With the Old Breed

This book has been on my read list for long time.  And perhaps due to my old man mannerisms, I finally sat down to read this war memoir.

And it is just that.  The author, Eugene Sledge, having researched and compiled the historical errata to accurate specifics, and having completed this work much later in life, created a perfect balance of fact and personal observation.  He never strays too far into emotional content, but through his directness (indicative of the academic he later became), one can clearly extrapolate how he felt at the time.

It is a story of the Peleliu and Okinawa campaigns of World War II.  A historian myself, if I can so make the claim, it was not the first time I had read about these particular conflicts.  It was, however, the first time I had read them through a firsthand account.  And as I’ve stated, I believe it is these records of the common man that provide significant historical value.

The nature of this work renders it beyond my rights to critique, so I will leave it at that.  If you want a primary source account of the two arguably most bloody Second World War campaigns, free from political asides and excessive loaded personal annotations, I have yet to encounter a finer example.

–Simon

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