With the old breed, at Peleliu and Okinawa
by E. B. Sledge · first published 1981
4mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2008–2026first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
Describes the author's experiences after landing on the beach at Peleliu in 1944 with the Marines.
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…theft) The Secret History (Insanely good) Ready Player One (Good, nerdy) Shadow Divers (Very good, history nerd book) Diary of Anne Frank (Very good) Unbroken (Very good, way better than the movie) With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa (Very good) Seveneves (good, but I'm a Stephenson fanboy) The Martian (Very good, but just watch the movie). I read a bunch of other stuff, but that's what I found really "good" this past year.
on “Ask HN: What's one book you've recently read and enjoyed?” ↗Read Paul Fussell's Wartime. Or Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed - At Peleliu and Okinawa. Then you'll know why I'm happy to study war from my armchair, despite the fact that I'll never really know what combat is like. It's also good to not know what it feels like to be high on heroin or…
on “Lies We Tell Kids” ↗…Obviously, the great modern literary works on the subject are Slaughterhouse Five and, even more so, Catch-22. In the realm of nonfiction, Fussell's Wartime was interesting, but it led me to Eugene Sledge's With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, which is even better: a very good book by a guy from the front lines in the Pacific who is not shy about telling you exactly what went on. Comes with an endorsement by PG! (from the last time I mentioned…
on “Ask HN: good books about military strategy?” ↗…first round, yes you'll be dead. But there will be a second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. round coming and many people could get to better, more survivable locations, before those impacted. In the book "With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa" the author talks about being under artillery fire in an open area. >"To be shelled by mass artillery and mortars is absolutely terrifying, but to be shelled in the open is terror compounded beyond the…
on “And then the men with guns tell you to do it anyway” ↗