Frontier Partisans

The Adventurers, Rangers and Scouts Who Fought the Battles of Empire

With The Old Breed

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By Matthew Ilseman

Eugene “Sledgehammer” Sledge’s war memoir, With the Old Breed, is a tour through Hell. In our modern age of excessive comfort it can be hard to imagine the level suffering that the Marines and soldiers of World War II went through. This is why it is important to read books like this one. So that we can at some level understand what has been sacrificed for our sakes.

Once at one of my local used bookstores, I saw a father scream at his son for wanting a book on World War II. He was horrified because he was “for peace.” He could have really fooled me. (I tried to remember if my ex-Army father ever raised his voice at me like that. I could not think of a time). Books like With the Old Breed would be good teaching tools about the horrors of warfare. Then again, Sledge, was saying, “If a country is good enough to live; it is good enough to fight for. With privilege comes responsibility.” Sledge saw no end of war any time soon, and believed it was necessary at times to take up arms. I doubt the father would have liked that lesson.

Eugene Sledge was a native of Mobile, Alabama, who joined the Marine Corps, and would later fight through Peleliu and Okinawa, two of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Campaign. His memoir was based on notes he kept in his New Testament. It follows from basic training to the end of the war.

He would first see combat at Peleliu. There he would see acts of savagery committed by both sides. He would see Marines use their K-Bars to cut out gold teeth from the corpses and even from a living man who had been shot through the spine. He would also find worse mutilations by the Japanese. During the battle, he comes across dead Marines had both their heads and genitalia cut off with the genitalia being shoved in the mouths of the severed heads.

These are horrifying incidents but it points to the greatest strength of the book: honesty. This is war as it happened to one man. It is not prettied up. It is shown in its stark horror. There are also moments of extreme courage, comradery, and even humor. It is free from any agenda except to show what war is like.

The Battle of Peleliu is a long and bloody one. I have heard that war is mostly boredom with moments of terror, but this battle, at least, seems to grind on and on. The stamina of the men must have worn thin, but they went on until the end. Thousands of lives were loss on both sides. Most horrifying is that the Battle of Peleliu may not have necessary at all.

After Peleliu, Sledge would also fight in Okinawa. This seems another long grinding battle. It was also one fought in pouring rain. Foxholes flooded and mud was everywhere. The shelling was so intense that many men went insane. Reading this book I am surprise that as many men maintained their sanity as did so. The misery that the men endured on Okinawa seems unbelievable. It is perhaps a testament to the human spirit that not everyone broke.

There are many things of note. One thing I found interesting is that while the Marines always and sometimes at great risk retrieved the bodies of the fallen, the Japanese left them where they died. What this means I do not know, but it is interesting.

The horrifying thing about the book is the amount of hatred both armies felt for the other. I suppose I would have liked it better if the violence had been dispassionate, but I was not there and I do not know how I would have reacted to the horrors seen, and I am not sure I have a right to judge.

It certainly seems that the war brought out the worst in both sides. That may be a valuable lesson in itself. It is not a pleasant one, but it might be a necessary one. If we are to lessen cruelty we have to recognize our own capability to be cruel.

History, at times, seems to be a long list of atrocity. That is something humanity has to deal with. The father who screamed at his son probably does not want to deal with that horrible truth. I imagine he thought that being vaguely for something good like peace made him a good person. He was obviously did not want to deal with his capability for cruelty.

To deal with something one first has to understand it. That means taking a long look at it and accepting whatever lessons it shows us.

At the same time as all of the cruelty there are moments of great courage. Sledge and his fellow Marines went through Hell, but they kept on going until the end. They were shot at, shelled, and sometimes fought tooth and nail in a harsh climate, but they kept going. Maybe it is the will to go on that matters in the end.

Perhaps that is the greatest lesson in the book.

Eugene Sledge’s memoir was a foundation stone for the HBO series The Pacific.

Comments

  1. David Wrolson says

    Good review Matt.

    A couple of added notes on Sledge.

    Eugene Sledge was a major character in The Pacific which is the companion (or whatever) to Band of Brothers.

    One heartfelt scene is when he tries to register for classes after the war.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etuHEvsZLcU

    Also, Sledge’s service continued after the war (which was a surprise to me as I long ago read With the Old Breed) into China after WW2. He talks about those experiences in another book called “China Marine.”

    Reply

  2. Ugly Hombre says

    Excellent review of a important book by a American Warrior, since the beginning men from the south like Sledge, have always been a force in America’s military patriotic and interested in the martial, bred to it by tradition and family history- men like Patton and Robert E. Lee, And thousands more men without rank like Sledge.

    The Pacific war was horrible my Dad was on Okinawa U.S.A. mortarman, combat infantry waiting to go in when they dropped the bombs- there would have been a million casualties minimal. The Japanese were savage. My father in law also fought them them Philippine Scout. The American and Philippine forces paid them back in kind. No choice is what I was told. I made it a point to talk to as many Pacific war vets in the Philippines as I could. Papang did not talk much others sometimes would.

    “Company commander sent me up on that ridge so I had to see what happened.”

    “They caught my brother and tried to make him talk he did not know where I was.”

    “He gave me his cigarettes told me he would not need them anymore he was right.”

    ” They had to slow down the trucks on the mountain way to Baguio- almost stopped, hairpin curve, by that time we had the Thompson’s.”

    Dad hated Japan loathed it and so did near all his comrades, one guy came to a reunion in a Japanese car he almost got a tar and feather treatment no joke lol.

    He softened up a lot much later after he came to Japan to visit me there- was telling the Taxi drivers “Throw down your guns and come out of the cave”! in GI Japanese..Nanda??? lol

    “I realized most of them were common people making there way in the world caught up in world events they could not control just like we were.”

    Local paper did a short article on him later. Was glad to see it.

    Great post Matthew.

    “China Marine” on order.

    Reply

  3. Matthew says

    Thanks.

    As I said in the review, I’d be more comfortable if the violence had been dispassionate and seen as a cruel necessity. But then I wasn’t there and I don’t know how I would’ve reacted.

    Reply

      • Ugly Hombre says

        “But then I wasn’t there and I don’t know how I would’ve reacted.”

        Same here. Not cut from the same material as “The Old Breed” don’t think I could have cut it.

        “You never know what you can really do until you have to”. I was told. Limits are different for everyone.

        He did not, could not take his boots off in combat in the Jungle for a few weeks or so “jungle rot” plagued him the rest of his life. After getting off of a troop ship in San Francisco they were told they could go home or wait for the V.A. and talk about medical condition’s etc. get things documented.

        “I told them you guys have been trying to get me killed for over a year gimme my D/C I want to get home”. He did not go to the V.A. until in his late 70’s. Never talked about what happened until in his 80’s.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCIJfM_CgWo

        Sledge and men like him are national treasures. The video of him speaking is classic wish there were more.

        Old school truth.

        Reply

  5. Marco says

    Suggest you all watch “Hell in the Pacific” on YouTube. It’s a four part British made 2001 history of World War II in the Pacific. Eugene Sledge is interviewed about his service on Peleliu and Okinawa, along with dozens of gripping, raw interviews of veterans and civilian survivors of a conflict that the Japanese started when they invaded Manchuria in 1931. This series gives an explanation of how Japanese savagery and racism resulted in tens of millions of deaths and the destruction of five empires better than any other documentary I’ve ever seen.

    Reply

  6. lane batot says

    Great post! And I would have liked to have told that screaming “peaceful” father that reading accounts like that, and of other harsh times throughout history, and/or watching documentaries of the same, just make me thankful as Hell I’ve never had to live through something like that. It certainly has never made me WANT to participate in any such incidents! And no way am I judgmental(or at least, I try not to be….), because it seems, proven again and again, that almost anyone, anywhere, in the right(or rather wrong!) circumstances, is capable of complete savagery. That’s what makes it so scary……

    Reply

    • Matthew says

      because it seems, proven again and again, that almost anyone, anywhere, in the right(or rather wrong!) circumstances, is capable of complete savagery. That’s what makes it so scary……

      That’s what I think too. We all have this capability. I wonder if the father in question realizes that. Probably not since screaming at the kid seemed pretty savage.

      Reply

  7. GAH says

    Enjoyed your post… I have read Sledge’s memoir at least twice and would count a third time having read Devil Dogs: King Company, Third Battalion, 5th Marines from Guadalcanal to the Shores of Japan (David, 2022)…

    David’s very recent book pulls together several Marine memoirs (including Sledge) in the same company across the entire war… It is a very good read…

    Reply

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