Reddit Reddit reviews With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

We found 21 Reddit comments about With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
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21 Reddit comments about With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa:

u/CorinthWest · 63 pointsr/HistoryPorn

Eugene Sledge, in his book With The Old Breed, mentioned that while they were happy for the troops in Europe, it meant nothing to them.

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Oh wow! It's on YouTube

Disk 1

Disk 2

A very tough read at times.

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Edit: Those are soldiers of the 77th Division. My Grandfather was a Doughboy with the 77th in France from 1917-1918. My Uncle was in the Navy at Okinawa on an LST that landed troops from the 77th. He was always proud that he served with his Father's unit.

u/RhinestoneTaco · 13 pointsr/ChapoTrapHouse

I spent most of the summer reading WW2 memoirs, including Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed.

I feel like WW2 stuff is the base of so much of the modern meme around needing a new warrior class.

What rules about this meme, and the general mindset that we need for a better society is Strong Men creating Good Times through war, is it ignores the part where the Strong Men who managed to make it through with all their limbs still attached suffer decades of nightmares and panic attacks and broken marriages and emotions they cannot control.

u/Jonny_Muscle · 8 pointsr/ww2

Have you watched The Pacific?. They had a marathon on yesterday for 12/7 and it was awesome. I've watched it before, but it gets better every time. It's based on 3 individuals and follows them throughout the war. It is only 10 episodes so you should be able to get through it rather quickly. I also recommend the book With the Old Breed by Eugene Sledge (one of the marines featured in The Pacific).

u/Lokitty · 8 pointsr/HistoryPorn

My two favorite WWII memoirs that I recommend to everyone interested in WWII history:

Always Faithful: A memoir of the marine dogs of WWII - The story of the US Marine Corps war dogs from training to battle on Guam as told by the commander of the Third Dog Platoon. This book is all about the loyalty, companionship, heroism, and immeasurable value of the war dogs on the battlefield, most of which were ordinary family pets who were "volunteered" by their owners to help with the war effort.

"With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa - If you haven't read this one, it's an essential pick and a no-brainer. The HBO series "The Pacific" was based partly on this book. A view of joining the US Marine Corp in late 1943, training, and deployment to Peleliu and Okinawa as told from the perspective of a young grunt.

u/mainsoda · 7 pointsr/interestingasfuck

Great book, a horrible and facinating real world account of the Pacific theater --> http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

u/jetpacksforall · 7 pointsr/AskHistorians

I can give you a short list of personal favorites, books that I consider both informative and extremely interesting / entertaining to read. As you'll see I prefer memoirs and eyewitness accounts to sweeping historical overviews of the war.

With the Old Breed, E.B. Sledge. Personal memoir of the author's experience as a marine machine gunner in the Pacific war, specifically the campaigns on Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge is a marvelous writer with prose I'd describe as "Hemingwayesque", a real compliment. Grueling, appalling, human, his account does a great job of sketching in the personalities of his fellow marines.

"The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Studs Terkel. This is the book that World War Z is aping, but the actual book is a far more gripping read. Terkel sat down for personal interviews with 121 survivors of the war, Germans, Japanese, British, Canadian as well as American.

Band Of Brothers, Stephen Ambrose. Now made famous by the TV series, the story of E Company's recruitment, training and ultimate combat experience during and after the Normandy invasion is as intense and eye-opening as it sounds.

Between Silk and Cyanide: A Codemaker's War, Leo Marks. Marks was a cryptographer working in London for the SOE (special operations executive, the group responsible for running much of "The Resistance" throughout occupied Europe, North Africa and Asia). He's a very funny guy, a self-professed coward, but the book portrays his deeply heartfelt concern for the well-being of the agents he was sending behind enemy lines. His codes, and methods of transmitting them, could be the only thing saving them from capture by the Gestapo. All too often, they weren't enough. "If you brief an agent on the Tuesday and three days later his eyes are taken out with a fork, it hastens the aging process," he writes.

Stalingrad, Anthony Beevor. When you start to read about the Eastern Front, you realize that much of the conventional western perspective of WWII in Europe is based on the comparatively minor engagements in Italy and France. France lost 350,000 civilians to the war, The Soviet Union lost 15-20 million. Considered purely from the POV of total casualties and total armed forces committed, WWII was primarily an engagement between Germany and the Soviet Union throughout Eastern Europe, with a number of smaller actions in the western countries. Anyhow, the story of the brutal, grinding siege of Stalingrad, the point where the German tide definitively turned, is a must-read.

Homage To Catalonia, George Orwell. This is Orwell's personal account of his service fighting on the Republican side against fascists during the Spanish Civil War from 1936-37. Basically, this was the war before the war, as described by one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. Incidentally Hemingway's novel For Whom The Bell Tolls is a fairly accurate, very powerful portrayal of a different view of the same war.

u/Operat · 6 pointsr/esist

With the Old Breed is literally named after WWI veterans who accompanied green soldiers into battle in WWII. That is one of the best known WWII memoirs and is taught in colleges.

u/Audiman64 · 4 pointsr/HistoryPorn

If you haven't read it, this is worth a read to get some understanding of the horror which was Okinawa -- With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa http://amzn.com/0891419195

u/ggill1970 · 4 pointsr/HistoryPorn

you want to read one of THE best books on the pacific campaign, check E.B. Sledge: With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Sledge ran 60mm mortars & man, the combat detail is nuts.

u/gzcl · 3 pointsr/books

I think everyone should read With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge. Even if they're not "in to" war or anything like that. It is an excellent story from the perspective of an infantry Marine about the battle of Peleliu and Okinawa in WWII. They were possibly the bloodiest battles of the island hopping campaign. I don't think there has been any other book of similar nature has had the same effect on me.

For people who are "in to" non-fiction war books I suggest The Bridge at Dong Ha which is about John Ripley, a Marine in Vietnam who essentially saves the day singlehandedly. He's also the only Marine to be inducted into the Army Ranger Hall of Fame.

For fictional war related books one of my favorites is Fields of Fire. Excellent story telling and I found myself really connecting with the characters. It has a great way of giving non-soldiers an understanding of the many reasons why people choose to serve, how they serve, and the struggles within.

u/InquisitorCOC · 3 pointsr/harrypotter

Actually no, the minimum age for enlisting in the US military is 17 (http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/enlage.htm).

E.B. Sledge's With Old Breed can tell you how brutal those 17/18 years old could be.

Although not scientifically proven, girls from 15-18 were said to be the cruelest group among Chairman Mao's Red Guards during China's Cultural Revolution.

Don't underestimate teenagers, please.

u/hawaiianssmell · 2 pointsr/sandiego

Reminds me of With the Old Breed by E.B. Sledge. He did his mortar training before deploying at Camp Elliott. Lots of ordnance fired in the Mission Trails area.

u/Kinbareid · 2 pointsr/history

a really good book that portrays infantry combat is "with the old breed" http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

u/cantcountnoaccount · 2 pointsr/AskAnAmerican

"The Pacific" HBO series is based on a couple different books; one of them is With The Old Breed At Pelilau and Okinawa

u/DerPope · 1 pointr/CombatFootage

All true, Peleliu must have been insanity. If I remember correctly it was like 10 square miles. If you haven't heard of it I would strongly recommend picking up "With the Old Breed", it is the first hand account of a Marine mortar man at Peleliu and Okinawa and it is incredibly good. I read it in like three days.

(http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195)

Sry for poor format my Reddit skills are newish

u/jdotg · 1 pointr/MilitaryPorn

Agreed, just read this instead..

u/thedonald420 · 1 pointr/AdviceAnimals

I don't think so. My copy says With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

http://www.amazon.com/With-Old-Breed-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

Regardless, one the best WWII books out there and it definitely deserves all the praise it gets.

u/LOWANDLAZY57 · 1 pointr/books

My second choice would be "With The Old Breed", possibly the most accurate recounting of the war in the Pacific.

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

u/RobOneXL · 1 pointr/todayilearned

http://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

i liked it more than Dick Winters book Beyond Band of Brothers.

u/USOutpost31 · -2 pointsr/space

>"People like me are good, people different from me are bad" is inherently harmful.

You do indicate a high degree of education in a specific political philsophy, where you would read my statements as a statement of moral bias. Nowhere did I give you any indication whatsoever that this was the case; you made it up in your mind, which most simply indicates you are indoctrinated, not educated.

The fact that you see this as a hierarchy of value systems, which you do as indicated by that statement, is a weakness in your world outlook not ameliorated by whatever education you have highly attained.

>Believing that you have created some sort of cultural "gift" and thus benefited the world is harmful.

The social metrics of the average Japanese and South Korean indicate you are wrong.

>but rather because they give rise to sentiments of segregation and superiority.

That's an assumption on your part. No need to get presumptuous, I'm not presuming I am superior to a Japanese. I am pointing out that Western culture is superior to Eastern, which is a fact, not an opinion, and it is not a moral fact in the way that money is neither good nor bad.

>These points of view are not harmful because they are "wrong" (though I do not concede that they are "right")

Your argument is moral. Narrowly moral, assumptive, and insulting in its presumption.

The West fought WWII and did not colonize the East. It would have been simple. We thence fought a war in Korea.

The inhabitants of the lands under the Western sphere are objectively and incontrovertibly better off, by solid social metrics, than those who aren't.

I am a Veteran, and I like history, and military history. Men dying at Chosin to hold off an overwhelming Chinese advance (which resulted in the complete destruction of 3 Chinese divisions, they actually ceased to exist), so that the US could get a mere 1/3 of the Korean refugees off the beach, by dumping supplies over the sides of ships and cramming it full of 20,000 refugees, for a grand total of 90,000 refugees in one battle alone, is a benefit.

It is not emotional, it's not patriotic. It is an objective, undeniable fact. Those 90,000 refugees from Chosin alone went on to produce hundreds of thousands of South Koreans who today enjoy rapidly-increasing life metrics, in contrast to what I don't have to mention for those who, unfortunately, were not evacuated.

If your education has buried these easily-verifiable facts, and there are thousands of them, under contemporaneous intersectional theories for well-paid Professors and overt, and known, Chinese infiltration of Academia, then you have been ill-served by your education.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/chosin/

https://www.amazon.com/Old-Breed-At-Peleliu-Okinawa/dp/0891419195

Western Civilization is better, in objective, verifiable terms, and it is more important to remember that than to goalkeep whatever superiority you hypothesize may be forming in everyone's mind.