← The Art of Manliness
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- [00:00]
A
So when we first started the Art of Manliness store, there was definitely that voice in the back of my head, what if nobody buys anything? What if this doesn't work? One thing that made it easier was having Shopify. We've used Shopify for years now to run the AOM store, and it handles everything in one place. Inventory, payments, analytics. So you're not juggling a bunch of different tools. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US from big brands to smaller operations like ours. And Shopify actually helps you find customers. You can run email and social campaigns right from the platform. And that shop pay checkout makes a big difference. Fewer abandoned carts, more completed purchases. And if you ever get stuck, they've got 24. 7 customer support. Which matters when you're figuring things out as you go. It's time to turn those what ifs into results with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.commanliness go to shopify.commanliness that's shopify.commanliness so our outdoor setup has always been one of those, well, we'll get to it eventually things. It wasn't terrible, just a mix of older stuff that didn't quite work together. The kind of setup you use but don't really enjoy. But lately, with the weather being so nice here in Tulsa, we've been outside more and it's finally felt worth fixing. So I've been spending time on Wayfair looking on how to upgrade our outdoor space. What's nice about Wayfair is you can actually find everything in one place. Seating, tables, lightning. And you can sort through it quickly. On Wayfair, you can filter by size, materials, price, and then read through tons of real reviews, which helps you figure out what's actually going to hold up in a real backyard. And Wayfair has so many options that you can put something together there that actually fits how you use your backyard instead of just settling for whatever's available locally. They also make it easy once you decide to purchase something fast. Shipping and options for assembly. If you don't want to deal with it yourself, Wayfair makes it easier to finally follow through on upgrading your outdoor space. Get prepped for patio season for way less, head to wayfair.com right now and shop all things home. That's wayfair.com w a y f a I r.com wayfair every style every Home Wayfair Every Style Every home Brett McKay here. And welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers and leaders that glean their edifying life, improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM Podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word and deed. Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliest.com, read the deeper dives we do in our substack newsletter@dyingbreed.net and turn our content into real world action by joining the Strenuous Life program@strenuouslife.com now on to the Show. 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 First Division, the Old Breed and 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 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 rode with the Old Breed, what made fighting in the Pacific uniquely hellish, and 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. After the show is over, check out our show notes at AOM is Oldbreed. Our right Henry Sledge, welcome to the show.
- [04:10]
B
Thank you. Great to be here, Brett. I appreciate that.
- [04:13]
A
So your father was Eugene Sledgehammer Sledge, who was a Marine infantryman who fought in the Pacific campaign of World War II. He's also the author of what many consider one of the greatest war memoirs ever written, and it's called with the Old Breed. I'm sure a lot of our listeners have read this. Why did your dad write the book originally? Was this something he had planned right after the war?
- [04:37]
B
There really was no orchestrated plan, you know, to write a book. I think it began as a cathartic process on his Part to deal with some of the ptsd, you know, the emotional trauma. Just trying to reassimilate to civilian life as he began to put the war behind him. I think that was part of it. And the other component to it was, I think there was a desire on his part to have a written record of his experience for my brother and me, you know, I remember him telling me that.
- [05:11]
A
And the thing too is he had extensive notes to write this thing. Where did those notes come from? How did he keep them when he was fighting?
- [05:20]
B
Well, so the Marines were not allowed to keep diaries for obvious security reasons. You know, if you saw the Pacific miniseries. Did you see the Pacific? I did, yeah. So, you know, Rami Malek playing Snafu has that classic line, gives the Japs valuable intel. They find it. But that really was the crux of it. I mean, Marines were not supposed to keep diaries for security reasons. And he began to keep surreptitious notes on little pieces of paper that he kept tucked into his pocket. New Testament Bible that he carried in the breast pocket of his dungaree jacket. And he also wrote some cursory notes in the first few pages of that Bible, just on weather conditions and basic outline of where they were and that kind of thing. But most of the note taking was going to be on pieces of paper that he kept tucked into the Bible. And then when he got home, he took those pieces of paper and wrote down on a piece of legal paper an outline fleshing everything out. And then from there began to write on his legal pads with his pencil.
- [06:29]
A
When he started to write, how long after did it take for him to finish it?
- [06:33]
B
He started writing, I would say early 70s. I mean, my earliest memories of it are just, you know, when I was just a few years old and that process, you know, and probably a few years after he began that, he asked my mother to begin typing the manuscript. So she started typing it. He would write at night, and then she would type. You know, in the days that followed, I mean, that went on through most of the mid to late 70s. It probably wasn't until the late 70s that she talked him into, you know, like, hey, this is a pretty powerful story. We should look at trying to get this published. And I think that process, and I remember it really well, I mean, I remember the day that we got the letter from Presidio saying that they would publish it. And that was around 1980, you know, because it actually came out 1981.
- [07:25]
A
So, yeah, it was about a 10 year process.
- [07:27]
B
Yeah, it was. And you Know, the thing is, Brett, I mean, he would work on it furiously for several days at a time at night, you know, and then he'd take a break and may not touch it for a month or two months. And I mean, you know, as my brother and I got older and you know, as a family, we're doing things and just, you know, because at that time he's in his early 50s and or mid to late 40s and just, you know, life gets in the way of everything. Right? So, I mean, he's being a husband, being a dad. He was very involved in our lives on a day to day basis. We had a close relationship and so we would hit stretches where he wouldn't even work on it for months at a time and then pick it back up and dive back into it.
- [08:11]
A
Your dad's writing is really good. It's really compelling. But he wasn't a professional writer. He was a biology professor. And his writing wasn't flowery. It was more matter of fact. How would you describe your dad's writing style?
- [08:24]
B
Yeah, I would agree. I mean, his writing, I would term it like this. You know, he was a scientist. He had PhD, biology, biochemistry. He wrote like a scientist. No flowery, elegant prose, nothing pedantic. I mean, he just, it was straight ahead, unblinking, factual.
- [08:46]
A
Yeah. You can tell that he's got this scientific, biological mind when he writes because the way he describes things, it's almost like you're reading a field report from a field biologist. I mean, there was one. Here's a quote he's talking about. He was seen just the dead bodies on Peloton. Yeah, he said this. It was gruesome to see the stages of decay proceed from just killed to bloated to maggot infested, rotting to partially exposed bones like some biological clock marking the inexorable passage of time.
- [09:18]
B
Passage of time, Yep.
- [09:19]
A
And then you'd also. Just. When he described dead bodies, he would compare them like, well, it looks like the intestines of a squirrel that I would hunt as a boy.
- [09:28]
B
Yes, that's exactly right. And I'm like, I literally turned as you were reading that. I mean, I, I know that book so intimately. Well, I, I got pretty much right here to the part where you were. Were reading from. But not only that, you know, like he talks about. Cans of C rations and K ration boxes, open and unopened, lay around our gun pit, along with discarded grenade and mortar shell canisters. Scattered about the area were discarded US helmets, packs, ponchos, dungaree jackets, web cartridge belts, leggings, boondockers, ammo boxes of every type and crates, the discarded articles of clothing and the inevitable bottle of blood plasma bore mute testimony that a Marine had been hit there. And what I was saying about that was, you know, that, that, that writing is like just knowing my father the way I did that. That is Eugene Sledge. That is Sledgehammer telling you that he's not just seeing this and observing these things. He feels the anguish of seeing the blood of fellow Marines.
- [10:29]
A
Yeah, that's one thing I noticed throughout the book is he doesn't flinch away from the brutality of war. And he describes it in great detail, but at the same time he brings his humanity to it and he talks about the moral and spiritual damage that it's doing to the men who are in these battles.
- [10:49]
B
Yeah, always there was always that angle of it to him because, I mean, look, you know, that was one of the extraordinary things about the kind of guy that, that my father was. I mean, honestly, he was a peaceable guy who wanted to enjoy his life and go to college and do the things that a young man would be doing. And fighting on some war torn island in the, in the middle of the Pacific was not what he wanted to be doing. But he wanted to enlist in the Marine Corps. He wanted to be a part of that. He knew that everybody was going to have to go fight somewhere and he wanted to be with what he thought was the finest outfit out there, which was the Marines. And all of those things just that bear testimony to his character.
- [11:30]
A
Yeah, and as you said, the process of writing this book, it seemed like it helped him process that trauma that a lot of soldiers came home with.
- [11:41]
B
I do think it was a cathartic process for him. I really do. I remember when with the Old Breed came out and I got, we got our first copies and I remember reading it. Of course, I had read some of the typewritten pages that my mother had typed in the years leading up to its publication. But I remember, you know, really well, I remember reading where in the introduction he said. I think it was in the introduction or some of the early parts of it. He said, you know, the, the, the nightmares no longer wake me in the middle of the night with a pounding heart and in a cold sweat. But I'll tell you this, I recall very well when my brother and I were young, my mother sat us down and she said, listen, if you boys need us in the middle of the night, come to my side of the bed. Don't go to your father's. Side of the bed. And whatever you do, don't touch him.
- [12:30]
A
Yeah, because he was still dealing with it.
- [12:33]
B
Yeah, I mean, he was still dealing with it. I mean, look, man, that's. That's heavy stuff, you know, I mean, this is a guy. We're talking in the mid-1970s here. This is a guy who's in his 50s at this point, you know, with a couple of boys and being a husband and a dad and trying to put all this behind him.
- [12:49]
A
And his war experience had happened in his early 20s.
- [12:52]
B
Yeah, well, I mean, he was 20 years old on Peleloo. He turned 21 on Peleliu, and he was 22 on Okinawa. Yeah.
- [12:59]
A
There was another antidote you put in your book about your experience with, you know, your dad's dealing with that trauma, that PTSD of the war. I think you were a kid and you got, like, a toy Tommy gun.
- [13:09]
B
Oh, yeah, the plastic Tommy gun. I know right where you're going. You know, Growing up in the 70s, my brother and I would go down to the dime store and we'd get the little. You know, the little plastic army helmets and the like. I. I was fascinated by the Thompson submachine gun. I just loved that. That weapon as a kid when I would see it on movies and things like that. And I remember buying one that just. The cheap little plastic tommy gun, and it had the little clacker in it, you know, when you pull the trigger, it would like that, you know, and, man, I would run around with that thing out in the woods. You know, I'd watch Hogan's Heroes in the afternoon and then run around with that thing after that, pretend like we were playing World War II or something. I mean, I was just a kid, you know, and I think I was like 8 or 9, maybe 10 years old. And I got the bright. The not so bright ideas that turned out to hide in our cupboard in the kitchen. We had a real, like. It was a pantry cupboard. It was really tall. It was about five feet tall, and, you know, eight, nine years old. I was a really small kid, and I got the idea to get in that thing and hide and close the door and jump out and scare him when he walked in the kitchen. And so I did one night, and I heard him coming down the hall, kind of whistling to himself, because he always did. And he walked through the kitchen, and as he did, I pushed open the door and jumped out at that thing and was squeezing a little trigger on it, you know, and he spun around, and I don't know that he ever said a word. He did not lose his temper, he did not lose his cool. But he spun around and looked at me like he'd never looked at me before. And he pick me up by the. He would, as the Marines used to say, grab me by the stack and swivel, which is where you grab somebody by the collar. And he grabbed me. And he was not. My dad was not a big man, you know, five, nine, five nine and a half, 155 pounds or so. But he grabbed me and he picked me up and pushed me against that cupboard door. And then he let me down and he took me into the bedroom and took his belt off and gave me a whipping. And, you know, people would be horrified at that now, but I mean, that was not an uncommon thing for those of us growing up back in those days. But the interesting thing about it was like he did not lose control, he did not lose his cool. That was a very calculated response to what I had done. And he was trying to instill in me, don't ever do that to a combat veteran.
- [15:28]
A
Yeah. And what's interesting though, besides, you know, the being startled at night and being, you know, freaked out by his 8 year old son who jumps out with a toy Tommy gun. You describe your dad, he. You never got the impression, you say this, that you're living with someone who was mentally ill or just disturbed. Like he was, like you said, very control, calm guy.
- [15:50]
B
Absolutely. I mean, he would stress out about things, you could see that. But look, this goes to the heart of. I mean, this is a great point you bring up, Brett, because a big part of why I do what I do is people who've read with the old breed, people who've seen the Pacific, people who maybe saw the Ken Burns, the war in 2007, you watch those things and you see this young man come home from this crucible of savagery which was his experience on Peleliu and Okinawa. And you see this guy come home and you see him have the nightmares and you get a sense of him struggling to assimilate back into civilian life. And one thing I felt like they did not. The war was excellent by Ken Burns, but my mother and I talked about it afterward. And one thing that they didn't do there, and they didn't do it in the Pacific either, because there just wasn't time. They really didn't convey the point adequately that, okay, yeah, he struggled when he came home, but he struggled successfully. And so I feel like I can bear testimony to the fact that he was a classic all American father. He would never forget the Marines he served with. He would never forget his time in the Marine Corps. He would never forget his pride in the Marine Corps or his pride in our country, for that matter. But at the same time, he deplored the idea of sending young men into combat. But he waged whatever struggles he had internally. He waged them successfully because, I mean, look, he and my mother had. They were married almost 50 years by the time he passed away. And they had a fantastic marriage. Not to say that it was perfect. No marriage is. But they had a very strong. We had a great family life. It wasn't perfect. Nothing is. But I never felt like. Well, I'll say it like this. My father did a great job of compartmentalizing the angst. And he was determined to be a productive, cheerful member of society. And he was. I've got to know many of his students in later years, some of whom were, you know, young Marines and soldiers coming home from Vietnam. And, I mean, his students called him Uncle Eugene. I mean, so he was a very light. He had a fantastic sense of humor, a very lively sense of humor. And he was very highly thought of professionally, very highly thought of in Montevallo, in our town, growing up, where I grew up. And so, yeah, Sledgehammer may have had his struggles, but he did it right.
- [18:13]
A
Well, let's talk more about your dad and his history and how he ended up as a Marine. So your dad's family had a military tradition. His father served in World War I. When the war broke out, your father was at a military school? Military Institute, was it? Marion Military Institute.
- [18:31]
B
Marion. Marion Military Institute, yes.
- [18:34]
A
And so, I mean, he was on track. He could have, you know, been an officer. His family was nudging him to be an officer, but your dad decided not to do that. Can you tell us the story of why he chose to intentionally flunk out of the Officer Candidate Program and enlist as a private in the Marines?
- [18:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, I can answer the question very easily. Youthful impetuosity, you know, the impetuousness of youth. You know, he. And a very large portion of the detachment in his officer training and the V12 program that he was enrolled in at Georgia Tech after the war broke out. You know, they were scared that the war was going to be over before they got into it, and he. He didn't want to live with that feeling of, you know, I almost got there, but I just didn't quite get there and do what I was meant to do. And. And, you know, it Bears pointing out. I mean, this is a really powerful thing. I think it's a very significant thing about. When you talk about Eugene Sledge and the kind of guy that he was, I mean, look, my grandfather was a very influential man in Mobile back in the 1930s. He was very well thought of and he had a certain amount of influence. And other marines that my dad served with pointed this out to. I mean, a lot of these guys came from hardscrabble backgrounds. They came from, I mean, I'm just going to say dirt poor backgrounds, lacking a lot of formal education. I mean, that. That was a fact with a lot of those guys back then, you know, and that wasn't the case with my father. I mean, he actually had some college behind him and he came from a family that you could say in certain ways was well to do and to absolutely purposefully insert himself into the world. He inserted himself in enlist in the Marine Corps. I think it's a powerful thing. And I mean, one of his fellow marines told me, I went to visit this guy years ago and he said, that was one thing I always admired about your dad. You know, we all knew he probably could have escaped the path that he chose, but there he was shoulder to shoulder with us, and he was a damn good Marine. He did everything he was ever asked or told to do.
- [20:38]
A
So I mean, you'd say it's just youthful impetuosity, Just sort of that thumos. That drive to see action.
- [20:44]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And as he said, I mean, if we only knew what I mean. Talks about in the troop train clacking along the rails to head into San Diego, because he actually went through basic in San Diego, not at Parris island, which was not the usual thing for a young man east of the Mississippi, but he did go to San Diego. And he talks about how they're all these guys are on the troop train headed west and they're all, you know, singing songs and jousting with each other and cutting up. And he said we were like boys headed off to a summer camp. And he said, God, if we had only known what lay ahead. You know, I'm reminded of all quiet on the western front because that young man, you know, this young German kid and his school buddies, I mean, they can't wait to enlist and get into the fight. And then you see well into the book what a horrible thing it is. And they understand that thing. Yeah.
- [21:36]
A
Your dad in the beginning of the book, spends a good deal of time talking about his boot camp training as an infantryman. What Was that like.
- [21:44]
B
Well, the training, you know, he felt like the instructors were all very thorough and professional and did a good job and tried to do the best they could to prepare these guys for what lay ahead. Now, to speak on a more personal level, you know, the training was rigorous. It was hard. Nothing about it was easy. Their drill instructor was Corporal Daugherty. And Corporal Daugherty was not a big man my father described as probably 5, 10, not an ounce of fat on him. Absolute rock hard physique in phenomenal shape. Just these mean green eyes, the way he would look at you. Very intimidating guy, even though he wasn't that big. But the man obviously was a professional at what he did, and that was taking these guys and stealing them into guys who were going to take positions in rifle companies across the Pacific. And I think that my father had a really mature attitude about the training they were going through because he understood. Well, he really reflected on and with some great material that got edited out of. With the old breed that I was so thankful to be able to use in my book, because he talked about when they got back on Pavuvu after Peleliu, he reflected he had some brilliant writing about the very thing you asked about. And talking about how, you know, the Marine Corps training was tough. It was brutal, but it had to be, because what they were going to experience was brutal. And he had just come off that at Peleliu, and he understood that he probably could not have survived that experience had it not been for their training.
- [23:17]
A
Yeah, I thought that was interesting. Those unpublished parts of the manuscript that you put in your book where he talked about that a lot. He was grateful for the training. A lot of the Marines, they carped about it, but he realized no part of the reason why I'm still alive. Well, I mean, luck's a big part of it, but the training was also a big part.
- [23:35]
B
Yeah, and, I mean, he writes that very articulately. And, you know, no small wonder that the Marine Corps views his book with such high.
- [23:43]
A
Regardless, let's talk about your dad's combat experience in the Pacific. His first assignment we've been talking about this was to help secure the island of Peleliu. I imagine a lot of people listening right now have probably never heard of this island. You know, they might have heard about Iwo Jima, Midway. Why is Peleliu often overlooked by Americans?
- [24:05]
B
Well, Peleliu was a tiny, tiny little atoll two miles by six miles on the western edge of the Pacific north. And the short answer to your Question why is it overlooked? Is because it could have been bypassed. And at the time, you know, MacArthur was, was proceeding along a southwesterly axis to get back to the Philippines. And then Chester nimitz and the U.S. navy and Marines were driving through the Central Pacific. So we kind of had this two tiered approach in subjugating Japanese forces. It was determined originally that Peleliu was needed to neutralize the airfield there so that Japanese air assets, Japanese air power, could not threaten MacArthur's right flank as he proceeded towards the Philippines. As it turned out, they didn't need to do that because all Japanese air power had been knocked out by US Navy Carrier Task Force raids in early 1944. And Peleliu wasn't invaded until September 1944. Now, Admiral Halsey had a foretelling of this because as his task force pilots are coming back, as those Hellcat pilots are coming back from their strikes throughout the Palau Islands, his pilots are telling him, look, we're not encountering any aerial opposition. It's all been done away with and we're destroying a lot of airplanes on the ground. And so he sat down and thought about it. He met with other officers and he went to Nimitz and said, I fear another Tarawa. I don't think that we need to hit Peleliu. My guys are not seeing in any aerial resistance. And I think this is going to be a lot worse than we think it could be. Chester Nimitz, for reasons he never really disclosed because he passed away in 1965, chose to not stop the invasion armada and to proceed with invading Peleliu. But the short answer to your question, why is it overlooked? Is because it could have been bypassed. And that was such a tragedy because going into it, General Robertas, who was the first Marine division commander, had this inexplicably optimistic view of the coming battle that, look, it's going to be rough but fast. It's going to be like Tarawa, you know, three days, maybe four. It might only take two. And every time I think about that, it just makes my blood run cold because you realize what they got into with the challenging topography, not to mention the heat and humidity. I mean, that was going to be part of every battle in the Pacific. But the absolute meat grinder that it turned into that they did not originally think it would be. I mean, a lot of the news correspondents didn't even go ashore at Peleliu because they thought, well, there's no point. I mean, it's going to be over in like a day and a half or two days or three, you know, and so you only had a handful of correspondents who actually went ashore. So, you know, it was an amalgamation of several things as to why Peleliu wasn't so well known. I mean, and that was, you know, that caused a lot of bitterness for my father and a lot of the guys who were there and lost good buddies there. I Remember in the 1970s, Peleliu was frequently referred to as the forgotten battle. I will say this, I don't think Peleliu is quite so forgotten anymore.
- [27:11]
A
Yeah. So I think thanks to movies like Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers, I think a lot of people are familiar with what fighting was like in Europe. All war is brutal. We've had Alex Kershaw on the podcast, the World War II historian.
- [27:25]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [27:26]
A
He talks about, he says the battles in Europe. The war in Europe, it was brutal, but there was a certain romanticism about it because, you know, soldiers are fighting amongst these old cathedrals in rural European farms with stone fences. Fighting in the Pacific was not like that at all. And your father did an excellent job capturing the hellishness of war fighting in the Pacific. What was Peleliu like? Give us a look into what it was like fighting there.
- [27:51]
B
Well, Peleliu, the northern part of the island was called the Uma Brogel, known colloquially to the marines who had to fight there as Bloody Nose Ridge. And in fact, it was a series of ridges. The coral high ground was obfuscated by vegetation before it had all been blasted off by our pre landing naval and aerial bombardment. But it was very topographically challenging terrain. You had a complex system of ridges and ravines and box canyons and blind canyons. And all of that was pockmarked with caves. I mean, I've seen the number, you know, 500 caves that pockmarked like Swiss cheese. You know, the Japanese were absolute masters of using every aspect of their, of their terrain to their advantage as a force multiplier, if you will. And Peleliu offered some, some tragic opportunities for that. But the parts of the island that weren't just complete coral were, you know, jungle scrub growth. But it was terribly hot, 7 degrees off the equator. On D day, it was 115 degrees in the shade. And so you, you had that aspect of it.
- [29:08]
A
I want to talk about the coral because I think a lot of people think, oh, Pacific islands, It's gonna be like Tahiti with these identic beaches. But these beaches were just mostly Coral. What made fighting on coral so brutal?
- [29:20]
B
Well, the northern landing beach. And I've walked that entire landing beach at Pelelu, where my father went ashore on Orange beach, too, which was a southern sector of the approximately 2200 yard Long Beach. It actually was pretty flat and sandy. You know, it had a gentle slope to it, but once you got inland, you were in the scrub growth and. But then they quickly got into the coral. Now up on what they call White beach, which was where the 1st Marine Regiment. My father was in the 5th Marine Regiment, but the 1st Marine Regiment landed on White beach, which was a little bit north of where my father landed. I walked that area and I've never seen anything like it in my life, Brett. It was sharp coral outcroppings all the way out into the water. There is no sandy beach on White Beach. And so for the 1st Marines, the 1st Marine Regiment, when I say 1st Marines, I'm referring to them as soon as they debark from their landing craft, you know, as soon as they got out of their amphibious tractors, they're immediately getting cut by this coral if they have to die for cover, which they did because the Japanese had heavily impregnated that or heavily fortified that part of the landing beach. But I remember my dad telling me, you know, they had entrenching tools. But he said it almost felt like there was no point in it because really, on Peleli, you really couldn't dig in. You know, quote unquote, dig in and, you know, dig a nice deep hole in soft earth like you could on Okinawa in 1945. Peleliu, he said there were so many times on Pellew we couldn't dig in. I mean, we might could take shelter in a shell crater, but half the time you just pile logs and rocks around you for any kind of protection, you know, any sort of protection from flying fragments. But digging in was just almost an impossibility because of that hard coral.
- [31:04]
A
Yeah. And then your dad talks about the coral. It made fighting hard and it made digging, you know, foxholes hard. But it also made field sanitation pretty much impossible.
- [31:17]
B
Correct. Because, you know, he talked about when a man had to defecate, usually he just did it in a. Like an ammo can or a C ration can. There was nowhere to bury it, so they just threw it off into some underbrush or something like that. And imagine after 15, 20, 30 days of that, not to mention the dead and rotting enemy bodies. And of course, the Marines tried to pull their guys out and get them back to a secure area as quickly as they could. But still you had this unbelievable proliferation of human waste. I mean, it's disgusting to talk about, but, I mean, look, these were things that my dad wrote about and talked about so much, because to him, you have to understand this. And this is a lot of what drove him to write with the old breed. I mean, he wanted people to understand. You know, you've seen war movies and you think combat is something glorious and something, you know, romantic. And he said, there's nothing romantic or glorious about it. It's dealing with blowflies that have become engorged on human blood. It's dealing with rotting corpses. It's the smell of unburied human waste. I mean, that's what a battlefield was to him.
- [32:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, the environment was just completely so. It's hot, humid. He talked about just smelled all the time. That was a challenge, dealing with that. You're dealing with not only the blowflies, there's maggots. He describes the maggots and the festering bodies. The land crabs were another thing you had to deal with all the time.
- [32:50]
B
Absolutely. I mean, he talked about how at night you could just hear the land crabs crawling around in the undergrowth. Of course, it sounded like Japanese soldiers crawling around, which they did. They infiltrated their lines at night to great effect. They did it every night, and they were really good at it. And of course, in addition to everything that you just said, you deal with the fact of lack of clean drinking water and the inability to get a good night's sleep because the Japanese were infiltrating every night to purposefully keep the Marines awake. And the soldiers, because the army was there too, of course, to purposefully keep these guys awake to keep them from getting any sleep. And, of course, that just compounds everything to an exponential degree.
- [33:34]
A
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- [39:04]
B
Well, the Japanese were fiercely brave, dedicated and horrifically effective and brutal soldiers. They were absolute masters at exploiting their terrain. As I've already said, at a place like Peleliu, they had untold opportunities to do that. You know, my father always thought it was ironic. I would say funny, but he didn't think it was funny. But I remember in the 70s, you know, people had this perception that anything made in Japan was cheap. I remember him telling me that. He said, you know, we didn't think of their weapons as cheap. They felt pretty effective to us. Their 70 Mountain 70 millimeter field gun that they used was horrifically effective. Their mortars were horrifically effective. And the Japanese exercised superb fire discipline. They would purposefully wait for a Marine to be wounded. You know, they employed snipers to horrific effect. A sniper might fire around to wound a Marine knowing full well that two other Marines are going to come out and try to drag him back in. And then they would open fire on those guys. You know, I remember my father saying, I can hear him say it. You know, I'm going to say Japanese. That's not the way he put it. But he said that, you know, the Japanese opened up on stretcher teams absolutely without mercy. And that was something that he said. It would just make you weep in fury to see, you know, a wounded Marine and four of his buddies going out or two of his buddies going out to try to bring him back in and then those guys getting cut down. He said it would make you absolutely weep to see that and make you hate your enemy. And so you had this fierce preternatural hatred between the Americans and the Japanese, just as much on their part as our part. You know, it was completely mutual. But they were certainly a skilled enemy and an enemy to be feared.
- [40:59]
A
How did fighting the Japanese compare to fighting the Germans?
- [41:03]
B
I remember my father telling me, you know, in the 70s and 80s as I was growing up, and we would have our conversations about all this. You know, the Germans were very professional and well trained, and he said, I would have hated to fight them, but most of the time they would bed down at night and get their sleep. He said the Japanese would not do that. You know, they would attack all day and fight all night through infiltration. And then the other angle to this is there were many cases where the Germans surrendered when they realized that they had to. The Japanese. I'm not going to say that they never surrendered because obviously by the time Okinawa rolled around, it did happen, but very rarely. It was very rare that the Japanese would surrender. And on Peleliu, they had to fight him to the last man. Pretty much Okinawa, they did begin to surrender, but even that was not a codified, systematic course of action. That was going to be a more piecemeal, ad hoc type situation where individual Japanese just realized that the jig is up, there's no point in continuing this, and they would give themselves up. But even then, that was rare. And so you have this human conflict that is just the absolute depths of human savagery. And it just was an absolute war of bitter hatred. And my father spoke of it, he thought of it, he wrote of it, because to him, it was just such. Such a component of what they were dealing with.
- [42:36]
A
Yeah, I mean, let's talk about that. I mean, what sorts of savagery did your father see and write about?
- [42:42]
B
Well, I mean, so he saw many cases where the Japanese had defiled Marine corpses. And I won't say how. You know, I don't want to put the listeners through the grotesque descriptions that you can read it in his book. There was a good bit of that. And so, of course, Marines always tried to remove their dead because they knew the Japanese would just do terrible things to the bodies and even worse to a man if they captured him. They knew that to be captured was absolutely not an option. On Guadalcanal, you had an incident called the Getge Patrol, which is where a couple of Japanese were taken prisoner by the Marines in the early stages of the battle. And these guys said that some of Their buddies were down the river and wanted to surrender and that if the Marines would go out and send out a rescue party, they would surrender. And so our intelligence officers always wanted to pick up surrendered Japanese if that was an option, because it was a source of intel, right? It was a source of knowledge and factual data. And so the Marines sent out a patrol under the command of Colonel Frank Gedge to bring these guys in, and they end up being ambushed and killed to the last man. I can't remember. I'm not a Guadala Canal expert. I've read a lot about it. But I have buddies who. That's their area of specialty. But the Get Key patrol was slaughtered. Well, I think. I think one guy survived and he was able to swim back along the beach and get out of there and get back to the Marine lines. But when he came back and began to get the word back to his guys of what happened, then we began to understand this is going to be a different kind of war. This is not a war where you can hold your hands up and surrender and say, that's it, I'm done. And not to mention, I mean, we haven't even talked about the Philippines. We haven't even talked about what was going on to our army, to the soldiers in the army divisions who had surrendered in the Philippines, you know, being marched north via the Bataan Death March up to Camp o' Donnell and the starvation and the torture that they were encountering. And so these were things that we were not prepared to deal with, but we learned very quickly that they were going to be things that we had to face. And when my father was going through his initial training on Pavuvu, when he first got out to the Pacific theater, he talks about how he was on a working party one day loading coconuts. And he. And the buddies he's working with and the guys he was working with had been at Cape Gloucester. They were combat veterans. And they had not just gotten out into the theater of war like he had. And they come across another Marine who was working in an area close to them. And I start talking, and this guy was. Was the survivor of the Get GE patrol. And the guy says goodbye to his buddies and he walks off. And my dad's like, who. Who was that guy? And his buddies tell him he's a lucky son of a bitch. That's what he is. He was on that Get Key patrol. And they proceed to tell my father the story of it. And news travels fast, man. People talk. And I mean, these Marines were speaking to each Other. And getting the word out that, look, you cannot surrender. That is not an option.
- [45:48]
A
And what's interesting, your father describes how when these Marines were seeing the brutality with which Japanese soldiers were treating, you know, the corpses of the Marines, there was this temptation from the Marines to do the same, to retaliate and do the same thing. And your father even describes, like, he had moments where he's like, yeah, I want to maybe do something to this Japanese dead body because I'm just so angry at them. But he didn't. He was able to kind of resist that pull. How do you think your father's able to do that and other Marines weren't?
- [46:18]
B
Yeah, so one of the things you're referring to is a lot of Japanese soldiers, World War II, had gold teeth. And it became a practice among a lot of Marines to, you know, if they saw a Japanese corpse that had gold teeth, they would harvest. They would take those gold teeth. And it was commonly done. Of course, the Japanese were doing even worse things to the bodies of our guys when they could get to him. But, yeah, that. That actually is a pretty powerful passage where he starts to do that one day, and Doc Caswell, who's the corpsman in K Company of my dad's unit, puts his hand on my dad's shoulder, says, sledgehammer, what are you doing? What are you getting ready to do? And my dad says, well, I just saw this. This jab's got gold teeth. I thought I might try to take one or two of them. And Doc Caswell, because I always call the corpsman Doc, he says, you don't want to do that. Don't do that. And my father says, well, okay. I mean, you know why? And Doc Caswell says, well, think of the germs. Think of the germs. You know, what would your old man think about that? And my dad said, well, my old man's a doctor. He might think it's kind of interesting. But Doc Caswell says, just, you don't want to do that. And so my father said, okay, well, you know, how about I just cut off his collar insignia instead? And so he did that. But, you know, my dad was a very intelligent young man, and he reflected on it, and he said, I realized Doc Caswell was not concerned about me being exposed to germs. He just didn't want to see me lose that last vestige of civility.
- [47:50]
A
Yeah. Lose that last part of his humanity. Because, I mean, for some reason, it even got worse. Your father described. I mean, there's one story, one guy Took a hand from it.
- [48:00]
B
Yeah. That was at the end of Peleliu.
- [48:02]
A
Yeah.
- [48:02]
B
And that guy was. Was almost ostracized by the other Marines because, like, their NCA was like, what? Get rid of that thing. I'm going to write you. I'll put you on report if you don't. Yeah.
- [48:14]
A
But it just goes to show, I mean, this type of fighting they were doing, the environment they were in, I mean, it could cause significant spiritual and emotional damage to these guys.
- [48:25]
B
It causes this complete degradation and breakdown of decency. And that was something that my father wanted to. To make people understand, is that, you know, the guys doing this, these are nice young. These are nice kids.
- [48:39]
A
Yeah. And they were kids. Some of them were like, literally kids. They were 17 years old.
- [48:42]
B
17, 18. These are nice kids. But they have been dehumanized. And if I can find it, Brett, this is. If I can. Man, there's such a powerful passage. Basically. It's. It's a paragraph where he just really kind of sums up the awfulness of an experience like Peleliu. In the last line in that. That paragraph, he says Peleloo eroded the veneer of civilization and made savages of us all.
- [49:09]
A
Yeah.
- [49:10]
B
And that is such a powerful line right there.
- [49:14]
A
Yeah. And your dad just did such a great job describing that while on Peleliu. I mean, just complete brutality, harsh fighting conditions. But your dad and a lot of the other marines lost a mentor, Captain Akak Haldane, on Peleliu. And this really hit your dad hard. And it was sort of a turning point for him in his war experience. How did Ack Ack die and how did his loss of leadership changed the way your father viewed the rest of the war?
- [49:47]
B
Well, yeah, Captain Haldane, his code name, Akak, they called him Ack Ack. He was such a well thought of officer. He was their company commander. He was K company's commander. He was killed on October 7, 1944 by a sniper on Hill 140 on Peleliu. And my father said it was the worst grief I suffered during the entire war. You know, Akak, Captain Haldane represented stability and security in a world gone mad. I mean, that's exactly the way he says it, because, you know, even though Captain Haldane was like 27 years old, he had been at Guadalcanal, he'd been at Cape Gloucester. He was incredibly well thought of and just a very cool headed, excellent company commander. And his men loved him and would have done anything for him. And the thought of him that he would be killed like that. My father wrote about how that never occurred to us that we could lose him. And it enraged them all that he was killed by a sniper, but that is how he died. And, you know, yeah, Captain Haldane was just so well thought of. And to lose him, you know, it just was. He represented, like I said, stability and security. And they. They never conceived that he would be killed.
- [51:01]
A
Did it change what your dad thought is like chances of survival were. It's like, well, if this guy could go, I could go just as easily.
- [51:10]
B
Absolutely. And I mean, certainly by the time they get to Okinawa, he's seen so many good marines get hit or killed. And he said, you know, the. The chance, the arithmetic of chance. I mean, you felt like every day you were running out of even more luck, if you had any left at all.
- [51:30]
A
So even though the brass thought Peleliu could be taken in a few days, the 1st Marine Division fought on the island for about a month, a little over a month. They suffered over 6,500 casualties, including 1,000 deaths. And as you mentioned, Pelu could have been bypassed, which your father had some bitterness about. After Peleliu, he fought on Okinawa for 82 days, on and off the front lines, mostly on the front lines. And Okinawa had its own nightmarish conditions, Constant rain, mud, maggots, everything was moldering. He called it hell's own cesspool. Sledge, despite being in the thick of two of the worst battles in history, never received a high level valor award like the silver Star. Why is that? And what was the culture in his battalion regarding medals?
- [52:22]
B
Well, I remember him telling me about a conversation that he had with Captain Stanley many years after, because he and Stumpy got to know each other well and had many conversations when he was riding with the old breed in the late 70s or in, you know, before it got published in 1981. And he asked Stumpy that. He asked Captain Stanley that. He's like, why is it that you never recommended anybody for a valor award? You know, bronze Star, Silver Star, you know, and he said that Stumpy told him. He said, because, Sledgehammer, I didn't want to pick one guy out and recommend him for a bronze Star, a silver Star, a medal of Honor, Because I felt like every one of you guys deserved something.
- [52:57]
A
Yeah. And then your dad recounts a story where he had a fellow marine just tell him, hey, you know what, Sledge, you did okay. And that to him, like, represented the highest honor that he could get.
- [53:08]
B
Yeah, that. So that was when it's after Peleliu, they've gotten back to Pavuvu, which is where they were in the. In the Russell islands, where the 1st Marine Division rested, refitted and trained and staged out for both Petaloo and later Okinawa. And he describes a scene where it's late one afternoon, kind of twilight, and he and his bunk mates. He and his tent mates, I should say, are in their tent. One guy's over in the corner on his rack, snoozing away very softly. Can hear him snoozing after the day's training. And my dad's lying there in the twilight, and he's starting to get sleepy, and he's resting his head on his arm, you know, on the pillow of his rack. And then he hears the other Marine say, you know, something, Sledgehammer. My. My dad says, what? And he says, I really had my eye on you coming into the. To the unit before Peleloo. You know, I. I had my doubts about you being a doctor's kid and kind of, you know, coming from a. A rich family and having been to college and all that. And he said, I got to tell you, man, I kept my eye on you on Peleliu, and. And you did okay. By God, you did okay. And my dad wrote about how his chest literally burst with pride. He said. And he said many men were awarded Silver Stars and Bronze Stars, deservedly so. But he said those words from a veteran who had been at Cape Gloucester and Guadalcanal. Those words meant more to me. That seal of approval from a fellow Marine meant more to him than any medal he could have ever been awarded.
- [54:36]
A
When Eugene returned home in 1946, he, like hundreds of thousands of American men, brought the abyss of war home with him. What was his transition to civilian life like?
- [54:46]
B
Well, it was a. A painful process. He. He writes about that in great detail in. In his second book, China Marine. I explore it quite a bit from. Obviously, I wasn't born until 20 years later, 19 years later, but I know from having talked to my mother and hearing family stories, it was a slow process. He dealt with a lot of nightmares. He dealt with. I remember asking him when I was a kid, I said, you know, dad, when you came home from World War II, what. You know, after surviving, that I would think you would have just felt like you could conquer anything. And he said, to be honest with you, I did a lot of sitting around, staring at the wall, just trying to mentally put my head back together. My grandfather was. And I write about this in My forthcoming second book, I talk about my grandfather a little bit and what an intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful man that he was. And my. My father credited my grandfather with really being a bridge back to sanity, because he said, you know, Pop. That was what everybody in the family called my grandfather. He said, pop was an incredibly well thought of one of the finest physicians in the state of Alabama, and professionally, very well thought of and accomplished. But he just understood because he had treated shell shock victims in World War I, and he understood what these young men had been through. And he was a shield for my dad because my grandmother didn't understand it. And she would come in, they show this in the last episode of the Pacific, they show it really well when they show the kid playing my dad sitting under a tree. And the lady playing my grandmother comes out and says, oh, Eugene, you look like a gangster with those glasses on. And she hands him a glass of iced tea and then start talking about, you know, Eugene, you have to get a plan for the future. You need to be doing something. And they film that scene exactly the way we told them those conversations went. And my father said, in those instances to my grandmother, my plan is to do nothing for a while. And then my grandfather would come out, and just like he did in the Pacific, you know, in that last episode, he comes out and he. He says, mary Frank, what are you doing? Leave the boy alone. You have no idea what men like him have been through. Go on, leave him alone. And that is exactly the way that happened. And I remember us talking to the producers about that and how my grandfather would do that and shoo her away, and she'd start grumbling and mumbling and muttering and walk away in a huff, you know. And then my grandfather would just tell my father, you know, you have nothing to prove to anybody in this world.
- [57:16]
A
When someone reads your dad's book, what lessons do you hope they walk away with when they're finished?
- [57:23]
B
You know, they learn something about what it really means to send young men into combat. I mean, look, I've always said this, Brett. I mean, I am passionate about World War II history. And so I enjoy reading about everything concerning every battle across the Pacific. And not only that, but in Europe as well. And I enjoy reading about the tanks, the weapons, the airplanes, all of those things, you know, the hardware, the logistics, all of it. The strategic planning, all of those things interest me greatly. But to really understand what it's all about, you have to go beneath the rim of the helmet, and you have to understand what goes through a young man's. Head when he is under heavy fire and experiencing prolonged close combat and the emotional toll that that takes on a human being. And with the Olbry, my father's book helps you understand that. It helps you understand that beneath the rim of the helmet perspective. And I mean, my book explores that as well, you know, I mean, because it has not only my perspective of seeing how as a father, you know, and of course, I was born in 1965, so I'm growing up in the 1970s and 80s. You know, how his Marine experience, how his World War II experience informed the choices he made as a husband to my mom and then as a father to my brother and me.
- [58:44]
A
Yeah. What do you think people listening to this show can learn from how your father carried himself after the war?
- [58:50]
B
Well, you know, the last thing he says in with the Old Breed, the last thing he says, if the country is good enough to live in, it's worth fighting for, is the troops used to say, with privilege goes responsibility. Certainly he delved deeply into the whole matter of, you know, Peleliu was tragic, unrelenting horror and suffering and waste, unnecessary waste. Okinawa was its own hell. He saw so many good friends maimed and killed. Everybody suffered in their own way. Even the ones who came home physically intact, as he did suffered. They bore that cost for the rest of their lives. But he regarded having been a Marine and having served the way he did as a great honor. And he carried that with him, I think, for the rest of his life. I mean, I remember the leather belt that he wore every day, okay, with his L.L. bean corduroys. If he was wearing blue jeans, he wore the same damn leather belt every day. It had an EGA on it, which, of course, is the Marine Eagle, globe and anchor. It was a really small. It was one of his collar egas, and he had that through one of the holes in his belt.
- [60:01]
A
One of the lessons I took away after reading your dad's book is just gratitude for the comfort and privilege that I have. I mean, there's this he talks about when he's in Okinawa. He had marched two straight weeks with sore, slimy feet, trapped in wet socks. Then when he finally had a chance to dry out, remove them, you know, pieces of dead skin were peeling off with his socks. And he says it was the kind of experience that would make a man sincerely grateful for the rest of his life for clean, dry socks, a simple condition, as dry socks seemed a luxury. And he talks about, too, that he hopes people in America who read this book would be grateful for the things they have. And he talked about. He struggled to comprehend people who griped because America wasn't perfect or their coffee wasn't hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or a bus. And I'm living here in 2026, and I can get things delivered to my doorstep from Amazon the next day. And I get upset because, oh, you know, I. I asked for next day delivery and it's going to be two days. It's just like, man, when I'm thinking that, I got to think about Eugene Sledge.
- [61:08]
B
Right.
- [61:08]
A
And just how lucky I am and quit complaining about all the inconveniences and. Yeah. So just gratitude. And I'm wondering if we could end this. If you can read a passage in the preface of the book where he talks about why he published with the Old Breed.
- [61:23]
B
In writing, I'm fulfilling an obligation I have long felt to my comrades in the 1st Marine Division, all of whom suffered so much for our country. None came out unscathed. Many gave their lives, many their health and some their sanity. All who survived will long remember the horror they would rather forget. But they suffered and they did their duty so a sheltered homeland can enjoy the peace that was purchased at such a high cost. We owe those Marines a profound debt of gratitude.
- [61:53]
A
Yeah, when I finished this book, I felt that gratitude exactly.
- [61:57]
B
I mean, as he said to me, brad, I mean, I heard that when I was a kid, I complained, of course, I did, like every kid, you know, and he would say, I'm just happy I got dry socks. But he also, when we would have deeper conversations about all this, and we did that many times, he said to me, people who have not been under heavy shellfire cannot imagine what that is like.
- [62:18]
A
Yeah, well, Henry, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about your father, his book, and your book, and the work you're doing around your dad's legacy?
- [62:27]
B
Well, I. I speak a lot about my dad. I go to a lot of historical events. I don't have a website. I'm on Facebook. William Henry Sledge. I'm on Instagram. I think I'm at H. Sledgehammer on Instagram. I don't do a lot of posting on there. Both his book with the Old Breed and then my book, the Old Breed, the Complete Story Revealed. Then the subtitle of my book is A Father, a Son and how World War II and the Pacific Shaped Their Lives. Both of those books are on Amazon. And of course, any bookstore is going to have his book and my book, his second book was called China Marine. It was about his time in China and then coming home. It dealt with that. And then I'm working on my second book, will release in November. And it's going to be called the Things that Remain the Artifacts of Eugene B. Sledge. And it will be a coffee table photo book of a lot of the artifacts of uniform items and things like that of my dad's that I have. And some of those things are in museums as well. His Bible that he kept notes in that form, the basis of his book with Yolbree, that Bible, it's currently at the World War II Museum in New Orleans, but it is going to be in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. they have asked for it, so it will be there. But I do everything I can to perpetuate my father's legacy. I mean, I just feel a passion for it's not just that I feel a passionate interest in World War II history, but it's I know how people Marines especially, but really combat veterans of all stripes. I know what my dad's writing has meant to them because I met so many of them who've told me that. And that just drives me forward to do what I do. I mean, look, I've been to my dad's gravestone in Mobile, Alabama, Brett, and my wife and I were just down there back in March, and a local veterans unit did a 25th anniversary or commemoration of his passing. And his gravestone is forever covered with challenge coins and tokens of respect. And I mean, Marines have gone and left their medals there. You know, I've seen little toy airplanes left by children there. I mean, the tokens of respect. It's overwhelming, really, to stand there and look at that. And when I see that, I mean, you know, here's a guy who died in 2001, and people from all over the world travel to pay their respects to his girl. I mean, I look at that and that just tells me there's the guy who did it, right?
- [65:02]
A
Well, Henry Sledge, thanks for time. It's been a pleasure.
- [65:05]
B
It's been an honor to be here, Brett. Thank you.
- [65:08]
A
My guest today was Henry Sledge. He's the son of Eugene Sledge, who wrote with the Old Breed. Henry's got his own book out called the Old the Complete Story Revealed. It's available on Amazon.com and make sure to check out our show notes@Aowim Isoldbreed where you can find links to resources. We delve deeper into this top. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWM podcast if you haven't done so already. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us review on the podcast player that you use to listen to the show. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think gets something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support. Until next time, is Brett McKay reminding time to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you might not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with Progressives save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates national average 12 month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary. Early birds Always rise to the occasion
- [66:52]
B
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A
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B
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A
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