Soviet Aircraft and Aviation, 1917-1941 Book

Eugene Sledge would seem an unlikely author of what I consider the most powerful memoir of war in the Pacific theater. The son of a Mobile, Alabama, doctor, Eugene began his military career as a candidate in an academic college program that would have made him an officer. However, he deliberately failed to become a Marine assigned to infantry in the Pacific. Sledge's account is told in frank, straight forward and understated language. The Pacific war was a fierce world of barbaric conduct by troops on both sides. Sledge understood the ease with which a man could lose his sense of humanity and recognized how close he came to that outcome.

Sledge quietly states the futility of war and the unnecessary sacrifice of life in the Peleliu campaign. The battle had no strategic effect on the outcome of the war. The island could have easily been hopped over as other pockets of Japanese resistance were.

He wrote,"To the non-combatants and those on the periphery of action, the war meant only boredom or occasional excitement, but to those who entered the meat grinder itself the war was a netherworld of horror from which escape seemed less and less likely as casualties mounted and the fighting dragged on and on. Time had no meaning, life had no meaning. The fierce struggle for survival in the abyss of Peleliu had eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all."

Sledge adjusted to his return to civilian life with great difficulty. He wrote "With the Old Breed" over a number of years, originally intending it to be a memoir to be read by his family. Following the war he became a professor of botany and zoology at the University of Montevallo in Alabama. His students would have been hard pressed to understand the horrific memories that lay beneath his gentle exterior as he led them on field trips identifying native botanical plants.

Sledge's story was published in 1981. His story was later central to Ken Burns' series, "The War." His memoir later served as one of the key sources for Spielberg and Hanks HBO series, "The Pacific."

Eugene Sledge died in 2001 after a lengthy battle with cancer. His memoir of men at war should be read throughout the coming generations by anyone ever inclined to take the matter of war with an attitude of indifference.

Do not think that Sledge should ever be considered a pacifist. He should not. Nor should his work ever be considered a polemic against any war. These are his concluding words: "Until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others, it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one's country - as my comrades did. As the troops used to say, "If the country is good enough to live in, it's good enough to fight for." With privilege goes responsibility."