With the Old Breed

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With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a

.

Origins

By his own account, Sledge began writing the memoir in 1944, "immediately after

1st Marine Division

(K/3/5).

The book's working title was A Marine Mortarman in World War II, which Sledge later changed to Into The Abyss. The book was first published under its final title by the Presidio Press in 1981.

Synopsis

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Sledge's memoir gives a firsthand perspective on the

banzai attacks

, and the hopelessness and loss of humanity that characterized the campaign in the Pacific. Sledge wrote starkly of the brutality displayed by Japanese soldiers during the battles and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "This was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands."

Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, butchered and with their severed genitals inserted into their mouths. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (including, in one case, from a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other macabre trophy-taking. He details the process and mechanisms that slowly strip away a combat infantryman's humanity and compassion, in a manner accessible to a general audience.

Sledge describes in detail the physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand-in-hand," he wrote. "It has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their

Reception

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Describing it as an example of "the American procedure at its best, unashamed of simplicity," Paul Fussell said that With the Old Breed "is one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war."^[2]

New York Times writer and editor Dwight Garner describes the book's depiction of war as "surpassingly vivid," adding, "What puts With the Old Breed'across is, oddly enough, Sledge's sensitivity. He offers many small, artful portraits of men he admires. (And a few he despises.) He chronicles small kindnesses and profound acts of friendship."^[3]

Printings

• 1981: Novato, California: Presidio Press. — 12197607
• 1983: Paperback: Toronto; New York: Bantam Books. —
  ISBN 978-0-553-23055-0 — 82912620

• 1990: New York, New York: Oxford University Press. —
  ISBN 978-0-19-506714-9 — 22653690

• 1990: Novato, California: Presidio. —
  ISBN 978-0-89141-119-2 — 21718513
• 1996: Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. —
  ISBN 978-1-55750-747-1 — 35132407

• 2001: Prince Frederick, Maryland:
  ISBN 978-0-7887-4879-0 — 48064872

• 2006: Princeton, New Jersey: Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic. — 70684214

(Audio-CD)

• 2007: New York, New York: Presidio Press:

(New introduction by Victor Davis Hanson)

Trade paperback — (8.2" x 5.5"):

ISBN 978-0-89141-906-8 — 124046079

Mass market paperback — (6.8" x 4.2"):

ISBN 978-0-89141-919-8 — 175295688

Trade paperback

ISBN 978-0-09-193753-9 - 0091937531

title ペリリュー・沖縄戦記 (periryū-okinawa-senki, a record of the war at Peleliu and Okinawa)

size of 文庫本 (bunkobon, poket size paperbook)14.8 x 11 x 2 cm

ISBN 978-4-06-159885-0

ISBN 978-974-02-0614-9

ISBN 978-80-242-2922-5

ISBN 978-3-86883-332-4

ISBN 978-2-251-44889-3

ISBN 978-8-93291-990-4

• 2007:
  The War.^{[citation needed}
  ]
• 2010:
  Band of Brothers, during which Sledge (played by Joseph Mazzello
  ) is seen occasionally writing notes in his pocket bible.