Description
First edition of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene B. Sledge.
Octavo, xvi, 326pp. Brown hardcover, title stamped in gilt. First edition, with no additional printings on copyright page. Clean text throughout, a very good example. In publisher’s very good, first state dust jacket, $15.95 retail price on front flap, ISBN number on rear flap, closed tears to back panel, short closed tear at hinge, reinforced with archival repair, bright illustrations. This copy belonged to J.E. Boberg, who was a member of the 33rd Naval Construction Battalion, with a note below his signature: “Peleliu, I was there from the 1st day.”
This memoir by E.B. Sledge, which recounts his time as a marine during World War II in the South Pacific, is considered one of the finest war memoirs ever written by a soldier. It began as notes that Sledge kept in his bible during the battles and which he sporadically wrote down after returning to the United States. This work, which went largely unnoticed when it was first published in 1981, has become an important first-person narrative of the Pacific theater. It was the inspiration for the HBO miniseries, The Pacific, and Ken Burns PBS series, The War.
