With the old breed is one of the stories that inspired the HBO miniseries the Pacific. The show like the book focuses on the personal stories in a war of millions. It’s a biography of a solider with little or no say in deployments or tactics. This focus on the individual story makes the book gripping and grim. The author distances himself from horrible the honesty by a detached cold narrative which serves to intensify the words.
War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste.
The book follows Sledge through his entire pacific champaign describing both the camaraderie and the misery of war in the pacific. It feels wrong to say that I enjoyed the narrative, it’s to brutal for enjoyment but it gave an insight into the minds of the soldier. You really do get a sense of the terror and confusion felt by the grunts far away from home lost in someone else’s war.
The book is as compelling as it is dark and I would definitely recommend it to anyone that enjoyed the TV-show. In contrast with the cinematic version the book does not come of as a glorification of war.