With the Old Breed Easy to Read
Joe Mazzello plays Eugene Sledge in HBO'southward The Pacific. HBO hide caption
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[ed. note: Knowing what characters in The Pacific wrote memoirs may authorize, for some, as a "spoiler," in that they apparently ... lived long plenty to write memoirs. Then please understand that these reflections from NPR's Russell Lewis may, in effect, spoil events from Earth War II. This cannot be helped. I dearly hope you will read it anyway. -- Linda Holmes]
past Russell Lewis
Some books just stay with yous. Mayhap it's a memorable storyline. Or the writing. Or a compelling narrative. Sometimes it'south all of those and more.
I first read With The Old Breed when I was in higher. Journalism was my major. Only American history became a passion. The early Deep South, the Civil Rights motion, Globe War Ii. I soaked it all in and read as much about those eras equally I could. Just one book haunted me. It stayed with me. It'south the kind of book you dearest to reread. Footling did I know how With The Old Breed would later parallel many aspects of my life.
The writing of With The Old Breed, and the reading of it besides, after the bound.
Eugene Sledge grew up in due south Alabama. He joined the Marines and fought in two battles in World War 2: Peleliu and Okinawa. He wanted to become an officer but enlisted to go to boxing sooner. He was scared and brave. He wasn't certain if he'd survive.
Sledge took notes throughout both campaigns, intending to write a short memoir for his family. His words were honest, forthright and just plainly accessible. During some of the worst firefights, as his friends were cutting down by enemy fire, Sledge wrote several times, "What a waste." I remembered how he chose his words and the pictures he painted with his engaging, all the same simple, descriptions.
He went through boot campsite at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. He remembered how Drill Instructors would bark orders at the terrified recruits. Many years subsequently, every bit a public radio military machine reporter, I would walk through some of the same buildings and interview 18-twelvemonth-olds with clean, cropped buzz cuts like Sledge'due south. They all seemed gung ho and eager. I wondered how many of these immature men were really ready for battle. I wondered if any had read Sledge's volume.
The boxing at Peleliu in 1944 was supposed to be a quick one. Simply 4 days. It was a tiny island. But the Japanese offered stiff resistance and the conflict dragged on for months and killed thousands of Americans and Japanese. Subsequently, the National Museum of the Marine Corps would call Peleliu the 'bitterest boxing of the state of war for the Marines'. The Navy even named one of its amphibious assault ships the U.South.Due south. Peleliu. I spent several days at sea aboard that indigestible, gray ship during a training mission in the Pacific Ocean.
Sledge was a member of the storied 1st Marine Sectionalization. That unit is based at Campsite Pendleton, merely north of San Diego. The sprawling 125,000 acre base of operations is the Marine Corps'due south largest expeditionary preparation facility on the w coast. It'southward a place I got to know very well during my six years reporting on military issues there.
After I left Southern California, I moved several times and continued to peel down my property. I hadn't thought much about the volume until a few weeks ago when I saw a headline in my local paper: "Alabama man's memoir used in HBO'southward The Pacific." I'd heard most the upcoming series but didn't know much about it. As I read the commodity, I learned that one-half of The Pacific was based on Sledge's book.
What surprised me even more than is that Eugene Sledge had been a biology professor at a university not far from where I live now. A picture taken in 1999 showed him sitting in a comfortable chair, smiling, with his arms wrapped effectually a tiny black dog.
Sledge died a few years ago. He still has family in a neighboring boondocks, and his son is quoted as saying his father would probably shun the publicity from the HBO series. So I did something else to honor this Globe State of war II veteran.
The other day I went looking for his volume and plant it, tucked abroad in the back of a bookshelf. In that location was a chip of dust and the pages take yellowed. I'm almost halfway through With The Quondam Breed again, and I'm wondering if my love of writing and reporting on the military somehow got its beginning because of Eugene Sledge and his book.
Russell Lewis is Southern Bureau Chief of NPR News and based in Birmingham, Ala.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2010/03/22/114580456/with-the-old-breed-a-book-that-helped-launch-the-pacific-and-a-lot-more
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