Read With the Old Breed Online
Authors: E.B. Sledge
What I find most haunting about
With the Old Breed
is Sledge's empathy with those whom he might not have been expected to share a natural affinity, among them even at times the enemy—whom he often wishes not to kill gratuitously and whose corpses he refuses to desecrate. His is a very mannered Southern world where the martial chivalry of an Alabama, Louisiana, or Texas soldier shine through; implicit is a pride in the stereotyped manhood or the Old South, but also love for his Yankee comrades who he knows fight as well as his kinsmen. Sledge admits fear, occasionally acknowledging that his courage was the only result of desperation or rational calculation. He only incidentally notes his skill as a Marine. Yet through his own matter-of-fact descriptions the reader easily surmises why his comrades nicknamed a man of 135 pounds “Sledgehammer.”
Sledge's heroes amid the desolation of the charred islands—Sergeants Baily and Haney, Lieutenant “Hillbilly” Jones, and the beloved Captain Haldane—are singled out for their reticence, reflection, and humanity. Of Jones, Sledge writes, “He had that rare ability to be friendly yet familiar with enlisted men. He possessed a unique combination of those qualities of bravery, leadership, ability, integrity, dignity, straightforwardness, and compassion. The only other officer I knew who was his equal in all these qualities was Captain Haldane.”
While the reader is astonished at the élan and skill of Sledge's young compatriots, Sledge nevertheless describes them as apprentices in the shadows of the real “old-time” Marines—a near mythical generation that came of age between the wars and was made of even sterner stuff, fighting and winning the initial battles of the Pacific at Guadalcanal and Cape Gloucester on New Britain against the supposedly invincible and ascendant Japanese of 1942 and 1943. Of Gunnery Sgt. Elmo Haney, who scrubbed his genitals with a
bristle brush and cleaned his M1 and bayonet three times daily, Sledge concludes, “Despite his personal idiosyncrasies, Haney inspired us youngsters in Company K. He provided us with a direct link to the ‘Old Corps’. To us he
was
the old breed. We admired him—and we loved him.”
Indeed, in Sledge's Pacific, there are Homeric heroes of all sorts of an age now long gone by. Bob Hope at the height of his Hollywood career turns up as the devoted patriot at out-of-the-way Pavuvu, flying in at some danger to entertain the troops. And the future Illinois senator Paul Douglas—noted author and University of Chicago economics professor— appears in the worst of combat at Peleliu as a gray-haired, bespectacled fifty-three-year-old Marine enlistee, handing out ammo to the young Sledge. Douglas later becomes severely wounded at Okinawa and receives the Silver Star and Purple Heart. Again, if modern readers are amazed at the courageous breed of young Marines who surround Sledge, he advises us that we are even more removed than we think from these earlier Americans, since the real “old breed” antedated and was even superior to his own.
Sledge shares a hatred for the brutality of the Japanese, but it never blinds him to their shared horrible fate of being joined together in death at awful places such as Peleliu and Okinawa. So he is furious when he sees a fellow Marine yanking the gold teeth out of a mortally wounded, but very much alive, Japanese soldier on Okinawa: “It was uncivilized, as is all war, and was carried out with the particular savagery that characterized the struggle between the Marines and the Japanese. It wasn't simply souvenir hunting or looting the enemy dead; it was more like Indian warriors taking scalps. Such was the incredible cruelty that decent men could commit when reduced to a brutish existence in their fight for survival amid the violent death, terror, tension, fatigue, and filth that was the infantryman's war.”
Indeed at the heart of Sledge's genius of recollection is precisely his gift to step aside to condemn the insanity of war, to deplore its bloodletting, without denying that there is often a reason for it, and a deep love that results for those who share its burdens.
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.
There is a renewed timeliness to Sledge's memoir.
With the Old Breed
has never been more relevant than after September 11—war being the domain of an unchanging human nature and thus subject to predictable lessons that transcend time and space. It is not just that American Marines of the new millennium also face a novel strain of suicide bombers, or fanatic enemies emboldened by a frightening anti-Western creed, or once again the similar terror of Sledge's mines, mortars, and hand-to-hand battle in places like Iraqi's Ha-ditha or Ramadi.
Rather, Sledge reminds us of the lethality of what we might call the normal American adolescent in uniform, a grim determinism that we also recognized in the Hindu Kush and Kirkuk. Raised amid bounty and freedom, the American soldier seems a poor candidate to learn
ex nihilo
the craft of killing. How can a suburban teenager suddenly be asked to face and defeat the likes of zealots, whether on Okinawa's Shuri Line or at Fallujah in the Sunni Triangle? “Would I do my duty or be a coward?” Sledge wonders on his initial voyage to the Pacific. “Could I kill?”
But read
With the Old Breed
to be reminded how a certain American reluctance to kill and the accompanying unease with militarism have the odd effect of magnifying courage, as free men prove capable of almost any sacrifice to preserve their liberty.
Or as E. B. Sledge once more reminds us thirty-six years after surviving Okinawa:
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.
We owe the same to the late E. B. Sledge. He reminds us in a “sheltered homeland” that America is never immune from the “insanity” of war. So he brings alive again the names, faces, and thoughts of those who left us at Okinawa and Peleliu, but who passed on what we must in turn bequeath to others to follow.
The 1st Marine Division's assault on the Central Pacific island of Peleliu thirty-seven years ago was, in the overall perspective of World War II, a relatively minor engagement. After a war is over, it's deceptively easy to determine which battles were essential and which could have gone unfought. Thus, in hindsight, Peleliu's contribution to total victory was dubious. Moreover, World War II itself has faded into the mists with the more immediate combat in Korea and Vietnam.
To the men of the 1st Marine Division who made the assault on Peleliu (the youngest of whom are in their fifties today), there was nothing minor about it. For those who were there, it was a bloody, wearying, painful, and interminable engagement. For a single-division operation, the losses were extraordinarily heavy.
Eugene B. Sledge served in Company K, 3d Battalion, 5th Marines throughout the battle. I had the privilege of commanding Company I of the same battalion in the same period. His account awoke vivid memories which had lain dormant for years.
Don't read this personal narrative seeking the significance of the battle or of grand strategy. Rather read it for what it is, intense combat as seen by an individual Marine rifleman. For those who have experienced battle elsewhere, the similarities will be obvious.
John A. Crown
Lieutenant Colonel
U.S. Marine Corps
Atlanta, Georgia
I enlisted in the Marine Corps on 3 December 1942 at Marion, Alabama. At the time I was a freshman at Marion Military Institute. My parents and brother Edward had urged me to stay in college as long as possible in order to qualify for a commission in some technical branch of the U.S. Army. But, prompted by a deep feeling of uneasiness that the war might end before I could get overseas into combat, I wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps as soon as possible. Ed, a Citadel graduate and a second lieutenant in the army, suggested life would be more beautiful for me as an officer. Mother and Father were mildly distraught at the thought of me in the Marines as an enlisted man—that is, “cannon fodder.” So when a Marine recruiting team came to Marion Institute, I compromised and signed up for one of the Corps’ new officer training programs. It was called V-12.
The recruiting sergeant wore dress blue trousers, a khaki shirt, necktie, and white barracks hat. His shoes had a shine the likes of which I'd never seen. He asked me lots of questions and filled out numerous official papers. When he asked, “Any scars, birthmarks, or other unusual features?” I described an inch-long scar on my right knee. I asked why such a question. He replied, “So they can identify you on some Pacific beach after the Japs blast off your dog tags.” This was my introduction to the stark realism that characterized the Marine Corps I later came to know.
The college year ended the last week of May 1943. I had the month of June at home in Mobile before I had to report 1 July for duty at Georgia Tech in Atlanta.
I enjoyed the train trip from Mobile to Atlanta because the
train had a steam engine. The smoke smelled good, and the whistle added a plaintive note reminiscent of an unhurried life. The porters were impressed and most solicitous when I told them, with no little pride, that I was on my way to becoming a Marine. My official Marine Corps meal ticket got me a large, delicious shrimp salad in the dining car and the admiring glances of the steward in attendance.
On my arrival in Atlanta, a taxi deposited me at Georgia Tech, where the 180-man Marine detachment lived in Harrison Dormitory. Recruits were scheduled to attend classes year round (in my case, about two years), graduate, and then go to the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, for officers’ training.
A Marine regular, Capt. Donald Payzant, was in charge. He had served with the 1st Marine Division on Guadalcanal. Seeming to glory in his duty and his job as our commander, he 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 with the good fortune of being stationed at a peaceful college campus.
Life at Georgia Tech was easy and comfortable. In short, we didn't know there was a war going on. Most of the college courses were dull and uninspiring. Many of the professors openly resented our presence. It was all but impossible to concentrate on academics. Most of us felt we had joined the Marines to fight, but here we were college boys again. The situation was more than many of us could stand. At the end of the first semester, ninety of us—half of the detachment— flunked out of school so we could go into the Corps as enlisted men.
When the navy officer in charge of academic affairs called me in to question me about my poor academic performance, I told him I hadn't joined the Marine Corps to sit out the war in college. He was sympathetic to the point of being fatherly and said he would feel the same way if he were in my place.
Captain Payzant gave the ninety of us a pep talk in front of the dormitory the morning we were to board the train for boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, California. He told us we were the best men and the best Marines in
the detachment. He said he admired our spirit for wanting to get into the war. I think he was sincere.
After the pep talk, buses took us to the railway station. We sang and cheered the whole way. We were on our way to war at last. If we had only known what lay ahead of us!
Approximately two and a half years later, I came back through the Atlanta railway station on my way home. Shortly after I stepped off the car for a stroll, a young army infantryman walked up to me and shook hands. He said he had noticed my 1st Marine Division patch and the campaign ribbons on my chest and wondered if I had fought at Peleliu. When I said I had, he told me he just wanted to express his undying admiration for men of the 1st Marine Division.
He had fought with the 81st Infantry Division (Wildcats), which had come in to help us at Peleliu.
*
He was a machine gunner, had been hit by Japanese fire on Bloody Nose Ridge, and was abandoned by his army comrades. He knew he would either die of his wounds or be cut up by the Japanese when darkness fell. Risking their lives, some Marines had moved in and carried him to safety. The soldier said he was so impressed by the bravery, efficiency, and esprit of the Marines he saw on Peleliu that he swore to thank every veteran of the 1st Marine Division he ever ran across.
The “Dago people”—as those of us bound for San Diego were called—boarded a troop train in a big railroad terminal in Atlanta. Everyone was in high spirits, as though we were headed for a picnic instead of boot camp—and a war. The trip across the country took several days and was uneventful but interesting. Most of us had never been west, and we enjoyed the scenery. The monotony of the trip was broken with card games, playing jokes on each other, and waving, yelling, and
whistling at any and all women visible. We ate some meals in dining cars on the train; but at certain places the train pulled onto a siding, and we ate in the restaurant in the railroad terminal.
Nearly all of the rail traffic we passed was military. We saw long trains composed almost entirely of flatcars loaded with tanks, halftracks, artillery pieces, trucks, and other military equipment. Many troop trains passed us going both ways. Most of them carried army troops. This rail traffic impressed on us the enormousness of the nation's war effort.