Description
First edition of With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa by Eugene B. Sledge, with an emotional inscription to a fellow veteran.
Octavo, xvi, 326pp. Brown hardcover, title stamped in gilt on spine. First edition, with no additional printings on copyright page. Clean text throughout, light wear to top edge of spine, a near fine example. In publisher’s first state dust jacket, $15.95 retail price on front flap, ISBN number on rear flap, some wear from handling at top edge of spine, bright illustrations.
Inscribed on the front free endpaper: “Dec. 20, 1983 / To Steve Hodges, Best wishes to a fellow veteran of WWII, & and [sic] “old salt” of the 45th Infantry Division, U.S. Army. Your work with the Armed Forces Radio Service was appreciated by millions of guys like me whom you never met. We are kindred spirits in that we served in a war that had to be won to insure a free America & a free world – & we won, but lost a lot of good buddies we will never forget. Semper Fidelis, Sledgehammer (E.B. Sledge).”
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.
