With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
by E.B. Sledge
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Book Reviews of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Book Review: Marines frightening and harrowing accounts with the Japanese
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a personal account of the harrowing and brutal fighting and horror these brave men faced and hand-to-hand fighting seemingly without parallel in the annals of U.S. warfare.
These are the unrelenting, earth shattering and macabre experiences that show how their love for each other did as much for their perseverence as any training or experience ever did. Courage beyond belief, and tragedy without let up until literally the last volleys were expended, and the last Japs and Marines, dead.
They lived with death, dying and destruction, artillery noise that shattered eardrums,unthinkable wounds, concussions, shattered bodies hanging in trees, screaming and insanity often minute by minute hour by hour day by day and sometimes, week by week...without letup. Add to those elements, dysentery, pneumonia, walking wounded, the physically and mentally missing...get the picture?
AND YET, THEY WERE VICTORIOUS WITHOUT EXCEPTION!
Read these old breeds then ask yourself, "Could I ever begin to muster up to what it takes to wear the Eagle Globe and Anchor"? Their grandsons are today guarding what we all should be so grateful for here, as they continue to spill their blood in the mountains, marshes and deserts of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Book Review: With the Old Breed
Summary: 5 Stars
After seeing E.B.Sledge on the History Channel's 'Hell in the Pacific', I was taken by his straightforward and honest approach to the extremely unsavory task of war.
I was saddened to learn Mr. Sledge passed away in 2001.
If you are interested in war history his book is very well written and easy to follow. I read 'Helmet for my Pillow' by Robert Leckie as well.
Mr. Leckie's book is also very good but written with a lot of obscure words which made it a little harder to follow. Perhaps just a sign of the times when his book was written as opposed to Mr. Sledge's book which was written in the early 1980's.
Mr. Sledge's book, like Mr. Leckie's, does not use foul language, but Mr. Sledge's book spares no graphic detail otherwise. Mr. Leckie's book usually refers to the horror of war but only gives a few graphic examples.
Not that gore determines the quality of a book but it is easier to empathize with Mr. Sledge's daily existance.
Also, after hearing Mr. Sledge speak and his southern drawl, I could visualize him speaking the words he wrote in his no nonsense approach.
'With the Old Breed' is an excellent book and needs to be read by any WWII historian.
Book Review: War with the shine rubbed off...
Summary: 5 Stars
December 29th, 1980, I arrived at the same Marine Corps boot camp which welcomed EB Sledge nearly 40 years before. With the Old Breed (WTOB) makes it perfectly clear why the stress and hardship of the Marine Corps boot camp experience is necessary. Thankfully, my generation was spared the subsequent horror that Sledge and his fellow marines witnessed on the islands of Peleliu and Okinawa.
Unlike other WWII books, WTOB truly brings home the misery and insanity of the Pacific theater slugfest. Death is imminent on nearly every page. The broken, shredded, mangled bodies of friend and foe are always close at hand. The filth, the stench, the mania of combat are unapologetically laid bare. There are passages so unforgettably gruesome that any romantic view of warfare is crushed beyond recognition.
WTOB reads as a personal journey through hell from which EB Sledge emerged against extraordinary odds. One marvels that he wasn't emotionally scarred beyond recovery. These were impressive men, iron-willed warriors, all of whom deserve our undying gratitude. We benefit from their unbelievable bravery and would be mistaken not to read this book. 5+ stars.
Book Review: Brilliant Memior
Summary: 5 Stars
Watching the varios retrospectives shown during the 50h anniversary of the end of WWII was fascinating,but what delighted me was seeing Eugene Sledge on televlsion and getting to see what he looked like and what his voice sounded like.I'd read his book several times and it was great actually seeing him.As the cliche goes, I felt like I knew him. I assume that he's passed away because he wasn't on camera during Ken Burns' new documentary, The War,and I felt a real sense of sadness and loss when I realized that he was being discussed but wasn't being interviewed-which made me assume that death had finally caught up with him.Damned shame.He authored one of the finest American memiors of a fighting man.He brilliantly conveyed the pride and excitement that he and his fellow Marines felt on finally "making the team"and he just as brilliantly conveyed the horror and disgust that a thinking man must feel sitting in a hole in the ground surrounded by rotting bodies and human excrement,waiting for an incomprehensible foe who was eager to die in battle.RIP Eugene. Thanks for what you did for your country.Book Review: A must read!
Summary: 5 Stars
Military history is one of my greatest interests and I have read extensively about the second World War. This book is by far the best first-person account of battle I have ever read. It recounts, with vivid horror, the experience of being shelled day and night for months; the animal sounds of two men fighting to the death in a foxhole; the misery of sleeping in the mud and rain for two months; US Marines using their KBar knives to knock gold teeth out of the mouths of still-living Japanese soldiers; the hundreds of dead bodies, all infested with maggots, rotting all around you for weeks and nothing to be done about it as the action was continuous; the Marines turning into animals, rather than men, in their treatment of the wounded and dead Japanese.
You will most likely not read a more horrifing and vivid account of battle.
And in the end, "Sledgehammer" keeps saying how it is all such a waste of life, and for what? He is greatly disturbed by the carnage but fights on.
You cannot put this book down.