With the Old Breed
At Peleliu and Okinawa
by E. B. Sledge
Published By: Oxford University Press, 1981
Genre: Nonfiction | History & Culture, Military & War
Page Count: 352 (Paperback)
Audiobook Length: 13 hours and 58 minutes
Audiobook Narrator: Marc Vietor, Joe Mazzello, Tom Hanks (introduction)
ISBN: 9780891419068
Publisher’s Description
The amazing and moving WW2 memoir, on which the epic Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg series The Pacific is based
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
About the Author
Eugene Bondurant Sledge, known as E.B. Sledge, was an American marine, professor, and author, born on November 4, 1923, in Mobile, Alabama. Sledge enlisted in the United States Marine Corps during World War II and fought in the Pacific theatre, including the brutal Battle of Okinawa. His wartime experiences became the foundation for his later literary work.
After the war, Sledge pursued higher education, earning a doctorate in biology. His most renowned work, “With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa” (1981), stands as a gripping memoir that vividly recounts the harrowing conditions and intense combat he and his fellow Marines faced during the Pacific campaign.
E.B. Sledge’s book is often regarded as one of the most honest and visceral accounts of infantry combat in World War II. Beyond his literary contributions, Sledge dedicated much of his life to education, serving as a professor of biology at the University of Montevallo.
E.B. Sledge passed away on March 3, 2001, but his impactful writings continue to provide a stark and compelling insight into the experiences of those who served in the Pacific during World War II.