With The Old Breed

Now including a new introduction by Paul Fussell, 'With the Old Breed' presents a account of the Marines in the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa. Born in Mobile, Alabama in 1923, Eugene Bondurant Sledge (later called 'Sledgehammer' by his Marine Corps buddies) joined the Marines the year after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and from 1943 to 1946 endured the events recorded in this book. In those years, he passed, often painfully, from innocence to experience. Sledge enlisted out of patriotism, idealism, and youthful courage, but once he landed on the beach at Peleliu, it was purely a struggle for survival. Based on the notes he kept on slips of paper tucked secretly away in his New Testament, he recalls those long months, mincing no words and sparing no pain. The reality of battle meant unbearable heat, deafening gunfire, unimaginable brutality and cruelty, the stench of death, and, above all, constant fear.