With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

by Eugene B. Sledge

“If the country is good enough to live in, it’s good enough to fight for.” With privilege goes responsibility

“comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.

In particular theaters the Japanese had advantages over the Americans in numbers, choice of terrain, and even supply.

capture Okinawa

over 50,000 American casualties, including some 12,500 soldiers and sailors killed, and the greatest number of combat fatigue cases ever recorded of a single American battle.

The destructive potential of thousands of kamikaze suicide bombers, together with the faulty prebattle intelligence that had sorely underestimated the size, armament, and ferocity of the island resistance,

If today Americans in the leisure of a long peace wonder whether our grandfathers were too hasty in their decision to resort to atomic weapons, they forget that many veterans of the Pacific wondered why they had to suffer through an Okinawa when the successful test at Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16 came just a few days after the island was declared secure.

“a passionate hatred for the Japanese burned through all Marines I knew.

War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waster. Combat leaves an inedible mark on those who are forced to endure it. The only redeeming factors were my comrades’ incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other—and love. That esprit de corps sustained us.

“Would I do my duty or be a coward?” Sledge wonders on his initial voyage to the Pacific. “Could I kill?

E. B. Sledge

In writing I am fulfilling an obligation I have long felt to my comrades in the 1st Marine Division, all of whom suffered so much for our country. None came out unscathed. Many gave their lives, many their health, and some their sanity. All who survived will long remember the horror they would rather forget. But they suffered and they did their duty so a sheltered homeland can enjoy the peace that was purchased at such high cost. We owe those Marines a profound debt of gratitude.

For those who have experienced battle elsewhere, the similarities will be obvious.

loved the Corps and was salty and full of swagger. Looking back, I realize now that he had survived the meat grinder of combat and was simply glad to be in one piece

The fact that our lives might end violently or that we might be crippled while we were still boys didn’t seem to register.

“Listen, mate, everybody gets scared, and anybody says he don’t is a damn liar.

The 2d Division suffered terrible losses—3,381 dead and wounded. Its Marines killed all but seventeen of the 4,836 Japanese defenders of the tiny atoll