With the Old Breed
The World War Two Pacific Classic
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4.7 • 113 Ratings
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
The inspiration behind the HBO series THE PACIFIC
This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands...
Landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 as a twenty-year-old new recruit to the US Marines, Eugene Sledge can only try desperately to survive. At Peleliu and Okinawa - two of the fiercest and filthiest Pacific battles of WWII - he witnesses the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier has for his enemy.
During temporary lapses in the fighting, conditions on the islands mean that the Marines often can't wash, stay dry, dig latrines, or even find time to eat. Suffering from constant fear, fatigue, and filth, the struggle of simply living in a combat zone is utterly debilitating.
Yet despite horrendous conditions Sledge finds time to keep notes that he would later turn into a book. Described as one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war, With the Old Breed tells with compassion and honesty of the cruelty, bravery and deaths of the men he fought alongside, and of his own journey from patriotic innocence to battle-scarred veteran.
'Eugene Sledge became more than a legend with his memoir, With The Old Breed. He became a chronicler, a historian, a storyteller who turns the extremes of the war in the Pacific - the terror, the camaraderie, the banal and the extraordinary - into terms we mortals can grasp' Tom Hanks
Customer Reviews
A personal account of the titanic clash of two war machines in the Pacific
A tragic true story. This may be a story about ‘the old breed’ but the feelings, emotions and events described ensure this book isn’t about the ‘good ol’ days.’ Instead it is a tragic, soul-deflating, first-person account of those famous campaigns on tiny patches of land in the Pacific. I’m afraid this book is so sad, so depressing and so detailed about the depths of human suffering it probably is accurate. Unfortunately it’s required reading for anyone with lingering illusions of grandeur about America’s final pacific campaigns in the Second World War.
Fantastic
The ordeal of war and all its terror and waste told by someone you feel like you have befriended by the last page.
E Sledge is a hero and his story is worth classic status.
An inspired account of war and its effects in the Pacific in WW2
A gripping, honest, and chilling personal account of a United States Marine in a constant battle for survival in the Pacific Theatre against the hardened and fanatical Japanese during WW2. Sledge manages to draw the reader in and convey the absolute horrors faced by those on the front line whilst offering unique insight into the thoughts and feelings of an ordinary man, thrust into an extraordinary situation. A must read for anyone wanting to know more about the lesser focussed on but equally important theatre of world war 2.