Inside With the Old Breed: A Conversation With Eugene Sledge’s Son

With the Old Breed is widely considered one of the greatest war memoirs ever written. Penned by Eugene Sledge, a Marine who fought with the 1st Division — the old breed — in the Pacific campaigns of Peleliu and Okinawa, the book is unflinching, deeply human, and so vividly written that you can practically feel the heat, mud, exhaustion, and terror coming off the page.

But Sledge wasn't a professional writer. He was a biology professor who started jotting notes on scraps of paper tucked inside the New Testament he carried in his breast pocket. He wrote the book decades later, partly to process his own trauma, partly to leave a record for his sons.

One of those sons is my guest today. Henry Sledge has spent years carrying his father's legacy forward, and he's written his own book — The Old Breed: The Complete Story Revealed — that pairs his father's combat experience with previously unpublished material and his own perspective as Eugene's son. Today on the show, Henry and I talk about why his dad wrote With the Old Breed, what made fighting in the Pacific uniquely hellish, and how Eugene managed to come home and live a full, honorable life despite carrying the war with him for the rest of his days.

Resources Related to the Podcast

• China Marine: An Infantryman's Life After World War II by E.B. Sledge
• HBO series The Pacific
• Ken Burns' The War
• AoM Article: Eugene B. Sledge Puts Your Problems Into Perspective
• AoM Article: Are You Missing the Forbidden City?

Connect With Henry Sledge

• Henry on IG
• Henry on FB

Thanks to This Week's Sponsor!

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0:00 - Introduction

0:41 - About With the Old Breed: Eugene Sledge's War Memoir

1:15 - Why Eugene Wrote the Book

3:07 - How He Kept Notes in Combat

4:20 - Writing & Publishing the Book

6:03 - Eugene's Writing Style

9:44 - Why Eugene Enlisted as a Private

16:03 - Boot Camp Training

21:35 - Why Peleliu Is the "Forgotten Battle"

27:49 - What Made Fighting on Peleliu Hell

31:40 - The Japanese as an Enemy

43:10 - Life After the War: Coming Home

50:00 - Lessons from With the Old Breed

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