Rating: 
Summary: A great WWII memoir
Review: One of the best of the genre I have ever read. Truly horrifying account of battle in Pacific. It makes you feel the heat, smell the smoke, and experience the terror.
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Summary: A vivid first hand account of the brutality of war.
Review: Very few authors of books on the war in the South Pacific bring the vivid first hand experiences to light the way Dr. Sledge is able to do. He paints a picture that your mind and spirit is able to see as you read his words. He tells of the funny side of war, if there is one, the emense amount of hard work involved, and the brutality of war as he experienced it. The contrast of fighting on a barren coral rock, as was Peleliu, to the muck and mud of Okinawa is compelling. As I have been a close personal friend of Dr. Sledge for over 30 years, I have heard many times in his own words the accounts of the battles fought on Peleliu and Okinawa. However, Dr. Sledge, in the words he writes is able to bring the battles to life, and involve the reader as if they were there. His story is so much like the man he is, strong, well prepared, confident, a believer in God, and willing to go to war for his country and "kill japs". Anyone who wishes to gain insight into the nature of the war with the Japanese, and of war in general, needs to read this book.
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Summary: A must read for Marine Corps History buffs.
Review: The book is forceful and compelling. It was hard to put down once started. Very thought envoking and allows your imagination to actually bring the scenes to dreadful life. However hard to believe there were no cussing Marines! Considering I only know a couple who don't during peacetime.
Not sure I would agree with the opinion of one reviewer that the author must still be living the war due to the graphic nature of the telling. I believe this is more of a reflection on the quality of the Marine training of the time. Clear and concise was the emphasis and the book clearly reflects as such.
Rating: 
Summary: What have we learned?
Review: Sledge's memoir is clear, stark and poignant, driven by the plainness of oral history -- and made tragic by the author's inability, after years of what must have been living nightmares, to understand the why of what happened to him. To be fair, we shouldn't force our warriors to try to be the final word on why they went to war. The job of Sledge and his countrymen -- including my own father, a Marine almost killed at Peleliu -- was to fight, and fight they did. He hides almost nothing of the Marine combat experience, drawing from notes almost obscene in their lack of sentiment (one chapter is titled "Mud and Maggots"). When time stretches in the hellish foxholes of Okinawa, Sledge's is the hollow wandering thoughts of every young man prepared to die under orders.
And he never knows why -- other than knowing that any Marine would be willing to die for his buddies. In combat, that's certainly enough. But it's clear his abiding anger against the war, against Japanese ("Japs" even today, to him), against futility and horror, has never been able to rest. If this was indeed "The Good War," in Studs Terkel's phrase, why are men like Sledge still fighting it?
I highly recommend the book, and so does my Dad. (Curiously, it has one false note, and it's one shared by most of the Marine memoirs: They can speak in endless detail about corpses, but they can't bring themselves to swear. Marines in Sledge's book will shout, "Get back, you fool!" Why memoirists avoid cussing while sparing no details on maggots eating dead soldiers is a mystery.)
Rating:
Summary: A classic personal account of the horrors of war.
Review: E.B. Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is, simply put, one of the best war memoirs ever written. Sledge paints a compelling and often horrifying picture of what it was like to be a young Marine fighting in the Pacific theater of World War II. From his first day at Marine boot camp, to the last hours of the epic battle for Okinawa, Sledge eloquently expresses what it was like to be a young man thrust into the brutality of the most destructive war in human history. With the Old Breed is nothing less than a classic of war literature
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Summary: One of those books that should be read by all.
Review: One of those books that should be read by all who would wage war. The simple truth of what daily life was like during those hell years in the South Pacific.
Eugene Sledge survived the war and led a very gentle life and career as a biology and botany teacher and wrote this book detailing his war experiences.
Originally written for his children, it has become a classic which is read and respected by military professionals and anti-war workers.
Also see "WE WERE SOLDIERS ONCE, AND YOUNG." by Joe Galloway, a like spirited book about Viet Nam, both these volumes are as taut as the best fiction, but they are memoirs
Rating:
Summary: Devastating
Review: This book is a masterpiece of writing, fiction or nonfiction. You are right there in the blood and mud and nightmare with the soldier who wrote this book. He writes straight from his gut in a way most writers cannot accomplish after a lifetime of writing. This is not for the squeamish or romantic. It is war at its most brutal and it is very up close.
I came away from this book profoundly moved by the willingness of the author to tell his story in such a plain, unvarnished way and for his sacrifice and for all the soldiers who were not able to speak. Historically, it is a fasinating look at the ground war in the Pacific, fought by the Marines. Sledge deals in the day to day life of the soldier on the ground, how he had to fight, what kind of rifle he had, what his foxhole felt like, what it sounded like at night. The devil's in these details. We don't hear much about Peleliu any more (can you find it on a map without checking with encarta?) We don't even hear much about the battle of Okinawa. The European theater has gotten much of the attention lately. I don't know why that is, maybe because it's easier to imagine Belgium or France, rather than Guadalcanal or the Solomon Islands.
If you have a relative who served in any war, if your father or grandfather was in WW II, read this book for them, and think about what they did.
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Summary: Outstanding first-hand account of a neglected subject
Review: Volumes upon volumes have been written about the European theatre of operations during WW II, but it is difficult to find good books about the Pacific. That's a real shame considering the hardships and horrors endured by the men who served in that theatre. With the Old Breed was recommended to me by a college student who read it as part of a history class assignment. I don't know how this book managed to hide under my radar for so long, because it is absolutely outstanding. Too often, books written about a person's combat experiences are poorly written, but this plain-spoken book neither tries to be something it isn't nor falls short of good writing standards. Anyone who reads this book will have a new appreciation for what soldiers went through while fighting the Japanese during WW II. It is an essential part of any WW II buff's book collection.
Rating:
Summary: Great book, As good as its reputation
Review: I finally got around to reading this wonderful book. Like many others, I was lead to it by Paul Fussell's "Wartime."
I have gained a new appreciation for the history of the Pacific campaign and will undoubtedly read more.
Sledge's account is a little tedious at times as he makes an effort to nail down historical details of troop deployments, which are important but not particularly interesting to the average reader, but it hardly detracts from the impact of the book.
If an expanded edition of this book were published with better maps and perhaps an expanded introduction by an historian I would surely buy it. Fussell's introduction explains a little bit about how Sledge actually managed to keep notes in combat, which I found interesting and would like to know more about.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Insight
Review: Of the many books on the various battles between the US and its enemies, only those written from participants provide a true insight into the conflict. In fact, usually the best books are not written by those behind the lines calling the shots, but those who were on the front lines. Indeed, I had previously heard of the many atrocities committed by the Japanese on both civilians and combatants, but to hear first hand about what certain US troops did during and after the heat of battle was sadly educative. This book is recommended reading for anyone interested in what the Greatest Generation accomplished and it certainly made me more appreciative for our current freedom in this great country. God bless the USA.
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