In September 1944 a young Marine name Eugene Sledge landed on the Pacific Island of Peleliu. As a mortarman, stretcher-bearer and rifleman Sledge would fight his way across Peleliu then the Japanese island of Okinawa, arguably two of the fiercest and filthiest battles of the Pacific campaign.
After the war, Eugene Sledge became a professor at Montevallo University and turned his diary notes from the war into a memoir of his experiences titled With the Old Breed. The book relates the dehumanising brutality displayed by both sides and the animal hatred that each soldier had for his enemy. Sledge writes of the conditions on the islands that meant the Marines often could not 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 was utterly debilitating for the Marines.
With the Old Breed has proved to be highly influential and has been used as source material for the Ken Burns PBS documentary The War (2007), as well as the HBO miniseries The Pacific (2010), where Eugene Sledge was played by Joseph Mazzello.
Joining me today is Henry Sledge, Eugene’s son.
You can also find Henry presenting the podcast What's the Scuttlebutt.
Patreon:
patreon.com/ww2podcast
147 - Operation Barbarossa
146 - Stop Lines
145 - Bomb Aimers
144 - Alan Brooke: Churchill's Right-Hand Critic
143 - The Battle for Madagascar
142 - Mackenzie King
141 - Eighth Army versus Rommel
140 - How to kill a Panther tank
139 - German Uniforms of WWII
138 - Hang Tough: Major Dick Winters
137 - Operation Lena and Hitler's Plots to Blow up Britain
136 - The Defeat of Army Group South, 1944
135 - Spaniards in the British Army
134 - The Original Jeeps
133 - Rome
132 - The 746th Far East Air Force Band
131 - Economists at War
130 - The Texel Uprising: Night of Bayonets
129 - The Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign, November 1942–March 1943
128 - The Doolittle Raiders and their Fight for Justice
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