With the Old Breed: The World War Two Pacific Classic [Paperback]

E B (Gene) Sledge's memoir of his time in the Pacific War has been an incredibly rich source for for television history. Ken Burns drew extensively upon his account for his brilliant series "The War" particularly in Episode 9 "FUBAR" and his words are read and quoted. Now it extensively figures again in the what will be one of the great series of modern television, HBOs "The Pacific" a 10-part mini-series from the creators of "Band of Brothers" telling the intertwined stories of three Marines during America's battle with the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. "Helmet for My Pillow" by Robert Leckie is the other key primary source and you may wish to read the reviews elsewhere of that excellent book. It is Sledge's memoir however that in my subjective opinion is the definitive account of this terrible conflict.

Gene Sledge was no backseat General or causal observer, he gave up a graduation course leading to a commissioned officer's position to serve as a Private First Class in the Pacific Theater and saw combat at the raging infernos of Peleliu with its controversial airfield and Okinawa. He played others roles such as a stretcher bearer and constantly throughout his service, Sledge kept extensive "unauthorised notes" of what happened in his pocket sized New Testament. If you go over to the US Amazon site you will see that this book has nearly 300 reviews and Sledge is rightly compared to Robert Graves as a war author. This is no American hyperbole. Gene Sledge aside from his military feats is a great writer and remembrancer.

This is by no means a "jolly romp" war memoir it is a brutal and often terrifyingly honest account of a soldiers experience and the deep fear and boredom that underpins this. Slegdes account of the first man he kills throws into sharp relief the the unimaginable dread of taking another life. His deep reflections and anxiety about whether he might turn out "yella" are brilliantly articulated. His sheer dismay at the "terror compounded" of being out in the open in an artillery barrage is almost heart rending and you wish he wasn't there. Indeed Joseph Conrad's immortal phrase "Oh the horror" in the Heart of Darkness could be subtitle for this book. Sledge in one sense also prefigures the some of the disillusionment that would be rampant in the later Vietnam War. He talks of the "awesome reality that we were training to be canon fodder", the word "expendable" is used and the sheer ruthlessness of the combat and treatment of soldiers is set out in raw detail. Sledge was deeply religious but combined his faith with sharp intellectual analysis of his own and his comrades precarious situation. "Something of me died at Peleliu" he states in capturing an island which was deemed by the military planners to be a four day "in and out" exercise that eventually took 2 months and thousands of lives. The Japanese were blasted and burned out of these Islands but in turn gave new meaning to the term "never give an inch". The battle rolled onto the mainland but not before the "two scorpions in a bottle" to use Sledge's term went from island to island slugging it out in increasingly brutal combat. Sledge ended up in the the apocalypse at Okinawa in a mortar section which went in singing "Little Brown Jug" at the top of its lungs.

When you write a review of America's role in World War 11 some British reviewers get upset about the fact that our soldiers are often ignored or written out of history. The failure of British television in particular to undertake contemporary and exhaustive historical TV series of both World Wars and properly recognise the sheer effort/contribution of the British people is a travesty. The Thames production "World at War" is now nearly 40 years old and "The Great War" produced by the BBC in the early sixties. HBO should therefore be thanked alongside with recent American documentary makers for the important role they are playing. The same is true of Gene Sledge's brilliant book "With the old breed" since the messages it contains are timeless and universal, and we ignore them at our peril.

The decision of HBO to use `With the Old Breed' as one the key sources for their $ 200 million mini-series ` The Pacific' has brought Eugene Sledge's war memoirs has a whole new global readership. First published in 1981 but using notes taken at the time of the battles in 1944/5, this is an account of the author's recruitment and training in the US Marine Corps and his participation in two of World War Two's most brutal and horrific battles . The original working title of was `Into the Abyss' and nothing comes closer to describing the particular forms of hell that were the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa. Whilst the author refers to the wider strategic picture, that is only reference events and this remains a very personal account.

Sledge doesn't shy away from describing in detail the horror of the battlefield with its rotting corpses, mangled body parts and human excrement. Too often in other literature comparisons with the First World War's trenches are drawn, yet on Okinawa the combination of multiple assaults against a well entrenched enemy and a rain saturated battlefield lead to a repeat of those conditions. It was only the lack of Japanese re-enforcements that ensured this campaign did not develop into the same stalemate.

Despite all the horror around him and the killing he had to do, Sledge's own humanity, whilst tested, survives and shines through. There is no sense of blood lust for the death of the Japanese, even though their conduct is often appalling, and Sledge finds no glory in war even in the eventual US victory.

The writing is one of the great strengths of this book. The author was well educated and after the war went on to become a Professor of biology. The narrative is always clear, events are easy to follow and there is the avoidance of poetic prose and unnecessarily over descriptive passages but still you are carried along by the events.

I have no doubt that Spielberg, Hanks and HBO will try to do justice to this book and Sledge's story. However, they can never cover all the events and detail it contains. This is highly recommended for anyone interested in the frontline combat experience of war.

By the end of this book I felt a real attatchment to the author and the men who shared the experiences described in the book.

It is not one of the best works of literature I have come across, however it is one of the best accounts of the reality of war on a group of men I have read.