E. B. Sledge (1923–2001)

This is a great memoir if you want to understand what it was like to fight in the Pacific in WWII. It affected me very much as my reading of Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead did when I first read that. I could feel the pain—the dirt or worse yet on Peleliu the coral one couldn’t dig into—the bad food and dirty water, dirty and wet clothes, the fear. It’s painful to read, though, and if you won’t want to know the gory details faced by young men barely out of school and show more inexperienced with the world, then you don’t want to read this book.I hate war, but I feel compelled to know what it’s like so I don’t take for granted what we asked young people to experience in war. Eugene Sledge (who became Sledgehammer to his buddies) had had one year of college when he joined up—as did most of his generation (few in fact staying to finish college which is one reason why we needed the GI Bill). He joined the Marines (the “old breed” of the title).This book is different from other memoirs because of the detail. It’s not brilliantly written or “literary”. That’s its genius says Paul Fussell who reviewed it for a 1990 edition (Fussell has written about both WWI and WWII and was a soldier in the Pacific himself). Sledge explains how comradeship worked with soldiers to form lifelong bonds. He talks about officers they admired and those they hated and feared. He details the hardships and how hatred of the Japanese developed and hardened even the most sensitive among them. He explains how everything worked or happened, from the human waste in foxholes they couldn’t leave, to stripping a Japanese corpse for souvenirs, to descriptions of wounds and dead Americans lying covered up on the battlefield until they could be retrieved, to water that was dirty because those in the rear had put it in insufficiently cleaned oil drums, to how the mortar he used worked and the problems placing it in the muddy ground of Okinawa. He explains how ammunition was delivered (or not in some cases) which the movies never show. He explains how everyone was afraid and how some handled it differently from others. He explains how Japanese soldiers who spoke English tried to move in on their foxholes at night and how occasionally a buddy was mistakenly shot for an enemy.Sledge never romanticizes war. The only good was the friendship and interdependency men developed, but he doesn’t romanticize that either. show less

E. B Sledge deftly handles two huge challenges in writing the first hand narrative of America’s two most costly battles.
First, he faces the challenge of conveying a vivid picture of combat, death and inhumanity while not present so grisly a picture that readers could not “stomach” the book.
Second, he faces the bigger challenge of honoring those who fought, especially those who sacrificed their lives, while not dwelling on how totally and completely unnecessary and even criminal the show more invasion of Peliliu really was.
There really are no words, no description and not even any cinematic presentations that can truly show the horrors of any war, and the war in the Pacific was far more brutal than most. Sledge rises to the challenge by describing in detail sufficient images to give the reader a feel for the total horror. The graphic descriptions of the few situations allows the readers to understand that things are even worse than what he is reading, yet allow him to continue reading the book.
Those who fought and even died on Peliliu did what their country asked them to do. Their willingness to face unimaginable, grueling and unrelenting horrors testifies to the courage, loyalty and dedication they had.
The planners of this engagement, those who ordered nearly 4000 young ment to die failed and perhaps even betrayed them. Peliliu was unnecessary bloodletting. It’s participants did the right thing for the wrong reason, yet they themselves were innocent of the blunder until years later.
The invasion of Peliliu was undertaken to protect the left flank of MacArthur when he invaded the Philippines. On that basis, perhaps the Peliliu action was important.
But the larger issue has been settled by military experts and historians for years. The very invasion of the Philippines was both unnecessary and unproductive. America spilled the blood of thousands of its own and those of other nations solely to satisfy the ego of the narcissistic MacArther who had proclaimed, “I shall return.” And return he did, but for no strategic or logistic gain.
Sledge dodges this issue well and focuses the reader on those who did their duty, who displayed unbelievable heroism and to whom the world owes its gratitude.
Too bad MacArthur himself didn’t have to land with the Marines. show less

As other reviewers have noted, this is one of the best descriptions of a battle field I have ever read. The picture Sledge paints of the mud and decaying bodies he dug foxholes in Okinawa will always stay with me when I think of the war in the Pacific. If you are looking for a ode to the absurdity of war, here it is.

The HBO series, The Pacific, used material adapted from this memoir. R. V. Burgin whose book Islands of the Damned was also used to make the series was in Corporal in Sledge's show more mortar squad and is mentioned several times in this work. show less

The strength of this memoir rests on three pillars. One, Eugene Sledge's memory for detail is so vivid that I wonder if he had that rare condition known as autobiographical memory. Two, he had a masterful ability to put his detailed memories into words. Three, he experienced actual hell and lived to tell about it.

The mud was knee deep in some places, probably deeper in others if one dared venture there. For several feet around every corpse, maggots crawled around in the muck and then were show more washed away by the runoff of the rain. There wasn't a tree or bush left. All was open country. Shells had torn up the turf so completely that ground cover was nonexistent. The rain poured down on us as evening approached. The scene was nothing but mud; shell fire; flooded craters with their silent, pathetic, rotting occupants; knocked-out tanks and amtracs; and discarded equipment--utter desolation. The stench of death was overpowering. The only way I could bear the monstrous horror of it all was to look upward away from the earthly reality surrounding us, watch the leaden gray clouds go scudding over, and repeat over and over to myself that the situation was unreal--just a nightmare--that I would soon awake and find myself somewhere else. But the ever-present smell of death saturated my nostrils. It was there with every breath I took. I existed from moment to moment, sometimes thinking death would have been preferable. During the fighting around the Umurbrogol Pocket on Peleliu, I had been depressed by the wastage of human lives. But in the mud and driving rain before Shuri, we were surrounded by maggots and decay. Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell's own cesspool. show less