If you are enjoying the HBO series The Pacific, the story of 5 men whose lives intersect in the Pacific theater during World War II, there are several books that might interest you.
The first book is The Pacific by Hugh Ambrose ($26.95) (Yup, Ambrose…Hugh is Stephen Ambrose’s son). A companion to the TV series, this fascinating and inspiring book tells the stories of four US Marines and one US Navy carrier pilot whose lives intersect in the Pacific theater during WWII.
For more information about the individual men involved, here are some books you might want to consider:
A Helmet For My Pillow: From Parris Island To The Pacific by Robert Leckie ($16.00) Robert Leckie, one of America’s greatest military historians, recalls his own story from boot camp in Parris Island to the bloody war in the Pacific. Leckie experienced it all–the booze, the brawling, the loving on sixty-two-hour liberty; the courageous fighting and dying in combat as the U.S. Marines slugged it out, inch by inch, island by island across the Pacific to the shores of Japan.
I’m Staying With My Boys: The Heroic Life of Sgt. John Basilone, USMC by Jim Proser ($14.99) Sgt. John Basilone held off 3,000 Japanese troops at Guadalcanal after his 15-member unit was reduced to three men. Killed during the war, he was the only Marine in World War II to have received the Medal of Honor, the Navy Cross, and a Purple Heart and is arguably the most famous Marine of all time. I’m Staying with My Boys is the only family-authorized biography of Basilone, and it features photographs never before published. Distinctive among military biographies, the story is told in the first person, allowing readers to experience his transformation, forged in the horrors of battle, from aimless youth to war hero known as “Manila John.”
With The Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by E.B. Sledge ($16.00) In The Wall Street Journal, Victor Davis Hanson named With the Old Breed one of the top five books on epic twentieth-century battles. Studs Terkel interviewed the author for his definitive oral history, The Good War. Now E. B. Sledge’s acclaimed first-person account of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa returns to thrill, edify, and inspire a new generation.
An Alabama boy steeped in American history and enamored of such heroes as George Washington and Daniel Boone, Eugene B. Sledge became part of the war’s famous 1st Marine Division-3d Battalion, 5th Marines. Even after intense training, he was shocked to be thrown into the battle of Peleliu, where “the world was a nightmare of flashes, explosions, and snapping bullets.” By the time Sledge hit the hell of Okinawa, he was a combat vet, still filled with fear but no longer with panic.Based on notes Sledge secretly kept in a copy of the New Testament, With the Old Breed captures with utter simplicity and searing honesty the experience of a soldier in the fierce Pacific Theater.
(If you haven’t started watching the series because you don’t get HBO…good news! They have the whole first episode available online!) http://www.hbo.com/the-pacific/index.html#)
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