With the Old Breed

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With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa
Oxford University Cover
Author	Eugene B. Sledge
Country	United States of America
Language	English
Genre(s)	War Memoir
Publisher	Presidio Press
Publication date	1981
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	326 p.
ISBN	ISBN 0195067142
Followed by	China Marine: An Infantryman's Life after World War II

With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa is a World War II memoir by former United States Marine Eugene Sledge. It was originally published in 1981 by the Presidio Press and has been reprinted at least three times: in 1990 by the Oxford University Press, in 1996 by the Naval Institute Press, and again in 2007 by the Presidio Press. In April 2007, it was announced that With the Old Breed, along with Robert Leckie's Helmet for My Pillow, would form the basis for the HBO miniseries The Pacific, the successor to Band of Brothers. In addition, Ken Burns drew considerably from With the Old Breed for his World War II documentary The War.

Nicknamed "Sledgehammer" by his comrades, Sledge experienced horrific combat during the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa as an operator of a 60mm mortar while part of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

His memoir is the definitive account of front-line infantry combat in the Pacific War. Sledge writes honestly of the brutality displayed by United States Marines and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harbored for each other. In Sledge's words, "this was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands." Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines, including one Marine whose genitals had been cut off and stuffed into the corpse's mouth. He also describes the behavior of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other disturbing trophy-taking.

Also separating the book from most other war memoirs is Sledge's description of the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth. "Fear and filth went hand in hand," Sledge writes; "[i]t has always puzzled me that this important factor in our daily lives has received so little attention from historians and is often omitted from otherwise excellent personal memoirs by infantrymen." Marines had trouble staying dry, finding time to eat their rations, practicing basic field sanitation (it was impossible to dig latrines or catholes in the coral rock on Peleliu), and simply moving around on the pulverized coral of Peleliu and in the mud of Okinawa. Sledge also displays an unusual literary affinity, citing poems by Rudyard Kipling and Wilfred Owen in between his grim descriptions of "war at its worst."

Since its first publication in 1981, With the Old Breed has earned wide recognition as one of the best first-hand accounts of combat in the Pacific during World War II. Literary scholar Paul Fussell, himself a World War II combat veteran, called it "one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war." The memoir is based on notes Sledge kept tucked away in a pocket-sized Bible he carried with him during battle. Extensive research was also done in order to give a clearer picture of the role of his Division in the Pacific War.