In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and. 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. WITH THE OLD BREED At Peleliu and Okinawa By E.B. Sledge Illustrated. pages. Ballantine Books. $ Eugene Bondurant Sledge.
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There are corpses everywhere, as on Peleliu, often left yhe and putrefying in the hot sun. Men tumble to the bottom of ravines and have to climb out, covered with maggots because the bottom of the ravine was filled with rotting corpses. This is all helped along tremendously by the very fact that Sledge is such a likeable guy. Consequently, I’m glad that I watched The Pacific before reading With the Old Breedbecause the images Opd retained from the miniseries helped me to iwth the technical details and battle scenes that Sledge describes in his memoirs.
Sledge nicknamed Sledgehammer by his fellow Marines is completely honest. He reports the moment, while on Peleliu, that he suddenly heard a voice saying “You will survive the war.
If you saw the mini-series “The Pacific” you will recognize some scenes. Sledge is so little an author in the pejorative sense that his eye seems never to wander from his subject to contemplate the literary effect he’s creating. Anyone seeking to learn of the exp One of the all time best war memoirs ever written.
With the Old Breed
These are men — mostly teenagers – that literally live for months on end, wet and dirty, in filth and gore surrounded by the smell, sight, and sometimes feel of rotting, maggot infested corpses of both friend and foe. He doesn’t, and goes to find a medic, only for another Marine to wwith into the hut and calmly shoot her.
His wonderings at how men can be so cruel and can become animalistic so quickly within the confines of a battlefield.
Being lulled into a false sense of ssledge is never a good recipe to survive a war. It is all told in such an open and personal way which makes it something different from other war memoirs and a compelling read. Sledge’s memoirs also depict a fanatical, military enemy–much like today’s fanatical “Islamsists”–that is difficult for post WWII generations to connect with Japan, our current friend, ally and trading partner.
An appropriate read for Memorial Day weekend. Also shows the fanaticism of the Japanese troops and provides essential background to what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Refresh and try again. They knew what to expect – they’d come ashore and the Japanese would try to swarm them in suicidal “Banzai charges” that were Japanese infantry doctrine up to that point, no matter that it had repeatedly proven ineffective against disciplined troops.
So at en, it is hard to decide where the action is taking place and how it fits in olc what is going on around the individual who is writing the account. The best books I have read have been found through the bibliographies of other writers I have appreciated Losing Your Humanity Savagery was evident on both sides, though far more so on the Japanese. The review is also long because the book gave me lots to think about.
Nov 16, J. Sledge describes one instance bred which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered and with severed genitals stuffed into their mouths. They do not surrender, they will lure American medics to their wounded and then blow themselves and the medics up with grenades.
Sledge’s account is told in frank, straight forward and understated language. Mar 20, Chad Bearden rated it really liked it Shelves: References to this book Seeing the Elephant: They tend to be either poorly written not surprising since most Infantry in the war were the least intelligent of the Branches.
He details the process and mechanisms that slowly strip away a soldier’s humanity and compassion, making the thought process accessible to those who have never served in combat. Dulce et wihh est Pro patria mori.
Oops, getting more sentimental here, let’s continue Frankly, it’s almost unnerving how little perspective and context inform the tale. Sledge Limited preview – We were unable to understand their attitudes until we ourselves returned home and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or a bus There is no glory in war, in the shedding of another man’s blood; in digging a foxhole in a torrential downpour only to uncover the badly decomposing body of a Japanese soldier crawling with maggots; in watching helplessly as four of your comrades retrieve, on a be, a wounded Marine amid machinegun fire “If it were me out there,” Sledge recounts, “I would want to know I wouldn’t be left behind.
So it was decided Peleliu needed to be taken as a first step in MacArthur’s campaign to retake the Philippines.
With the Old Breed – E. B. Sledge – böcker () | Adlibris Bokhandel
Sledge wrote what is now considered a classic among World War II memoirs, a description of Pacific fighting from an enlisted man’s view. He wrote,”To the non-combatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement, but to those who entered the meat grinder itself the war was a netherworld of horror be which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on.
The Engine 2 Diet: He details the hardships and how hatred of the Japanese developed and hardened even the most sensitive among them.