I see something that goes much further back into the history of warfare which is the desire of the fighting man to have to fight as little as possible, a condition that minimizes the loss of life on both sides. The preference of the "ritual" battle where one side knows in advance that they can not win, engage in minimal fighting to maintain a sense of honor, and then surrender under terms that are mutually acceptable, even if onerous to the losing side. Victors over a vanquished enemy often were the most vicious when the victors had suffered many unnecessary casualties. Sledge and his front line compatriots showed this resentment in fighting an enemy whose goal is "to inflict maximum losses on the American forces. The tactics turned Okinawa into a blood bath."
Another reason why this racism may be overblown, especially on the part of Sledge, is the fact that he was from the segregated south. His family had also fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. I did not find any of this type of Black Racism in Sledge nor did I find it transferred by Sledge to his Japanese adversaries.
All this being said, both the American fighting man and the American public transferred America's Black Racism to the Japanese by their perception of Japanese behavior and American propaganda. They were different and their Bushido Creed and Emperor worship supported their contempt for those who would not fight to the death, for them surrender was not an option.
Neither Sledge and his men nor the Japanese military on the front line were interested in the fact that extremely high American casualties might result in a negotiated peace settlement more favorable to the Japanese than Unconditional Surrender. This is left to the policy makers whom are not a part of Sledge's world will make these calculations.
Sledge's book also gives the reader insight from the Japanese side of the conflict. This is not the purpose of the book but it is a subtle message shown in the book. It ties in with Sledge's many comments on the waste of war in terms of lives lost and destroyed. The Japanese have the advantage of terrain and fortifications against the Americans who have to come to them to settle the issue in combat. The Japanese have their version of "Live Free or Die."
Victor Davis Hanson rates With the Old Breed by Sledge as the second most important book in his listing of "The definitive books on the battles of the 20th century."
There are some brilliant memoirs of the savage battle for Okinawa, but E.B. Sledge's is by far the most haunting. Sledge, who landed with the Marines on both Okinawa and Peleliu islands, describes in matter-of-fact prose how the superior discipline and bonds between fellow Marines overcame the often brilliant fighting of the desperate Japanese, who hugely outnumbered [if they had come out of their entrenchments to fight the Americans on the beach. This numerical advantage would have been meaningless and very suicidal in face of American Naval and Air superiority.] the Americans and fought from impenetrable subterranean concrete and coral-covered gun emplacements. "With the Old Breed" might serve as an antiwar ode, but the book ends by reminding the reader how well the U.S. was served in its hour of need by rare men such as his own--men that Sledge thinks it may well need again.
It is interesting to see how other writers, historians, and pundits have used Sledge's book since the end of World War II. Studs Terkel's, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War Two (New York, 1985) uses Sledge's work to show that WWII was a "Good" War while Vietnam is a bad one. The internet also can give the reader the chance to hear Sledge tell his own story in his own voice. As you listen to him, his book becomes more real. It is hard to believer that this soft spoken man, now a PhD, did what he did and he was not alone. It is his voice that speaks for many others [http://www.studsterkel.org/gwar.php].
Although some can see Sledge's work as an antiwar tract, Hanson and others use Sledge's book to show that Americans have put themselves in harm's way for the good of their country. As Sledge himself says, "They did their duty so a sheltered homeland can enjoy the peace that was purchased at such a high cost. We owe those Marines a profound debt of gratitude."
The author Paul Fussell has caught the fact that "Sledge wrote this memoir less for strangers than to tell his own family what his war had been like." Paul Fussell not only wrote the current introduction of the Sledge's book in 1990. In it, he also shows how the book can be used to justify the immediate use of the Atomic Bomb against an enemy who would not surrender. The Marines and Army had used flame throwing tanks to clear the enemy from their entrenched positions in the Pacific. Sledge and the front line fighters were happy that Truman used the Atomic Bomb for the same purpose against mainland Japan.
Paul Fussell has latterly found fame verging on notoriety for his mordantly witty yet deeply serious dissenting position on two of the determining military issues of the age. In the first place he dissents from the widely credited if often unexamined propositions enunciated by A. J. P. Taylor and propagated by Studs Terkel that, "Despite all the killing and destruction that accompanied it, the Second World War was a good war." For Fussell, who was there, it was nothing of the kind. "It was a war and nothing else, and thus stupid and sadistic." In the second place he dissents from any condemnation of the decision to drop the bomb in 1945, a dissent memorably registered in the title essay of his most recent collection, Thank God for the Atomic Bomb. In the early 1990s both positions have a tendency to surprise. Conjoined, they are positively shocking--an effect one suspects Fussell himself has taken some pains to achieve.
Alex Danchev also drives home the point about the fact that fighting for your country is neither immoral nor futile.
The book also loses the argument. Eugene Sledge for one is perfectly clear. In a passage not quoted by Fussell, his memoir concludes with the thought that, though war is indeed "brutish, inglorious and a terrible waste until the millennium arrives and countries cease enslaving others it will be necessary to accept responsibility to make sacrifices as my comrades did."
Sledge's full quote is:
Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and to be willing to make sacrifices for one's country -- as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, "If the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." With privilege goes responsibility.
Sledge's book should be required reading for all courses that deal with foreign policy questions, World War II in particular, because it takes these issues from the cerebrum to the smell of the foxhole where wars are fought. The book is a call to all future policy makers to do more than their absolute best either to prevent a war from occurring or to be prepared to end it quickly if one needs to be fought so that others will not be filled "with anger at the war and the realization of the senseless waste." This required reading should be accompanied by a required 3 to 4 page book report as well as class discussion. Once this has been achieved, students will have a much better understanding of the implications of how they feel foreign policy should be conducted.
After reading Sledge, it would be interesting to see how many students would still want Sledge and his men to be on the front line landing on a beach on mainland Japan.
Summary of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge?s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war?s famous 1st Marine Division?3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where ?the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.? By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.
Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill?and came to love?his fellow man.
Military Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Military Books
A Quiet American: The Secret War of Varian Fryby Andy Marino
St. Martin's Press; Published: 1999-10-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $11.75
Price in other shops:
Eva's Story: A Survivor's Tale by the Step-Sister of Anne Frankby Eva Schloss, Evelyn Julia Kent
St Martins Pr; Published: 1989-04; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $40.00
George Washington: A Biographyby Washington Irving
Da Capo Press; Published: 1994-08-22; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polkby William Dusinberre
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-03-27; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $21.49
Price in other shops:
Hitler: Diagnosis of a Destructive Prophetby Fritz Redlich
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2000-05-18; Paperback; Book
Best price: $19.25
Alexander Hamiltonby Ron Chernow
Penguin Audio; Published: 2004-04-26; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $29.95
Price in other shops:
Alexander Hamiltonby Ron Chernow
Penguin Audio; Published: 2004-04-26; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $141.72
Faith of My Fathers: A Family Memoirby John McCain, Mark Salter
Harper; Published: 2008-09-30; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $0.01
Price in other shops:
Patton: A Genius for Warby Carlo D'Este, este, Carlo D'
Harpercollins; Published: 1995-11; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $49.94
Stonewall Jacksonby James Robertson
Macmillan Pub.; Published: 1997-02-18; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $48.00
Price in other shops:
Similar Books and other products
Company Commander: The Classic Infantry Memoir of World War IIby Charles B. Macdonald
Burford Books; Published: 1999-10-19; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.90
Price in other shops:
Strong Men Armed: The United States Marines Against Japanby Robert Leckie
Da Capo Press; Published: 2010-02-09; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.48
Price in other shops:
The Second World Warby John Keegan
Penguin (Non-Classics); Published: 2005-05-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $13.39
Price in other shops:
Ivan's War: Life and Death in the Red Army, 1939-1945by Catherine Merridale
Picador; Published: 2006-01-23; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.89
Price in other shops:
The Winds of Warby Herman Wouk
Back Bay Books; Published: 2002-02-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $4.99
Price in other shops:
A Team for America: The Army-Navy Game That Rallied a Nationby Randy Roberts
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Published: 2011-11-29; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $12.91
Price in other shops:
China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War IIby E. B. Sledge
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2003-09-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.69
Price in other shops:
The Second World War: A Short History (Struggle for Survival)by R. A. C. Parker
Oxford University Press, USA; Published: 2002-03-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.00
Price in other shops:
Islands of the Damned: A Marine at War in the Pacificby R.V. Burgin, Bill Marvel
NAL Trade; Published: 2011-03-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.98
Price in other shops:
Helmet for My Pillow: From Parris Island to the Pacificby Robert Leckie
Bantam Books; Published: 2010-02-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.80
Price in other shops: