Reviews for The last of the old breed : an oral history of the final Marines from World War II
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
The title is an echo of Eugene Sledge’s now-classic WWII Marine Corps memoir, With the Old Breed (1981), as Davis records the combat memories of about 130 Marine Corps veterans who are now nonagenarians and centenarians. Invaluable as the WWII generation passes, these recollections arc chronologically from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in 1945. Though distinct, each Marine’s memories cover the shared experiences of enlistment, training, and encountering the Japanese. The enemy was feared and hated, but also respected by some of these Marines for their suicidal bravery. The Japanese certainly exacted carnage on the U.S. Marine Corps, as Davis’ interviewees, many of whom were wounded, confirm in their graphic descriptions of comrades killed next to them. They also recount killing Japanese soldiers. Amid such ghastly warfare, what were these veterans thinking and feeling? Kill-or-be-killed is prominent, as is reliance on luck for survival, or for some, faith in God. After the war, many were reluctant to talk about what they went through. Likely no oral history like this can be organized again, justifying its addition to the enormous WWII-history collection.
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Past 90 and occasionally 100 when interviewed, Marines tell stories from long ago and far away that haven’t lost their fascination. Historian and journalist Davis writes that fighting in the Pacific from 1942 to 1945 was the defining experience in the lives of many veterans. Recounted innumerable times, their accounts have been refined, perhaps departing somewhat from reality. Soldiers traditionally considered the enemy subhuman, but the Japanese refusal to surrender placed them in an incomprehensibly alien category in American eyes. This was not an ancient Samurai tradition (which merely stressed absolute loyalty), but a 20th-century addition by leaders certain that soldiers who fought to the death would overcome an enemy who relied on superior numbers and firepower. In reality, the famous banzai charges worked against undisciplined troops, but not the Marines. Davis begins each of his 20 chapters with a chronological account of events, then lets the elderly men (and three women) have their say. The veterans stick to personal experiences—recollections of incidents that soldiers never forget. “My first week in boot camp, I cried every night in my bunk,” recalls Robert Beale, age 97. “I thought,Why did I join such a maniacal group of sonsabitches?” Burt Withee, 95, summed up his experience this way: “It comes down to circumstance and luck. A lot of people discount luck, but as a lot of guys used to say, ‘I’d rather be lucky than good.’” There was awful behavior on both sides, the deaths of friends, their own injuries. Some Marines collected gold teeth and other body parts; many of Davis’ subjects express disapproval, but not all. PTSD didn’t become an official concern until the Vietnam War; World War II scholars mention it in passing, but it was all too common among these veterans. Vivid memories of bygone battles. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
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Historian Davis debuts with an immersive collection of oral testimony from still-living vets who fought in WWII’s Pacific Theater. Calling the book “a story of memory,” Davis takes a hands-off approach to interviewing Marines in their 90s and early 100s, letting them focus on what matters to them. While every aspect of war is eventually considered, from stateside deployments to the challenges of fighting in humid conditions, a recurring theme is the subjects’ traumatized fixation on how their Japanese adversaries refused to surrender: “They would keep attacking until everyone was killed. We just couldn’t believe it”; “We were on a cliff overlooking the Japanese and delivered an ultimatum: By a certain hour, if they didn’t surrender, we were going to let them have it. They wouldn’t budge. We fired... and they all jumped off.... At that time, we considered them nothing more than just an animal, I guess. Odd, isn’t it?” Other sections record the reflections of Marines who survived a 1944 storm that sank three U.S. destroyers and the assault on Iwo Jima, as well as Marines’ conflicted feelings about the atomic bomb (many express concern that an invasion would have meant they had to fight women and children to the death) and becoming friendly with the Japanese during the occupation. The result is a raw record of a generation’s little discussed trauma. (May)
