This paper examines E.B. Sledge's memoir With the Old Breed as a counter-narrative to the notion of World War II as a "good war." Drawing on Sledge's firsthand accounts of fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa, the paper traces his transformation from an idealistic Alabama recruit into a battle-hardened Marine confronting fear, disease, racism, and death. The analysis highlights how Sledge's recollections reveal the dehumanizing conditions of Pacific combat, the racial ideology embedded in American military training, and the psychological toll borne by soldiers on the Eastern Front. The paper argues that Sledge's honest, unromanticized account makes the Allied achievement more moving precisely because it eschews jingoism in favor of truth.
With the Old Breed is a memoir by a Marine who fought on the South Pacific front during World War II. World War II is often called a "good war" or a "justified war," but the recollections of E.B. Sledge and his experiences fighting in the battles of Peleliu and Okinawa — two of the most critical conflicts of the Pacific theater — demonstrate that no war is truly good. Sledge enlisted in the Marines immediately after Pearl Harbor was bombed. At the time, he was an idealistic college freshman, delighted to embark upon an adventure like his boyhood heroes, and reared on a doctrine of patriotism and hard work in his home state of Alabama. On his way to boot camp, after enlisting, he writes, "everyone was in high spirits, as though we were headed for a picnic instead of boot camp — and a war" (7). Along with the other recruits, Sledge proudly traded in his meal ticket for a fancy dinner — perhaps, he ruefully recalled, his last good meal before the dehydrated rations on the sweltering Pacific front, where provisions were scarce and intestinal poisoning was a constant danger from contaminated water and food (167).
Basic training in San Francisco robbed Sledge of many of his illusions that he could easily become a natural soldier, although he learned quickly in comparison to some of the other men. "We believed that the Japs couldn't kill us if he didn't scare us to death," he wrote of one of his boot camp trainers (14). Later, he described the group he trained with as chafing at the bit, eager after all they had learned to embark upon real warfare. However, Sledge's bravado began to ebb as he confronted the actual work of fighting. Stomach in knots, waiting in a cold sweat amidst bursting shells and clouds of shellfire, he lived in constant fear once the reality of war set in (55). Kill or be killed was the rule of the day.
The United States Marine Corps training doctrine that Sledge underwent was designed to forge aggressive, resilient fighters — yet no amount of preparation could fully insulate a young man from the psychological shock of sustained Pacific combat.
In his account, Sledge brings insight into how the different sides of the war were viewed, even by American military officers. Sledge was instructed during basic training that if fighting Japanese soldiers, he should "kick him in the balls before he kicks you in yours," and was counseled that knives were especially effective against them because of their underhanded tactics (18). The Japanese were seen as less ethical and more desperate combatants than the Germans, in part because of their kamikaze warplane tactics. The idea of the Germans as more compassionate adversaries seems deeply ironic in light of the revelations of the Nazi death camps following V-E Day, but Sledge's account shows how racial views of "the enemy" permeated even the American side at the time. This eyewitness depiction also helps explain why Japanese-Americans' patriotism was called into question by the American government over the course of the war, in a way that German-Americans' patriotism generally was not.
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