Sledge, who passed away in 2001, published his account in 1981.
Sledge went on to become a successful professor teaching microbiology and ornithology at the University of Montevallo in his home state of Alabama. Uncommon valor was displayed so often it went largely unnoticed. It’s ironic that the record of our company was so outstanding but that so few individuals were decorated for bravery. The island fighting against the Japanese in the Pacific was so brutal and horrific that Sledge called it “the most ghastly corner of hell I ever witnessed.” In the fight for Okinawa, some of the bravest of combat veterans cracked, “even to the point of losing their desire to live.” The Marines in the Pacific proved so courageous that Admiral Chester Nimitz simply said of those at Iwo Jima: “Uncommon valor was a common virtue.” Sledge mirrored those thoughts in his own account: He quotes the theme of Wilfred Owen’s poem “Insensibility” by saying, “Those who feel most for others suffer most in war.” And this is what particularly made Sledge a master of the craft of writing, his deep and abiding love for others. Sledge’s writing and passion is so heartfelt in this book because he allows the sensitivity to the events that surrounded him to be chronicled page by page.
His compassion and love for his fellow Marines, and the circumstances of what happened on those islands, caused an outpouring of raw and vivid emotion. The experience, he said, “made savages of us all.” Many years later, from notes taken of the battles in his field Bible, Sledge published With The Old Breed, one of the most stirring personal accounts of war I’ve ever read. He was among a company of men who didn’t talk about their feelings. Photo reprinted with permission from The emotional scars and nightmares from Eugene Bondurant Sledge’s memories of the battles at Peleliu and Okinawa haunted him for years.
0 kommentar(er)
