With the Old Breed
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With the Old Breed by E B Sledge
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Of all the books about the ground war in the Pacific, [this] is the closest to a masterpiece."--The New York Review of Books"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
In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles after its original publication in 1981. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge's acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.
An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war's famous 1st Marine Division--3rd Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where "the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets." By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.
Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater. Here is what saved, threatened, and changed his life. Here, too, is the story of how he learned to hate and kill--and came to love--his fellow man.
"In all the literature on the Second World War, there is not a more honest, realistic or moving memoir than Eugene Sledge's. This is the real deal, the real war: unvarnished, brutal, without a shred of sentimentality or false patriotism, a profound primer on what it actually was like to be in that war. It is a classic that will outlive all the armchair generals' safe accounts of--not the 'good war'--but the worst war ever."--Ken Burns
Sledgehammer Sledge was born and raised in the city of Mobile, Alabama. He enrolled in the United States Army in late 1943. Marine Corps is a branch of the United States military. He was transferred to the Pacific Theater after basic training, where he fought in Peleliu and Okinawa, two of World War II's bloodiest engagements. Following the surrender of the Japanese, Sledge joined the occupation troops in China.
He earned his bachelor's degree in biology and went on to teach at Alabama College (later the University of Montevallo) until his retirement. Sledge wrote about his combat experiences at first to explain them to his family, but his wife urged him to publish them. On March 3, 2001, Sledge passed away.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780891419068 |
| ISBN 10 | 0891419063 |
| Title | With the Old Breed |
| Author | E B Sledge |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Presidio Press |
| Year published | 2007-05-01 |
| Number of pages | 352 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |