With the Old Breed
The World War Two Pacific Classic
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- £9.49
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- £9.49
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
Fantastic!
An insight like none I've read/seen before into the daily life of a Marine in the Pacific fight of WW2. Anyone interested in war or history will defiantly enjoy this. Fantastic read.
Brutal
Not just a combat tale, but a true account of the daily struggles of a marine on the frontlines. Warts and all
A Sledgehammer to the Heart
This is one of the finest first hand accounts of war ever written. That is in no small part because it was not written for the public, but for the author’s family and friends, in an attempt to convey the experience. For anyone who has a relative or friend who “never talks about the war”—any war—this book will give you a pretty good idea why.